Bet sizing is one of the most important skills to develop as a poker player. While flashy bluffs and big hero calls might grab the spotlight, it’s often the subtle art of adjusting your bets that separates the winners from the rest.

Whether you’re a beginner poker player looking to build a solid foundation or an intermediate player aiming to level up, understanding how and why you size your bets is critical to improving your game.

Making the wrong size bet is one of the most common mistakes I see beginner players make, and it is one of those mistakes that can compound during a poker hand. In bet sizing in poker, an error on an earlier street frequently puts you in a compromising position on a later street in a hand. I want to outline some basic principles of bet sizing both preflop poker and postflop poker.  

Preflop Bet Sizing in Poker

Let’s start with preflop in poker, the foundation of any hand. If you’re the first to act, a standard raise size is typically 2x to 3x the big blind in most cash games and tournaments.

A common error beginners make that should be avoided is raising to different amounts based on the strength of our hand. This is something that sharp opponents can pick up on quickly and exploit. Raise and reraise sizes tend to trend in the smaller direction as we play shallower stack depths. For example, players would be more likely to use a min raise (2x sizing) at 20BB depth than 100BB depth. 

If you’re facing a raise, your re-raise, or “3-bet,” size should generally be around 2.5x to 3x the original raise size when in position and slightly larger – 3.5x to 5x – when out of position. The idea here is to make it expensive for your opponent to continue with the advantage of position postflop. Again, let’s try to avoid some of the common beginner mistakes such as re-raising very small with pocket aces and telegraphing our hand. 

Postflop Bet Sizing in Poker

Postflop bet sizing is a bit more complex than preflop sizing as there are more factors to consider. Instead of just position, opponent, and hand strength to consider we now have the additional data of community cards. My number one tip to beginner poker players would be to always think about postflop bet sizing in relation to the size of the pot.

Players should be keeping a rough estimate of the pot size in their head throughout the hand. This will be a starting point for choosing different bet sizes throughout the hand which will all be a function of the size of the pot (bet 30% of pot, bet 100% of pot, bet 250% of pot!). 

Finding the right bet sizings postflop in certain scenarios and on certain textures is one of the most challenging tasks even for top players. The crux of solving postflop bet sizing really comes down to range versus range and how our ranges interact with each other and the board. However, this may be a tough concept to integrate and execute on in-game. For beginner players, my advice would be to keep it simple when possible and put scenarios into different strategical baskets. 

For example, on dry textures where it is very easy for opponents to have nothing, like a K72 rainbow flop, a smaller bet sizing often achieves the same task as a larger bet would. Anytime we can leverage a smaller bet to do the same work as a bigger bet, that is efficient poker. Remaining consistent is important as well.  We want our ranges to be balanced within our different bet sizes.

In our K72 rainbow example, if we are c-betting 30% pot with KK, we should be c-betting 30% pot with JT as well. This prevents our opponents from gleaning too much information from our bet size and making exploitative adjustments.  

Try Your Bet Sizing Strategy at BetMGM Poker

Bet sizing isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy. It’s about reading the situation, understanding your opponents, and tailoring your bets to achieve specific goals.

As you gain experience, you’ll develop an intuitive sense of when to adjust. Even the top players in the world study and debate different bet sizes. Remember, poker is a game of constant learning. Stay curious and always think about why you are choosing a certain size with your bets.

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