...Online Poker Reviews and Strategies...
The value bet
The difference between good and weak players is made on several levels. Good players lose less money on the hands they end up losing and win more money on their monsters. As you can see damage control is only one side of the equation. Hammering your good hands home properly is just as important. Whenever you make less money on a hand than your opponent is willing to give up, you make a mistake and winning poker doesn’t tolerate mistakes.
Don’t ever think that just because you hit a monster, the going will be easy for you. As a matter of fact that’s where it gets really tough. If, at the conclusion of the hand, you have a bitter taste in your mouth and know you should’ve won more than you did, you’ve obviously lost value on the hand even though you won the pot.
One of the reasons why rookies seldom manage to “milk” their monsters to their full potential in cash games is that they do not bring an adequate stack to the table. In cash games, the larger your stack, the more advantages you enjoy over your opponents. One of these advantages is the fact that you can truly make someone pay when you hit your monster. As you probably know, cash game poker is about the blatant exploitation of the implied odds (see set-mining). In order for this strategy to yield optimal results, you need a substantial stack which you can then use to get as much money into the pot as possible whenever needed.
Beginners miss out on value when holding the best hand for other reasons too. One of these reasons is that they cannot value-bet. Betting patterns represent the single most important read at a poker table, be that a live or an online one. This is exactly why squeezing the optimal value out of your opponent is a real challenge. Basically, you need to trick him/her using the channel every player pays the most attention to: betting.
When you’re preparing for a value bet, these are the factors you need to consider:
- The strength of your opponent’s hand. You always have to strive to put your opponent on a range of hands. If you reckon he has a big hand (just not as big as yours), you can safely assume he’ll call a larger value-bet because he’ll assume his hand is the best. With a weaker hand, he’s obviously more likely to fold.
- What he may think of your hand. If your opponent is fairly sure he’s got the second best hand at the table, he’s not going to call your value-bet regardless of how cautious an amount you fire at him.
- His willingness to let his hand go. Some people are married to their hands. These people will not relinquish their cards as they’ll go to the bitter end to bust what they feel is a bluff on your part. Such players make many mistakes, but then again, you are supposed to make your money off other people’s mistakes.
- The amount of money he’s willing to call. Most players put a mental limit to the amount of money they’re willing to call under any circumstances at a cash table. Others though don’t have such limits. Assess your opponent’s calling limit and get it as close to reality as possible.
When you have a pretty good idea about all the above named factors, you can fire out a relatively optimized value bet. Remember, the goal here is to get the amount as close to perfection as possible.
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