Under Betting the pot

In the last post, I gave some arguments for overbetting the pot. I have recently developed the idea that in a lot of situations making a big overbet will give you the information to preserve your stack, and is occasionally neccesary.



Similarly, here are some reasons for betting less than the pot:
1) I can preserve my stack in tournaments, allowing me the flexibility to take on bad beats, and still survive.
2) I can often gain more information with probe bets to find out if my opponent is likely to raise me.
3), I can give my opponent more room to make huge mistakes against me later on if they overbet the hand
4) I can keep my opponents in on hands to either bluff them out later, or to pay me off when I have a big hand
5)I can deceive my opponents into thinking I want action. If the flop is K38 all different suits the board looks pretty "dry", if I make a small bet, after my opponent decidedd to check, I can often make a timid player that has a hand like QQ or JJ fold, simply because a bet doesn't really make sense there unless I have a king, a set, or aces
6)I can annoy opponents and put them on tilt.
7) By Betting more often, I can make people think I'm more of a maniac than I really am.
8)I can put my opponents in situations where they don't know what to do, and as a result they're likely to make huge mistakes. - By making a small bet preflop followed up by a small bet on the flop, often times I can get opponents, who normally cfold, feel compelled to call with poor cards, because of the small bet. As a result, I can also get them calling on the flop, and when they hit there hand they won't know whether or not it's good. Often times, this can turn a tight aggressive opponent into a loose calling station. Lets say I have KQ and make a minraise preflop. My opponent feels like he has to call with K8s. The flop comes 723 and my opponents has the odds to call thinking he has 2 overcards. The king comes on the turn, and my opponent is used to being aggressive and playing big pots, so at this opint he assumes his king is good. He checkraises me and I call to induce another bet. He leads out again on the river, and I hit a queen, so I reraise him and he calls. I rake in a huge pot, simply because my opponent isn't accustomed to playing small pots.
9)I can make more bluffs, more often, and still be just as effective. - By betting half the pot, I only need to win 1/3 to be profitable regardless of my chances of actually winning the hand. That means a half sized pot bet on the flop and turn risks the same amount as a potsized bet on the flop, but sometimes two bets are more effective
10)Sometimes smaller bets give off more information. - I give my opponent the chance to go over the top and reraise where he might have just called. By doig so, I can let him win a few times, and then when I have a hand, lead out small again and get paid off. If he thinks my small bet is weak, I can just call and lead out small again, and continue this until the river, where I will decide if I want to move all of my chips in or not.



Making small bets, as well as bet bets is a part of the game. If you can implement the strategy of switching between small pots and big pots at the right periods of time, you can really confuse your opponents, and put them in a difficult situations. You can set up good players that look for tendancies to exploit, and you can end up taking all of their chips.
You can get opponents to call all their chips drawing dead by playing small pots and being patient and chopping away with small bets against opponents who can't fold top pair.
You can force opponents to take a stand and force them to commit a lot of chips and until then take lots of pots. By acting "out of character" you can convince the bolder players that you're bluffing so they go over the top, you can get the conservative players to think you have a hand and convince them that you