Pot sizes grow quickly throughout a poker hand in No Limit Texas holdem and you need to be careful that you are controlling the size of the pot relative to the strength of your hand. If you do not there is the danger that you become pot committed and there are scenarios where you can be forced to commit your entire stack in an unfavourable situation simply because you must call due to the pot odds. By controlling the pot size this exerts control over the hand itself and is another winning edge you can take over your opponent.
Controlling the pot consists of your consideration of two main areas. Your assessment of your hand strength against the range of your opponent along with your stack size; your opponents stack size and your opponent’s style help you decide the best course of action to take in the hand. You can then move to the second stage which is how you implement your strategy based on the observations made and drill down bet sizes and tactics for each street. Let’s look at both factors in turn.
The stack sizes of yours and your opponents stack relative to the blinds can help you judge how far along the hand it will be before either party in the hand will be all-in or pot committed. For example you will not plan to bluff someone off a hand when most of their stack is bet on calling your initial raise. You must observe your opponents carefully as the way you exert pot control over a strong player differs from how you approach playing a weaker opponent. Knowing their potential hand holdings can only be known from watching their showdowns and then working back through the hand to see their raises pre-flop, post flop and on the following streets. If you feel that they are super aggressive (think Carlos Mortensen) then you may not be able to check to keep the pot small. Because professionals make much of their plays via the reads they have made on their opponents that is why a player reading the game well tends to go deep in a tournament.
Taking on board as much of the above information as possible you can implement the best strategy to proceed through the pot. Against a weaker poker opponent we can use the top pair top kicker example as a pivot. A weaker player may play less than the strength of top pair so against these players you should maximise value and bet pot sized bets throughout the hand. Should they just call, call, call throughout this pot control method you are likely to be ahead as their range is wider. Against an opponent you have classified as tricky and able, if they call the larger bets it become less likely they are holding anything less than a hand that can beat top pair top kicker. This is why it is wise to keep the pots smaller against more aggressive and tricky opponents.
The lesson to take from this article is the size of a pot you engineer against a particular opponent is not purely down to the strength of your own hand. How you play top set against one player at the table differs from how you would play against another player with a better stack, style and level of ability. If you tend to play hands the same ways then you are not getting the maximum value from the hands despite winning them. Simply winning any pot in any spot is not enough; you must seek to play the pot optimally against the opponent in question. Therefore observing them carefully is very important from the very first hand of the tournament as you can never get enough information to be 100% sure you are making the right move.