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Value Betting: Why And When To Do It

20 October 2007

Really think through the best course of action when in marginal spots - in poker these small edges very quickly add up

Whether to value bet or not is a crucial factor to consider if you want to maximise your poker profits...

Being able to extract the maximum value from a hand is the hallmark of a truly expert player. A value bet is often seen as a bet with a medium strength hand where a player believes they are ahead. The basic idea behind the value bet is to try and gain extra bets from players holding lesser strength hands.

Certain criteria have to be met to make a value bet profitable. Firstly, your hand needs to have some showdown strength (you are looking to be called so your hand has to be able to win). Secondly, you have to be quite sure that your hand really is the best hand (value betting bottom pair after lots of action is not going to profitable). Lastly, you are in a game where you have a tricky image – if players never see you bluff they will not call with marginal holdings.

A good example of when value betting is appropriate is when you hit part of your hand on the river. Your hand will be well disguised – always good territory when trying to get extra bets out of players.

Say you raise in a heads-up game with 9c10s and get called. The flop comes out Qc6s2h and your opponent check calls your continuation bet. The turn is the 3c and you both check. The river is the 9h and your opponent checks. This is often good territory to try and get some extra bets; your hand has good showdown value (second pair is usually going to be good after this sort of action), is well disguised, and your opponent has shown a tendency to call you. A smallish bet (maybe ¼ to ½ the pot) will often get a call out of a hand like A6 or 77 here.

It's not all roses though, people seem too frequently over use value betting – sometimes alternative plays will actually extract more. To illustrate this I want to look at an odd hand that shows why value betting in what appears to be a good spot can sometimes be a mistake.

You are under the gun with red aces. All players have large stacks relative to the blinds. You have raised four times the blind. One player has called you from the button. The flop comes out 6s6c7h. You bet out around the size of the pot. Your opponent calls. The turn is the 7c and you both check.
The river is the 6h. The pot stands at $100.

Before we discuss the river action some theoretical criteria need to be established about your opponent. Your opponent is a solid tight player who does not play weak hands (a true suited connector is the weakest hand you have ever seen him play). You believe that his only possible holdings by the river are any pair from 77 to KK, 67s or 56s. He will value bet half of the pot if checked to with any of these hands (this is the only bet size he uses on the river you have seen). He will call any bet up to a quarter of the pot (but no more - having regularly folded to half pot bets himself) with 88 to KK and will re-raise with any of the hands that beat you.
These criteria are obviously over simplified – although you will be surprised how often players do actually exhibit these sorts of predictable tendencies.

Of the nine possible hands your opponent has you can beat six and lose to three. This means you should expect to win 66% of the time and lose 33% of the time – an edge of 16% above even money over the long run.

Here’s what happens if you value bet into your opponent. 66% of the time you will win a pot of $150, 33% of the time you will lose that same pot of at least $150 (after you fold to their re-raise). This means betting out on the river has an expected return of $24 (16% of $150) profit over the long run.

Now let’s look at check calling as an alternative – here you will still win 66% of the time but you will win more. As your opponent always bets out half the pot you can actually increase your return by $6 (16% of $200 is $32). This is an obvious concept really - with any positive edge in a bet you want to try and maximise the amount of money put in by your opponent.

Here we see that through careful observation of your opponents you can identify situations where value betting is a significant mistake. Remember that people will often bet more than they will call (you always need a stronger hand to call than to bet, illustrated perfectly by David Sklansky’s “gap” concept). As a result value calling can often be more profitable than value betting.

It is surprising how often people will bet out in situations like this, even into very predictable opponents. Do not fall into this trap. Really think through the best course of action when in marginal spots - in poker these small edges very quickly add up.

Against players who habitually check call small bets, are content to check hands down, and do not raise their marginal hands, value betting is a great strategy with your medium strength hands. Yet in the increasingly aggressive modern era of poker it actually often makes much more sense to try and check call against constant aggressive raisers.

The real problem with this strategy is taking into account the percentages of the time they will check behind, yet would have called a small bet from you. Here is where the immense skill in value betting and calling becomes obvious; being able to really understand the player is critical in trying to maximise your edge.

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