Getting good with pot

[Humphrind]

Pot limit poker of course. What were you thinking? You Sicko.

I have a theory. I'd like to hear your input on this before I give my explaination.

If you want to raise pre-flop, you should ALWAYS raise the full pot amount.

I've seen people do this in Pot Limit Omaha, and at first I thought they were stupid, then I saw some method to their madness.

[twosevoff]

Yeah, it's pretty generally accepted that in PL you should always raise by the amount of the pot preflop, and if you're going to bet when the pot is relatively small, you should always bet the pot. That way you build the pot by as much as possible, and also, since you're always making consistent raises, the size of your raise won't tip off the strength of your hand.

When I play PL on Party Poker though, I usually tend to underbet the pot a bit when I raise preflop (i.e. if I can raise to 2.75 I might just make it 2) because it seems like this gets me more action. Nothing worse than taking down a $1.75 pot with bullets (well, except losing a $60 one).

[Toasty]

I've read that mainly in the US they bet 1/2 the pot and full pot in Europe, I'm not sure if that includes pre-flop though.

[Humphrind]

Yeah, it's pretty generally accepted that in PL you should always raise by the amount of the pot preflop, and if you're going to bet when the pot is relatively small, you should always bet the pot. That way you build the pot by as much as possible, and also, since you're always making consistent raises, the size of your raise won't tip off the strength of your hand.

You're on the right track.

As far as making your bet size consistent. I'm not a fan of that procedure. I like to vary my bet size, pre and post flop. That way, I control what information (or misinformation) I give out. I want people to be more scared of the bigger bets and less scared of the smaller bets. The only thing I have to watch for is a lack of patterns. Once I sat down and wrote down what I had and what I bet pre-flop, to look for patterns. I didn't find one.

As I said in another post, the 3 ways to judge betting is as an amount, in relation to the pot and in relation to the stacks.

If the pot stays low after the flop, you are losing 2 big betting keys. By betting the whole pot amount you are increasing the amount you can bet post-flop, but it's not just to build the pot, it's to give yourself more options on the next round of betting.

I guess the bigger part of my question should have been: Am I just finding a way to turn pot limit more into no limit or am I finding an advantageous way to play pot limit?

[michael1123]

Seems very smart, Humphrind. By the same respect, if others aren't doing this, you can limp in with drawing hands and draw to cheaper bets if you hit a nice draw (flushdraw + pair, flushdraw + straight draw, etc.).