Thin Value Betting

editors note: this article appeared in CardPlayer magazine in January 2008

I play high-stakes no-limit hold’em cash games online. I provide exclusive coaching videos for Card Player Pro, powered by PokerSavvy Plus. My columns will center on hands taken from my videos and will explore key concepts for success in six-max, shorthanded, and headsup play.

As a Card Player reader, you’ll have access to clips of these hands and many others. In addition to these columns, you can watch videos on CardPlayer.com for a richer learning experience. For this column, I have chosen a hand that illustrates a vital component of any great player’s game: getting full value out of medium-strength hands.

In this hand, my opponent raised from under the gun to $175. The next player folded, and I called from the button with the 10♦ 9♦. Both blinds folded. In this situation, I will almost always call with this type of hand if I am not reraising. Folding is simply not an option here, for a few reasons. First of all, with deep stacks, position becomes of extreme importance. Secondly, I believed that I had a significant post-flop edge versus my opponent, who was quite possibly inexperienced at these stakes.

The flop came 10♣ 5♠ 3♥. This is a good but potentially dangerous flop for my hand. It is likely that I have the best hand, but I have to be careful not to create a big pot if I have the worst hand. My opponent bet $300 and I called.

In reality, calling is the only play here. Some players may raise, but I think that is generally a mistake. There are no draws on the board to worry about, and in all likelihood, I am either way ahead or way behind in the hand. Until I have reason to believe otherwise, I will generally proceed cautiously and just call.

On the turn, the 6♣ fell.

This was a relatively safe card for me, unless my opponent had an unlikely 6-5 or 7-4. He checked very quickly, although not instantly. This led me to believe that he never really considered betting the turn, which is a crucial part of the hand. At this point, I have to assume that he is either checking to check-fold with a totally whiffed hand, checking with the intention of check-calling with a marginal hand, or check-raising with either a very strong hand or a semibluff. Given this opponent, the chances of facing a semibluff check-raise here were very small, so I decided to bet $750 into the roughly $1,000 pot. He thought for about 10 seconds and made the call.

At this point, it is important to establish a relative hand range for my opponent. Since he merely check-called the turn, I can all but rule out any overpairs. Pocket pairs J-J and higher almost certainly would have either bet again or check-raised, and the same is true for hands like A-10 and K-10. He may have check-called if he held Q-10 or J-10, but the fact that I held one of the tens made those hands less likely. Additionally, many players would not be raising from under the gun with those hands, especially if they were offsuit. His most likely hands at this point were pocket pairs lower than 10-10 (but not a set). Hands like 7-7 and 4-4 were especially likely, given that they have some showdown value as well as drawing value.

The river was an offsuit king, and he again checked very quickly. Some may view the king as a bad card here, as it is now an overcard to my pair. However, there are almost no hands he can have that contain a king. While we may be trained to be a little affraid of that card, we ought not to be.

With the pot size now at roughly $2,500, I needed to come up with a good bet size. If I bet too big, I limit the number of hands with which he can call, which kills the value of my hand. If I bet too small, I will lose too much value. In this spot, anywhere from a half-pot to almost full pot would be a reasonable bet size. I thought that $1,750 was an amount that would get called a fair percentage of the time, while also not being too small. My opponent thought for almost a minute and finally called me with two nines. Regardless of the results, I am happy with how I played this hand. By paying close attention to all of my opponent’s actions, I was able to extract maximum value from a medium strength hand. ♠