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Poker Math That Matters

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132<br />

would want to get the money in are worse sets. The worse sets<br />

will play themselves out for stacks more often than not<br />

regardless of what we bet. Given your assumptions regarding<br />

your opponent’s range, you may want to make a very small bet<br />

to induce action from your opponent’s weaker range. Maybe<br />

he’ll make a call with 66 if you only bet 1/4 of the pot. You may<br />

even consider checking since there is so little value in making a<br />

sizable bet. These actions will not build the pot in a manner that<br />

allows you to chunk your stack in easily, but it’s the best course<br />

of action given your opponent’s weak range on this flop.<br />

Now let’s change our opponent and the flop. We have A♦A♥<br />

again, but the flop is now T♣J♣6♠. The big blind is now a loose<br />

player who likes to call with any sort of draw or pair postflop.<br />

Preflop he would call with any broadway hands, any suited<br />

hands and any pocket pairs. Now this flop connects well with<br />

much of our opponent’s range. He has a lot of pairs and all sorts<br />

of straight and flush draws. We now have a reason to begin<br />

thinking about how we want to chunk up our stack.<br />

A big part of bet sizing is thinking about what type of odds we’re<br />

offering our opponent. We’re taking the idea of pot odds and<br />

flipping it around. Now we’re the villain, and we’re betting into<br />

the pot. When it gets to our opponent, what type of odds will he<br />

have to call? We want villain to make a mistake, so we're<br />

rooting for him to call when he does not have the pot odds to call<br />

profitably. When the villain makes a mistake, we reap the<br />

profits. The amount we profit is proportional to the size of his<br />

mistake. I often see players make large bets and openly tell the<br />

rest of the table "I need to get those drawing hands to fold."<br />

They are content to win what's in the pot already. However,<br />

that's not good thinking. We're trying to maximize our earnings.<br />

If our opponent can call profitably, we prefer they fold. If our

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