Balancing your play in poker

In older strategic books balancing your play would be known as “mixing up your play”, but the correct terminology for this topic is simply: BALANCE. Balance in poker encompasses everything from the rank of cards you play in certain positions, to the amount you bet with bluffs and made hands, to the number of times you check-raise compared to betting out.

The tricky thing is that you don’t want be perfectly balanced, just balanced enough that your opponents have to think about the possibility. The best example of this is probably the hands you play from Under the Gun: Most people play extremely tight from this position, so much so that you can usually safely put them on cards of Ten and higher. Because of this savvy players will play very tight, but they will also mix in some lower ranked hands as well, for balance.

This is also true with the bets you make. In a perfect world you could bet the minimum with your bluffs and the maximum with the nuts and have your opponents fold or call at your whim, but in poker you must learn to size bets your bets so that you can bluff with the least amount of chips but still get maximum value from your good hands, and you must do this without giving away the strength of your hand! You can’t bet ½ the pot when you bluff and ¾ of the pot when you have a good hand or your opponents will eventually pick-up on this; additionally you can’t just simply bet ½ or ¾ of the pot in both cases since your good hands will miss value in the first case and your bluffs will be too expensive in the second.

So what you need to do is find the right balance between the two. What players do is find the best balance for their particular game and opponent, such as bluffing by betting ¼ of the pot 10% of the time; ½ the pot 50% of the time, ¾ of the pot 30% of the time; and full pot 10% of the time. This is balanced by their value betting amounts, such as betting ¼ of the pot 5% of the time; ½ of the pot 25% of the time; ¾ of the pot 50% of the time; and full pot 20% of the time.

In both cases, bluffing and value-betting, are close enough to keep your opponents off-balance, but averaged out your bluffs will be much less, while your value bets are more. For instance if the pot is $100, over 100 hands the amount you risk with your bluffs in the above example would be $6,000; while the total amount you are value betting is $7,125.

Obviously you have to factor in what your opponents’ calling and folding ranges are, but this should give you a good introduction to balancing your play in poker.