Value Betting In Poker

The goal of poker is to make as much as you can from your winning hands and to lose as little as possible from your losing ones.  Value betting is the art of extracting the maximum value from your opponents as possible when you feel you are holding the winning hand. There are many different value betting strategies that we will discuss in this article.

When you are holding the nuts you obviously want to get as much of your opponents money as possible. One way of doing this is betting a small enough amount that your opponent feels they have to call because they are getting a good enough return on their investment to see if you are bluffing. In this case you will want to bet around half of the pot so that your opponent will be willing to call and check if you are trying to steal the pot, which of course you are not.

Value Betting Method

Another value betting method would be over betting the pot on the river to make your opponent think you would never bet that much if you actually wanted to be called. This type of value bet will only work against looser opponents when you have already created a loose table image for yourself. This value bet will not work as often as a small value bet, but when it does work you will be paid off in a big way, which makes it well worth the risk.

Another type of value betting is betting when you think you may have the best hand, but are not sure. For example, if you have a straight, but there is a flush draw on board and you are first to act you should still bet. This is because if you bet and your opponent has a decent hand, but it is worse than the straight they will call you down and you will win the extra bet amount. If they have the flush they will raise and you can fold and lose your bet amount.  Compare this to if you check when you are first to act. If you check and your opponent has a worse hand, they will check and you will win the pot without the extra amount you would have won from betting. If you check and your opponent has the flush, they will bet and since you have the straight you will have to call the bet, which you will end up losing.

As you can see if your opponent has the flush you will lose the same amount whether you check or bet out, but if your opponent doesn't have the flush you will only win more chips if you bet out and don't check. This is a trickier value bet, but in the long run it is smart to bet when you are first to act and you think your opponent would call with a worse hand or raise with a stronger hand.

Value betting in poker is an art form and once you get the hang of it you will be able to extract the maximum value out of your winning poker hands, thus taking your meta game to the next level of thinking.Check out our many other poker strategy articles.