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Monitor your Stack To Pot Ratio :)
Watching your stack to pot ratio carefully can help you maximize pressure and leverage your chip stack.
Let’s say you have $1000,
If you bet 50% on flop and turn, how big will the pot be and how much do you have behind for the river shove?
Flop: you bet $50 into $100
Turn: you bet $100 into $200
River: The pot is $400 and you have ($1000 – $50 – $100) or $850 remaining.
Shoving river is 2x pot.
In this spot, starting the hand with $550 effective or 5.5 SPR would have been the ideal stack size for getting all-in on the river when you would bet 50%, 50%, and 100%. Is there another combination (say 33%, 67%, 100%) that would accomplish the same result when you have $550?
If you have a massive stack w/o risk of getting all-in, the pot size on the flop will grow by 8x when you bet 50% on the flop, turn, and river.
If you bet 33% on each street,
— flop bet (33%) of ($100) — bet $33
— turn bet (33%) of ($167) — bet $55
— river bet (33%) of ($277) — bet $92
— the pot size grew from $100 to $461 which is 4.6x larger than the flop pot size
Flop: you bet $33 into $100
Turn: you bet $112 into $167
River: The pot is $391 and you have ($550 – $33 – $112) or $405 remaining.
In this spot, betting 1/3, then betting 2/3 will allow you to jam the river when you have an SPR of about 5.5.
I looked into this further by writing some code. My goal was to find all the options and learn something about how it works.
My takeaways,
- the smaller the SPR, the more options you have to get all-in by the river.
- it’s easier to get all in with $300 when the pot is already $100 than it is when you have $2000
To flip the coin, instead of looking for all-in spots, maybe I’m looking for spots where I can bet 1/3 or 1/4 of the effective stack to put my opponent into a push or fold, never call spot. By betting 1/3 of the effective stack on the river, this puts most opponents in a tough spot. Looking for these chances can give me more leverage.
Have fun at the tables,
ARW
- the smaller the SPR, the more options you have to get all-in by the river.
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4 Replies
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The fun thing about being shorter stacked is that you can give your opponent the right pot odds to call, but still threaten their stack. Instead of betting a fraction of the pot, you can bet a fraction of their stack. Also, experimenting with Preflop opening sizes, 3bets, and especially check-raises can greatly affect effective SPR.
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Can you explain the Table w/ SPR 1, 2, 3, 4..?
I’m not sure I follow — is this for two streets?
Hoping you can elaborate on how your chart works. Can you provide an example?
Example
Pot = $100 — You have SPR = 1.5 or $150
The chart says bet 50%
Thus, you bet 50% of $100 — $50
The opponent calls, you have $100 left and the pot is $200
My examples were based on applying max pressure by betting “the pot” — all in.
For my approach with SPR 1.5,
You should bet:
— $20 with $130 left — the pot would be $100 + $20 * 2 = $140
— this gives you almost a full pot sized bet on the next street
or
— $25 with $125 left — the pot would be $100 + $25 * 2 = $150
— this gives you almost a full pot sized bet on the next street
This sizing is small and enticing to call. This means that a lot of drawing hands and made hands will likely call. I would expect a large calling range. On the next street, the plan is to go all-in and apply maximum pressure. A large portion of the range that called on the flop will likely fold the turn to big bet. You don’t necessarily need to have it in this spot. If you open say 22+, ATs+, KJo+ and some others, part of your jamming hands should include bluffs where you missed the flop, yet your range is stronger, you have position, and the initiative.
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Again, I want to flip the coin.
If you pay close attention to chip stacks, you might see an opponent setting up the jam. Let’s act as the villain and call the $22 bet on the flop. The pot is $144 and the opponent only has ($150 – $22 = $128). The opponent has very few options with only 1 pot sized bet left. The countermove to them jamming the turn would be to lead out into them for about 1/4 – 1/3 their stack. You can bet $35 into them and all of sudden, they are thinking about:
— less leverage than when it goes check push (only $93, not $128)
— the villain is betting into me, I can’t bluff anymore, they will likely call because my raise is only $93 more.
Leading out in this spot is very effective. It can be profitable.
