We all know what the point of playing poker is. To make money. Well, considering it is a game, the point is also to have fun, but you don’t need to learn strategies about having fun now, do you? You want to make money playing poker. For some, a good day at the tables is finishing up five bucks. For high stakes players, a good day could mean finishing up five hundred bucks. Regardless of the limits you play, you should always be looking for opportunities to extract that extra bet from your opponent. And that is where the value bet comes in.
There are varying opinions of what exactly a value bet is, but in a nutshell, it is a bet (and for the purposes of this article, we’ll stick to a river bet) you make when you believe you have the best hand and you want your opponent to call because you don’t think you’ll be able to make more money any other way. You are trying to get every last ounce of value from the hand. It is easily one of the toughest bets to make in poker, as it is far from an exact science. Let’s look at a few things to consider.
Opponent’s Hand Strength
This is the most important part of the value bet, for obvious reasons. Without having any idea of what your opponent might be holding, you will have no clue how to properly bet. If you think he has a monster, you of course don’t want to bet into him. If you think he has nothing, it doesn’t matter what you bet, as he is extremely unlikely to call you. Anything in between, as long as you believe it to be worse than your hand, and you have some decisions to make. Putting your opponent on a hand is one of the basics of poker, but it is still one of the most difficult aspects of the game to come remotely close to mastering. Like anything, it takes practice. Only The Amazing Kreskin is born with hand reading abilities.
Your Image
Part of determining your bet size, once you conclude that you have the best hand, is to be self-aware, to understand how your opponent views you. If your table image is one of a maniac or a big bluffer, you may be able to induce a call with a huge bet. If the only time you bet on the river is when you have a winning hand, then you may have to bet smaller. If your opponent views you as a strong player, he is unlikely to try anything tricky against you, so you will be able to get a better read on his hand based on what action he takes.
Opponent’s Image
Just like the image you project will affect how your opponent plays the hand, so will your view of your opponent affect how you play the hand. If you believe he is skilled, he is likely to play in a reasonable manner and at the same time know a little something about poker math and things like pot odds. If he plays loose, this will tell you one thing. If he plays tight, this will tell you another. If he gets married to hands, you will be able to bet more. If he lays down most non-nut hands, you will have to play small ball.
Let’s look at an example of the thought process behind a value bet.
The game is $1/$2 No-Limit Texas Hold’em. You have 8s-9s in late position. Two opponents in middle position limp, you call, the small blind folds, and the big blind checks (for simplicity’s sake, let’s just say stack sizes are not a factor here). The flop comes 8h-9d-Jc. The first limper makes a $6 bet into the $9 pot. The second limper folds, and you decide to smooth call with your two pair. The big blind folds, so it is just you and one opponent in a $21 pot.
The As hits on the turn and your opponent checks. You bet $12 and he calls. The 2s is dealt on the river and your opponent checks to you again. What is your play?
The most important thing here is to figure out what sort of hand he might have. You have determined that he is a pretty average player and he limped pre-flop, so it is very unlikely that he has a big pocket pair, A-K, or even A-Q. He did open the action with a decent size bet after the flop out of position, so chances are, he had something he liked. Top pair seems like a solid guess so far. Chances are he didn’t flop a set of 8’s or 9’s, not only because you have one of each, but also because he probably would have tried to trap or at least go for a check-raise, despite the board looking a little dangerous.
The check on the turn is very telling. You view this opponent as a fairly straight-forward player, which means that the Ace likely made him nervous. In a different situation, you might think he just hit something big like a set of Aces or maybe two pair with A-J, but since we ruled out a big pair earlier, the set is very unlikely. A-J could be a possibility, but there wouldn’t be much reason for him to slow down now if he had that since he already bet on the flop. Top pair still looks like a good guess, and since he looks to be afraid of the Ace, we could surmise that he has K-J or Q-J, as those are also two hands the run-of-the-mill players like to limp with pre-flop. He obviously still has something, though, or would not have called your bet.
The deuce on the river does nothing to change how we perceive the hand, and since he checked again, it looks like that K-J or Q-J very well could be what he has and he just doesn’t want to risk a check-raise. We want to make a bet that won’t scare him off, but at the same time is large enough to give us a nice profit. I say an appropriate bet would be relatively small, less than half the pot. If he has K-J, he might still think it has a chance to be good and that your turn bet may have just been trying to get him out of the pot. A $15 bet into the $45 pot could work – it’s not much larger than the turn bet, so it will feel more manageable to your opponent and might make it look like you are also a bit wary of your hand, since you aren’t ratcheting up the betting very much. $20 might work, as well, but I wouldn’t go much higher than that. In my opinion, erring on the side of underbetting is the prudent move if you aren’t sure how much to bet, as I’d rather sacrifice a few bucks and still extract a final bet from my opponent than bet too much, have him fold, and not make any more money in the hand.
Much of this changes if your perception of your opponent is different. For instance, if he hasn’t shown any ability to let go of hands, then you can make a larger value bet, since he will probably call it. Similarly, if you have a crazy bluffer table image (we assumed, for this example, that everyone sees you as a solid player), you could get away with betting more, as your opponent may see it as a bluff.
Now, if your opponent all of a sudden check-raises you on the river, you will need to lay down your hand. This type of ABC-style opponent isn’t going to mess around with a bluff here.
