How much ? When is it too much or not enough ? Part I

In the recent Full Tilt strategy guide Howard Lederer looks into the subject the “Theory of Leverage”. He describes it as the ability in no-limit hold’em to make a small bet in relation to the size of the pot, but threatens subsequent bets either in that round of betting or later rounds. A correctly made leveraged bet minimises the loss of chips on your part while maximising your opponent’s potential to lose the most number of his or her’s chips.

A simple example which often arises in online and live tournaments is when say both opponents have 30BB. Lets say blinds are 500-1000, 100 ante, and both opponents have 30,000 in chips.

Opponent 1 raises to 3300 in medium position. Opponent 2 looks down at a hand such as 10-10 in the big blind. He is faced with a difficult decision. If Opponent 2 decides to re-raise, he will figure out that a re-raise of 10k+ is in effect committing himself. If he does that and his opponent calls he will have a difficult decision after the flop, so the simplest and not necessarily incorrect decision is to in fact re-raise all in.

As Howard Lederer describes this situation, opponent 2 has been negatively leveraged. After all most of the hands that opponent 1 will call opponent 2’s all in with will have him either a coin flip or a 4 to 1 underdog. So opponent 1 has leveraged opponent 2 into risking all his chips when opponent 1 has only risked about 10% of his chips.

Preflop Leveraging ?
What quite a lot of people fall into the trap of, is working out how to vary your bet sizes just marginally so to avoid situations where you may be negatively leveraged or how best to negatively leverage your opponents.

In the current poker climate, especially late on in the tournament, a lot of the play is raise – fold or raise – re-raise – fold. Simply put there is not much post-flop action. A lot of that is to do with the size of the bets. If people make big raises and big re-raises there is no way to avoid committing all your chips in situations where you certainly are negatively leveraged.

Late on in a tournament, there is a general reluctance to call a raise, so if the table you are playing on is quite tight, and people are generally prone to either fold or re-raise then a good size leveraged bet is in fact smaller than perhaps the standard 3x the big blind raise. With antes people often feel that they should re-raise to 3 or more times the big blind. However if they are folding to quite a few re-raises then in fact they are not maximising their potential leverage. Simply you could raise on 4 occasions 2.5x the big blind versus less than 3 occasions to 4x the big blind. If the effect is going to be the same either way, why not keep the bet size as small as possible.

Lederer points out that when you have a big stack, you can open a lot of pots up with small raises, but you have the threat of the mountain of chips behind you. But even with medium and small stacks, making small raises so not to commit yourself can be a good ploy. For one, the smallish raise looks like you want action, thus creating fear in your opponent whilst not risking chips, and when you do have a strong hand you may induce opponents to re-raise you all in with marginal hands that they wouldnt necessarily call your all in with. Good leveraged betting gives your opponent the toughest decision possible.

In the first example the slightly larger raise of 3300, forced opponent 2 to risk all their chips with the re-raise. If opponent 1 raise to 2.5k , then perhaps opponent 2 could have re-raised to 7.5k and perhaps escaped the hand if opponent 1 re-pushed all in. This way opponent 2 has not risked all his chips, but can still try and win the pot with a decent re-raise. It is these subtle variations in bet size that can ultimately make the difference in how far you progress in a tournament. Always keep in mind how the size of your bet, dictates the size of your opponents next bet and how that impacts in relation to their stack.

rk

meng meng

nice post(fwiw i cant see your 2nd reply. javascript error). i recently changed from using a standard PFR size of 3BB to adjusting based on my position, cards and somtimes my opponent in the BB’s chip position. but this was only an ajustment to how short he was. eg he has 12 BB left, i am less inclined to attemt to steal because i want to have a hand i can call a shove with when he does so laying me 5/3 or better(depends on ante).

but what you(lederer) have proposed is an extension to this. useful againsts larger stacks. something i havent really considered agaisnst such opponents. i can see will be a very useful concept to consider.

Interesting post … 2.5x the bb seems to be becoming more and more in vogue now, because it will usually accomplish what 3x will while not throwing away chips when you have to fold to a reraise (also good for pot-control reasons post flop). It’s pretty ugly seeing people raise to 4x or sometimes even 4.5x (usually pressing the “pot” button on full tilt) for 1/4 their stack then fold to a reraise. I am curious about the best way to play hands when you have too many chips to reshove but not quite enough for set value, like in the example above with 10-10 – I think it’s easy to make the wrong decision in these types of borderline situations which can quickly snowball into a badly played pot and suddenly 2/3 your chips are gone. I guess it has a lot to do with whether you will have position or not post flop and putting your opponent on a range as to whether or not you shove or flat call.

It’s also interesting looking at leveraging the pot post-flop. if for example you are heads up in the hand, you have been the preflop raiser, and there is 10k in the pot, your opponent has 12k behind and you have say 20k behind. Rather than lead out for a standard c-bet of 2/3 the pot, leading out for about 2.5k, or 1/4 of the pot could be enough to get the job done because a normal sized bet might as well be all in as it is impossible for you to fold to your opponent’s all-in raise when you’re getting about 4-1 to call. Along the same lines, the smaller bet actually invites your opponent to shove, it gives you room to fold when you have nothing, and it also invites him to make a play which you can call when you do have a hand. The 1/4 size bet will often pick up the pot there, as flat calling is a poor option for your opponent, costing 1/4 your their remaining stack with the threat of an all in bet on the turn.

rk i am interested to learn what you do in examples like the one you gave with the 10-10 or similar, and how much does your opponent’s (and your) table image come into the decision?

i dont like the idea of betting with the intention of folding in a pot roughly the same size as the effective stack. if i find myself in a pot that big, i will almost always have planned to shove on any flop when making decisions preflop.
As for the TT hand(and similar ones), they are tricky. if you were trying to teach a begginer for example, i would just tell them to shove. they would make less mistakes that way. but for us these sorts of problems can be solved if you know the villains hand range. look at my post for AK, and use the same method to see if shoving is +ev. if it is, i would usully prefer to shove than 3-bet, when a 3-bet will leave us with an awkward pot size. if you know the villain is loose, then not shoving may be a thought, because we could string him along with a poor hand by 3-betting, or maybe even flat calling(you may want a stonger hand than TT. QQ’s or better). generally, my whole approach is to not fold after putting a large percentage of my chips in the pot. so, if i will be pot committed by 3-betting, then i usually prefer to shove when i think my hand is playable.