— you’re taking the initiative, being aggressive, and putting your opponent to a decision for all the chips.
— you offer good calling odds but with these stack depths, the opponent should either push or fold, rarely call.
— this play narrows your opponents possible actions (push or fold)
— By betting only $35 to win $144 — this is low risk, high reward.
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Geometric bet sizing is a betting strategy in poker in which the bet size is the same on each street, such that the effective stack is all-in on the river. This strategy is also called the “geometric bet size” or “geometric growth of the pot” (GGOP).
The main advantage of geometric bet sizing is that it maximizes the amount of money your opponent puts into the pot and threatens your opponents’ stack with a simple betting strategy. If you know the geometric bet size to get all in by the river, you can adjust from this strategy to fit your opponent or situation. If you want a bigger river bet, just bet less than geometric.
To simplify your equation, you can just bet 1/4 of the effective stack on the turn, and the all-in will be twice the size of the turn bet.
I think of geometric bet sizing as similar to ranges. It is a base line that you can adjust to fit your opponent. The better your opponent, the more you want to stay consistent with your bet sizing as a percentage of the pot and have that jive with card run out. When opponents figure out you are using GGOP, they know they will be all in by the river, and tend to overfold on earlier streets, but when they do show down, they are strong.With range advantage we bet often, with nut advantage we bet large, and vice versa.
When the flop comes QsJsTh, that is flop that gives the aggressor both the range advantage and the nut advantage, and we want to get the money in as smoothly as possible. That is the best time to use geometric bet sizing. A 40% pot bet all-in on the river when you have the nuts is a better value situation than a pot-sized bet.
When the flop come 5s4s3d, the aggressor has neither the nut advantage nor the range advantage, so they should check most of the time, and when they do bet (with the nuts and draws to the nuts only) they should bet 1/4 pot or less. The plan on a flop like this is to get to showdown as cheaply as possible, because your opponent has all the straights and (if in the Big Blind) all the flushes in their range. Unless the SPR is very low on this flop, getting all-in by the river by betting this flop is a good way to value pown yourself. Of course, calling an all-in with the nuts is the most fun of all, so letting your opponent bluff is the strategy with value hands here.
Do you think having a pot-sized bet on the river maximizes the EV of your nut hands?
Or are you just trying to get them to fold to your bluffs?Per Michael Acevedo Table 90-91 page 321 of the Modern Theory of Poker: When stacks are deep, more streets are left to play and the better your opponent plays, the more range balance matters and the less raw equity matters. When stacks are short, all the money will usually go in pre flop or on the flop which makes raw equity the dominant factor. As stacks get deeper, play will occur across multiple streets which increases the need for constructing well balanced ranges.
Constructing sound post flop betting strategies is not an easy task.
Not only do you need to preserver your informational advantage on the flop, but across all future streets, too. Runout coverage is essential for both betting and checking ranges. If you don’t have the right runout coverage, even if your flop ranges are well constructed to make your opponent’s decision difficult on the flop, they could still exploit you on later streets.
Poker is a game of equity, how much you have and how to effectively realize it. Betting helps realize equity because it denies your opponent’s equity and it also helps set up the SPR in a way that can be beneficial to your equity realization.Range composition is always key to determine optimal betting strategies.
All the different actions you take convey information. Once you take an action, you can only hold hands that would be present in the range that takes that action.
One of the biggest mistakes I see rookies make is trying to represent a hand that they clearly can never have given the way the action has played out. this is why it is important not only to be able to hand read your opponents correctly, but also to be aware of your own ranges and make sure to keep them well balanced.
IF THE STORY YOUR OPPONENT IS TRYING TO TELL YOU DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, THEN IT PROBABLY ISN’T TRUE AND THEY DON’T HAVE IT.
Also watch the book study on the Modern Theory of Poker, Session 13, 38:19 and my Quizlet on Chapter 10 of the book @ <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>eric_anderson517
○ The best bet size is the one that takes your opponents to a branch of the game tree with which they are unfamiliar, leading them to make the greatest number of mistakes<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>
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blog.gtowizard.com
Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings
There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this piece: Principles of Turn Strategy and How to Analyze Turn Textures in Poker.
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