Control Freak

Controlling the Pot Size

By Hugo Martin 11 April 2008

One often hears about top players controlling the size of the pot. What does this mean and why is manipulating the pot size important?

Imagine you’re playing a cash game against an aggressive and tricky player and you both have around 400 BBs in your respective stacks. You find pocket aces in third position and make a standard opening raise of 3BBs. Your aggressive opponent calls and you realise he’s the type who loves to call raises in position with a wide range of hands, especially when the stacks are deep and there is plenty of play further down the streets.

The flop comes down 76J with two hearts. You make a standard continuation bet and look back at your aces and notice you have the ace of diamonds and the ace of spades. Your foe calls you. Is that a sign of strength or is he just on a draw? Maybe he just has top pair with a strong kicker, a KJ or QJ perhaps? Or is he floating you and hoping to bluff you on the turn or river?

The turn brings an offsuit queen. Many inexperienced players might be thinking, “Well, I’ve got aces here, I must bet and protect them, I can’t afford to give a free card here and let myself get outdrawn”. However, against a tough and tricky opponent, betting merely bloats the pot allowing them to suddenly put the pressure back on you.

While checking seems like a weak play and indeed does give a free card, it’s probably the smart move. Imagine you bet 3/4s of the pot on the turn and now your opponent calls and raises you the size of the pot. How do you like your aces now?

Is he making a move? Has he slow-played a set and waited for the turn to bump it up? Maybe he’s just made two pair, queens and jacks? Or maybe he has a hand like Ah Qh which would give him a perfectly legitimate reason to raise it up here? Or maybe he’s got T9 and the queen has given him a good semi-bluff opportunity? Wow, that’s quite a few hands he could have. Notice that if you call there would still be a decent sized bet left for your opponent to make on the river.

Let’s think more about your hand. Aces is obviously the hand every Holdem player dreams of, but it’s also the hand many players find hard to release. The nature of pocket aces means that after the flop you can often find yourself in a situation where you are either miles ahead or miles behind. This means that if you bet the only action you’ll get is from a hand that is crushing you.

Checking in this spot keeps the pot small thus meaning any time your hand is no good you don’t lose too much. It also gives your opponent a chance to bluff if he has a hand that is so far behind that he would fold if you bet.

What about if you had position on your opponent and were last to act? Obviously this is more preferable and many players would probably choose to carry on betting if their opponent checks to them on the turn. As I said the villain in this scenario is a tricky customer who is capable of check-raising many types of hands here. Do you think your aces could stand a check-raise here?

Once again it looks like a check might be the smarter play. If your aces are the best hand, giving a free card is probably not giving up too much equity in the long run.

Deep stack play throws up many conundrums and interesting situations. Often you have to ask yourself, “Can my hand take any pressure?” Controlling the pot means you often have to revert to check-calling mode. This goes against all the poker books who love to preach that aggression is key, and that passive poker is losing poker, but when the chipstacks are high keeping the pot small is often the best approach.

11/04/08