My favorite scene it Matt Damon’s other movie (Good Will Hunting) occurs in the Cambridge bar typically occupied by mostly Harvard students. His buddy had been trying to impress some women when he was interrupted by another bar patron whose main goal was to make these townies feel inadequate and embarrassed. Damon’s character, who happens to be an unassuming genius, steps in and disarms the situation by unmasking the protagonist as the plagiarizing bully that he truly is. Just after the Harvard student takes one more jab by reminding Damon that he’ll never have the degree to accompany his supreme knowledge base, our hero closes the scene by stating that he’ll, at least, never be unoriginal.

Lately, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the unoriginal use of the “bet pot” button that many sites offer to their players. I see that particular bet a lot and, in my opinion, it often indicates a player who really has no idea how the pot is impacted. Rather, I think these players merely know that they need to skew the odds in their favor and figure a pot sized bet is enough to do the trick. In this article, I’ll be offering advice specifically designed to compensate for how that button is overused in no-limit tournaments.

In his recent article, Bohemian has offered the pragmatic advice that you learn the fundamentals of the game to the degree that they become second nature to your daily play. It is imperative that you learn how to control the pot with your bets in order to maximize your wins and minimize your losses. In his first book, Dan Harrington spells out very clearly how betting half the pot will give your opponent 3:1 odds (appropriate for a flush draw with an over card). Accordingly, betting ¼ of the pot will give your opponent 5:1 odds (appropriate for an open-ended draw), betting twice the pot will offer 1.5:1 odds (you’d need 19 outs to call) and making the ubiquitous pot sized bet offers, of course, 2:1 odds. But let’s dissect those odds even further, since we see the bet so often.

I’ll most often see the pot sized bet when the flop lands two suited. Suddenly your opponent is glaringly aware of the flush danger so it becomes imperative to scare away those draws. Let’s consider a few examples that might place you as the person considering answering the pot sized bet with a call. Because you’re already a strong player, we’ll give you suited slick. It’s early in the tournament and the blinds are only at 15 and 30. You don’t like to take big gambles this early in a large tournament, but you’re holding Ah, Kh in middle position. It folds to you and you make a standard raise of three times the big blind. You get one call from the cutoff, the small blind folds and the big blind completes, creating a pot of 195. At the start of this hand, you were all evenly stacked in the 1500 range. The flop comes 4s, 6h, Jh. The big blind checks and you decide to check as well, playing conservatively early in the tournament and hoping for a free card. But your cutoff opponent immediately bets the pot. The big blind folds and leaves you with a 2:1 decision.

Although you’re out of position, the good news is that you’re likely not to be up against a set. Even with the flush draw, I will see a flopped set played a bit slower more times than not. Accordingly, your two over cards will most likely also be good. Often times, the flopped set will send out a probe bet and then really nail the turn with a large bet if the flush does not land. But let’s assume that you are, indeed, up against a set of sixes, thereby requiring you to land the flush in order to compete with this hand. With two cards to come, you’re actually 1.9:1 to make your flush by the river. Your opponent’s stack has already drained to the 1200 range and will need to sacrifice another 585 chips to make a pot sized bet on the turn (if you keep reading my articles, I’ll tell you how to rally from a stack size of 600 from early in a large tournament). While you may end up needing to make a decision for all of your chips on the turn if you don’t land your flush (an easy fold, by the way), I actually want to encourage you to consider the flop call.

It will be early in the tournament and you won’t have a lot of information about your opponents, but consider that you’re often up against hands as poor as QJ, KJ, TJ, etc. You’re also likely to be up against a player who simply is not savvy enough to compete with your knowledge of pot odds. They just see a flush threat and act in the only way they know how. These are often the players who can’t understand why you called such a “huge” bet. In reality, you’ve got some good odds to make that 2:1 call and your opponent is often unwilling to lay out another pot sized bet on the turn (I’m not going to mention the Stop-and-Go semi-bluff). When we take the flopped set out of the equation and reconsider your over cards, you’ll often have some decent odds to call another bet on the turn. Even if you factor out one of your over cards as a clean out, you’ll have 3:1 odds to call a turn bet.

But suited slick from out of position is not the only flush draw you’re going to land. Let’s consider a scenario at a similar stage in the tournament where you’re holding 7s, 8s in the cut-off. Three people limp ahead of you and you’re fairly certain the small blind will complete. With blinds at 15 and 30, you’re offered a cheap look at the flop that could give you a well disguised hand to play with from good position. You call, as does the small blind, and the big blind allows the six of you to see the flop with a pot of 180. That flop lands As, Js, 9h. You’ve got a flush draw with a gut shot straight draw. If all your outs are clean and you’re not up against a higher flush draw, you’ve got 12 outs (the nine remaining spades, and the three remaining tens in addition to the Ts). Keep in mind that an opponent holding KQ (a likely keeper for a limp this early in the tournament) is going to counterfeit your tens. An opponent holding Ks, Qs is going to put you out of this tournament.

But as it turns out, it’s checked twice and a player in middle position brings out the pot-sized bet from a pathetic arsenal of poker tricks. Let’s assume that KQ off-suit might decide to call a gut shot draw leaving you with nine outs to the flush. Right now you’re getting just shy of 2:1 odds for a 2:1 call. As it turns out, however, the big blind also calls the bet, thereby bringing the pot to 720. Again, it’s early in the tournament and you all began with close to 1500 chips. You’re now all hovering in the 1250 range and the turn brings a 3s, giving you the flush with an 8 kicker. You think you’re good.

It’s checked to you and (for the sake of conversation) you want to maximize your gain here. A gut shot needs 11:1 to make a smart call. An opponent holding two pair is getting 7:1 odds to land their full house. If you make a bet of 90 chips, you’re offering 9:1 odds. Don’t do that. If you bet 150 chips into this pot, you’re offering the full house draw just shy of 6:1 odds to call. Depending on the player, you may get that call. Most of the time, you’re going to come out ahead on that deal. Most of the time, however, you won’t be up against opponents who know whether or not they’re making a bad call. If you can price an opponent in at 150 for a pot of 870, they’ll often think it’s an okay call. If the board pairs on the river, or if you get check-raised on your turn bet, you may want to give serious consideration to letting your 8 kicker go.

I’ve offered you two examples (both from the early rounds of a large tournament) of when it might be appropriate to call a pot-sized bet while holding a sufficient draw. As you come across different scenarios offering different board combinations and over-card holdings, and as you account for your various starting positions in those hands, start really trying to make sense of a pot-sized bet. Many opponents place that bet thinking they automatically wreck your odds for calling with anything. As you play your tournaments, start to note the number of times you see that pot-sized bet. As you begin to see what it is typically used for and as you begin to pair that with a complete understanding of the odds you might be getting on your own hand, I hope you will begin to decipher the bet to a deeper degree than what your knee-jerk reaction may have been allowing.

In the meantime, good luck. But remember, it’s always better to be good than to be merely lucky.

BD