Topics In Bet Sizing

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Topics In Bet Sizing

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Tom Coldwell

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Topics In Bet Sizing

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Tom Coldwell

POSTED Oct 19, 2013

Tom takes a look at bet sizing in PLO, focusing in on the crucial areas of c-betting and river betting.

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jdstl 11 years, 4 months ago

On the final hand where you value bet KK43, two things. 

1) You mention on the river you expect him to have a decent number of draws.  I'm curious how often you see people peel that turn vs a 2/3 psb with their draws+no SDV.  I feel like almost always they have pair+draw or better to peel that turn.  I'd expect the majority of his river range to be stuff like K+draw,T+draw, some KT, and AA+.

2)  When you get to that river with air, if you decided to bluff, what sizing would you be choosing?  If a small bet is better for value, it seems like it can't be the best candidate for your bluffs, so I assume your just going larger since he's fairly elastic with his Kx/Tx/KT's.  Something like 16-18?

Cool vid overall, I enjoyed it.

Tom Coldwell 11 years, 4 months ago
Great questions, thanks!

1) You're right, a lot of his draws will include something with a little showdown value (a top pair sort of hand). There will be some bigger naked draws, but also a lot with a little something that could be a bluff catcher. However, given they are mainly drawing hands, they still aren't going to be very strong on this river card (even AA + gutters are clearly unhappy when I bomb here).

2) Yup, that is 100% what I'd do (against a villain with whom I don't have some sort of dynamic where I expect that I should balance or that he'll call a bigger bet or w/e). As you say, a lot of those showdownable hands that missed draws will find themselves struggling to call a big bet but still able to click call for cheap so we use the bet-size which is most likely to achieve our aim (call for our good stuff, fold for our bad).
MajinVeta 11 years, 4 months ago


Nice Video. If you don't mind sharing, what kind of win rate do you have in these 50plo games? And how much would you estimate they can be beat for given the rake?

Tom Coldwell 11 years, 4 months ago

I'm really sorry, but I don't like to post exact winrates. That said, I don't mind saying that for this calendar year I'm comfortably >10bb/100.

As for what I think is achievable after rake, I don't really know. I could conceive of it being something really stupid (20-25bb/100?) if you game select super hard and/or play the deep ante games. That said, most people who could crush like that would move up so quickly that they wouldn't stick around 50PLO very long.

JimmyGlass 11 years, 4 months ago

 the format of the vid is great. V-betting river is really an issue for me (and I guess for many of SSPLO players), so would be nice to see more of this, especially is 'thin' spots when we are on mediocre hand OTR and have to decide on bet sizing in accord with villain's range...

it feels like another topic could be 2nd barreling (especially firing ott in 3b pots)


thanks for the vid

kurtkeoki 11 years, 4 months ago

Can you elaborate a bit more with regards to wanting to size the same regardless of your holding on the flop, but altering it based on your holding on the river? Does it have to with not having enough info about their hand to exploit them on the flop?

Tom Coldwell 11 years, 4 months ago
Thanks for the question :)

As far as betting based on the board texture on the flop and not the river, this is primarily because of the manner in which the board can alter as a hand progresses from the flop but not once we reach the river.

The equity of hands/ranges on the flop can vary wildly depending on how many cards can come which substantially change things, usually by completing draws. As such, we find ourselves in situations where our bets have the dual purpose of achieving something now (value or folds) and preparing us for potential future action by creating a pot of a certain size, transmitting information to our opponent, and forcing him/her to act in a way which transmits information back to us etc. One way to avoid the transmission of information towards him/her is to size our bets according to mutually available information, ie the board. Given that these sizings don't diverge from logical ones for flop value-betting or bluffing, it seems like an excellent way to go about constructing our c-betting strategy.

In contrast, all hands on the river have their absolute strength locked in. We therefore have no reason to consider future developments and should size our bets purely based upon the information we have. It is certainly true that we have a greater amount of information at this point, but more importantly neither our hand, nor our opponent's, can improve. At this point, we will have a singular objective (either goading our opponent into a call or forcing him/her into a fold).

Another way of thinking about this is that at all times you are trying to induce equity mistakes on behalf of your opponent(s). On the flop when his/her equity is highly dependent on how the three cards off the deck interact with his/her range, we need to size our bets accordingly to ensure the maximum likelihood of a mistake occurring (on dry boards, large bets will lead to very few incorrect folds whilst on wet ones they will lead to very few incorrect calls). By the river when equity is either 100% or 0%, we should use all the information available to us to determine the best way to induce further mistakes, either by making the largest callable bet with a value hand or the smallest one we believe will achieve a fold with our bluffs. Clearly the exact size we should go for is heavily dependent upon the previous action, what we believe our opponent's range looks like at this point, and what we expect he thinks of our hand.

Hope that makes sense.
Geo 11 years, 2 months ago

Yeah, I too really enjoyed this video and have learnt a lot from it, thanks :)

Also I'd like to add that although this seems to be posted in Mid stakes PLO i think it's still highly relevent at low stakes.


Tom Coldwell 11 years, 2 months ago
Glad you liked it :)

I would think the mid-stakes posting is an error - my videos are very much geared towards low-stakes play so I would hope it's relevant :p


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