Pot Control in Poker
In deep stacked no-limit Texas Holdem, one of the primary skills is in moulding the pot size to the strength of hand that you have. Often you need to balance two very important factors in deep stacked play, protecting your hand and not letting the pot get out of control. But let us look at protecting your hand for example and I am going to use a hand to show what I mean.
You open raise to $3.50 in a NL100 ring game and the button calls you making the pot $8.50. You have the As-Qs and the flop comes Ad-10h-9h.You bet $6 to “protect” your hand against the possible draws out there that may come in if you allow a free card by checking. Your opponent calls you making the pot $20.50 and the turn card is the 7d putting even more draws out there. You bet $17 and your opponent calls again making the pot $54.50.
The river card is the 2c and you are undecided whether you need to bet for value, check or use a stopper bet to prevent a big bluff. You decide that you will bet half the pot for value and as a stopper and bet $27 and your opponent min-raises you to $54. This now puts $135 into the pot and it is only $27 for you to call and with pot odds of 5/1 then that is simply too good to miss so you call even though you suspect the worst.
Your opponent shows A-10 for top two pair and you feel agitated at losing around $80 in this situation. But when you have the philosophy and the goal of “protecting your hand” then what you are actually doing is inflating the pot. For your own nightmare scenario to happen which is that your opponent hits his draw then two things basically have to happen!
Firstly your opponent has to have the exact draw that you think that they might have which in a heads up situation is unlikely. Plus even if they do have the draw that you think that they have then they still have to make the hand. A flush draw is nearly 2/1 against coming in by the river and a straight draw is more than 2/1 and nearly 5/1 to arrive on any one individual street.
If you check then your opponent may check behind you but your hand only wants so much action anyway and you cannot allow several bets to go into the pot with only one pair. You have to remember that your opponent is acting after you so he isn’t putting money into the pot with nothing is he?
You checking could entice a bluff on later streets or a weaker hand could call on later streets simply because there are fewer rounds until the end. A player is more likely to call on the river with 9-9 on an A-8-4-6-J board than they would be on the flop or turn with the prospect of several more bets to come. So checking can gain value on later streets but its just that checking seems to scare people and the thought of losing a pot and being outdrawn seems to terrify certain people. This is why they lose big pots after getting pot committed too often.