There are correct ranges for the amounts that you bet in no limit hold’em cash games when you play with a deep stack. Let us look at an example here taken from a six handed no limit Texas hold’em cash game where you are in the big blind with Ac-Ah. It gets folded around to the button that makes it 3.5bb to go and both you and them have a 100bb stack before the hand starts.
You decide to raise which is standard play. Correct poker strategy is to either raise or to under play your hand and call and extract some more money from the post flop betting rounds with your disguised holding. However in this instance then you decide to re-raise but the question is that as part of your online poker strategy then how much should that re-raise be to?
Now before we set about answering that question then we need to look at what your goals are with A-A in this situation. Now I know that A-A represents only one possible hand out of many that you could be dealt in this situation but we are looking at a premium hand here which could be one of several. Your goal with any superior hand is to win the maximum amount of money from an inferior hand. You would in an ideal scenario in online no limit Texas hold’em prefer it if your opponent decided to stack off with total air before the flop or on the flop.
This would allow you to maximise your value on the hand. However the betting action has seen everyone fold to the button player who has raised and so you are more than likely facing a hand that is far weaker than A-A. So if you re-raise then how much should the re-raise be for? Well let us look at an extreme scenario for a second and say that you shoved all in for your remaining 96.5bb. In this instance then the bet sizing cannot possibly be correct as many players would even fold Q-Q in that situation.
If you feel that your opponent has a weaker hand than yours and you want to re-raise in online poker then you actually want to get called. Only players that do not have enough confidence in their post flop ability prefer not to see flops or players who are playing many tables as part of their online poker strategy. So clearly an all-in shove is not going to achieve the objective of extracting more money from your opponents!
The downside of making smaller raises is that your opponent will call you more and outdraw you more and so you may lose much larger pots every so often. Being fearful of that eventuality is not strong online poker strategy and you should actively want to get called. So I would make the re-raise to 3-4 times the initial raise and so if their raise was to 3.5bb then make it something like 10bb-14bb in size.
You will find that good things can happen in no limit Texas hold’em when you do this. Some players start to enter into guessing games by thinking that you are thinking that they are bluffing from that position and are thus re-bluffing you. So they then four bet you with weak hands allowing you to extract even more value for your powerful hand.
Carl Sampson is a professional poker player that plays online at 888poker
