Play like a pro: JP Kelly on the art of bet sizing

Bet sizing is an important skill for a tournament player to master because it dictates the size of the pot and how the hand gets played, so if your sizing is right you can maximise profits when you have the best hand and you can minimise loses when you have the worst hand. JP Kelly, who has won both a WSOP and a WSOPE bracelet in his career, sat down with PokerPlayer to explain how to master the art of bet sizing.

Size matters

Recently bets have become smaller. When I first started playing it was very standard to raise three times the big blind, but nowadays players are favouring the min-raise. I started doing it before most people and now I don’t really like it.

Generally in big tournaments I’ll raise 2.5 times the big blind or even three times the big blind at the start because you’re always quite deep in the big tournaments. At the start many tournaments you’ve got 300 big blinds, but when the antes hit the average stack is 150 big blinds – on the next level the average will be 100BBs.

Because you go from 300 to 100 in about five hours you have to adjust your play. So I adjust my bet sizing because of the stack sizes not my hand strength. If you just min-raise it’s harder to read the weaker players as they could almost have anything, but with 2.5x that’s not the case. I don’t mind giving the blinds better odds to call because you’ll have position and it’s a good spot to be in. You should keep your opening raise size consistent at every blind level so as not to give away information to opponents.

Power of position

Being out of position makes it harder to win the hand, so I’ll often three-bet more than the size of the pot, whereas in position I’d make it smaller. So, say it’s 200/400 and someone makes it 1,000, if I’m the small blind I’ll make it about 3,200 as a standard three-bet. But from the button, I’ll make it 2,400 or 2,500. It’s to discourage callers, but you also want to do it with good hands because it’s pretty transparent if you raise big with bad hands and small with good hands.

A decent three-bet size over an open raise is about two-and-a-half times the bet. Earlier on, I might make it three times or if I’m up against a bad player, I’ll make it bigger to build the pot. A mistake even good players make is to raise too small for value against bad players.

The bad player is going to call a lot just based on his hand, not the size of the bet and by the end of the pot you can win more. And through bet sizing you’ve manipulated the pot, so if you make it bigger preflop you can bet more on each subsequent street. Against a bad player, I might pot in on each street as they’re going to call, it’s not the amount but about whether they like their hand.

Postflop play

Continuation bets have gotten smaller, and it’s gone from around two thirds of the pot to about half the pot. But I change my bet size based on board texture too. So say the board comes A-7-2 rainbow, I’m going to bet way less than if the fl op is 9♣-8♣-4♦.

The change of bet size is based on board texture not hand strength. On the A-7-2 flop their hand can’t improve very much so you don’t need to bet as much whereas on the 9-8-4 flop there’s loads of draws so you want to charge them.

You should definitely see the three streets postflop as connected and plan your bet sizing on the flop with the turn and river in mind, perhaps betting slightly bigger on the flop so that by the river you can get stacks in. Even good players will bet the flop without a plan for the turn, hoping to win the hand there and then.

Betting without a plan is bad and lots of players will now call one street routinely. So always have a plan. The flop is the key point of the hand where you can set up the rest of the plan. Set up what you’re planning on doing with your bet size so you can manipulate the size of the pot to what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re semi-bluffing with a flush draw, you are trying to build a pot so that if you hit it you can get paid off to the maximum.

If you’re setting up a bluff you can put the pressure on and if the right card comes off to represent then you can make it that much harder for opponents to call. But, you also need to be careful on making the pot too big if you’re bluffing. Sometimes you can make it such that a player can never really fold the river if they’re getting like 4:1 or something.

Reading and learning

Being able to hand read is important as you can not only tailor your bet sizing to what you think they have, but also to what they think you have. And knowing how certain players bet with certain hand strengths is important. You can knock hands out of their range and a lot of players give a lot away with how they bet the river.

For instance, they might bet small with their marginal hands and pot it, or at least make it bigger, with their made hands. I had a hand in the WSOP Main event on Day 7 (Kelly finished 26th) where I folded A-K on an A-A-J-9-8 board when he bet really big on the river. He looked so comfortable and why would he bet so big without the hand? I felt if he had a worse ace he’d bet about half pot and I didn’t think he was bluffing either, so I was able to find a fold. I found out later he had A-8 and I’d made a good fold.

Stack size is key to bet sizing and is a reason why bet sizes go down as stacks get shallower because it’ll do the same job, add in position and board texture and they’re the three factors that determine if you bet big or small.