Poker Math That Matters

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all sorts of As, Js and Ts in his range and was in no way folding
any pair on the flop. Also, I thought his range was packed with
broadways and middle cards that would give him all sorts of
straight draws. He was also playing many suited hands so could
easily have had about 30 combinations of flush draws in his
range. In other words, my opponent was going to be calling a
flop bet a lot. Also, it’s a flop where a weak hand like a small
pocket pair isn’t going to be calling much of a bet anyway. My
opponent wasn’t a good player, so I felt he would be happy to
call a very large bet. Another interesting thing about this flop is
that is can change dramatically after the turn and river. Another
heart or a broadway card can dramatically change how we each
view the board and interpret our hand strength. So, I decided I
wanted to end this hand on the turn. The preflop pot contained 8
big blinds. My opponent had about 46 big blinds left in his
stack. If I bet the pot on the flop, the turn pot would contain 24
big blinds, and he would still have 36 big blinds in his stack. So,
I decided I would overbet the flop. I bet 14 big blinds, and he
called. This gave us a 36 big blind pot on the turn and only 32
big blinds left in his stack. Getting all-in on the turn was a very
comfortable call for him at that point. So, thinking about
chunking and getting creative with my bet-sizing, I was able to
dictate how many streets I wanted to allow betting to happen.
This creative betting can also take place preflop. The size of our
preflop raise creates our stack to pot ratio (aka SPR) on the flop.
Analyzing the SPR in a hand can be a quick way to think about
chunking. The SPR is a product of dividing the effective stack
size on the flop by the size of the preflop pot. For example, if
we make a pot-size raise preflop, and the big blind calls, the
preflop pot is 7.5 big blinds. If we started with 100x, we now
have about 96.5 big blinds left.
96.5 / 7.5 = 12.86