How to maximize wins and minimize losses in poker Part 2: Pot Control

When it comes to generalizations in poker none rings truer than “You want to maximize your wins and minimize your losses”, but the practical application of this concept often escapes people. Whether your goal is to maximize or minimize, the methods are the same, and involve three key concepts:

• 1. Utilizing position
• 2. Pot control
• 3. Isolating weak opponents/avoiding strong opponents

In this series I will take a look at each concept and how it applies to the concept of maximizing your wins and minimizing your losses. Next up: Pot control.

Pot Control

Controlling the size of the pot is a crucial aspect in big bet poker. You want to bet an amount that will get paid-off with your winning hands, but at the same time you want to bet as little as possible when you are bluffing. The trick is to make these amounts -as well as your betting patterns– mirror each other. Like everything else in poker, this is like walking a tightrope, where you will sometimes offer a player the right odds to chase you down when you could have moved them off their hand, but you do this so that when you are bluffing you don’t have to bet this same large amount.

Often times poker players do the exact opposite of pot control: Instead of playing big pots with their big hands, they continually make big bets with weak and mediocre hands, when the reality of the situation is they don’t know if they are bluffing or value-betting.

This causes a second problem when you get re-raised, or bet into on the Turn or River, because the pot is so large it’s harder to call these bets, which makes it easier for your opponents to move you off the best hand.

For example: Suppose you raised pre-flop with AJ, get a single caller in the BB, and the flop is K-J-3. Your opponent checks, you decide to make a continuation bet, and your opponent calls. The Turn is a 7, and you fire again when you are checked to. Now, in this instance if your opponent calls or raises you are in trouble, and because of the Turn bet will likely have to fold to a raise here, or to River bet. However, if you had simply checked behind, you would be able to call any reasonable bet your opponent makes on the River -you also have the added benefit of inducing a bluff from a lesser hand, like JT or A3-or value-bet yourself should your opponent check to you again.

This is why it is so critical to your long-term prospects to control the size of the pot: Play big pots with your big hands, and keep the pot small when you are trying to bluff or have a marginal holding.