5 BETTING Tips For Beginners (Just Do This!)

What's up guys, Nathan here. Today I'm going to give you the five poker betting tips that all beginners need to know. You are going to learn how much to raise pre-flop, how much to re-raise pre-flop, how much to bet on the flop, how much to raise, and at the very end I'm going to show you my secret thin value bet sizing that I have used as a professional poker player when I have top pair in the river and they have middle pair. Let's jump into it. All right guys, counting down from five to one.

These are the top bet sizing strategies that all poker beginners need to know. All right, guys. So tip number five, first things first, you need to buy in full. Now, what do I mean by buying in full? I'm talking about buying in for exactly 100 big blinds, which is typically the maximum starting amount that you can buy in for in most online and live cash camps. And also at the beginning of tournaments, usually you're going to have have around this amount as well.

Now in terms of actual dollar value, if you're playing a $1, $2 cash game, the big blind in that game is $2. So times 100, 100 big blinds would be $200. Now, why do I suggest buying in for $200? Well, number one, guys, I am a firm believer in always having zero limit on your upside in poker. Anytime I sit down in a poker game, I wanna find out what is the most money I can put on the table so that I can win the most. Of course, right? I don't want to ever limit my winnings.

And this is why short stack strategies are deeply flawed, because they place an artificial ceiling on your winnings. If you only buy in for 30 big blinds, if you go all in, you can only win 30 big blinds. So guys, anytime you sit down at a poker table, you should always know in your heart that you're the best player there. You're there to run the show and get everyone's chips.

Otherwise, why are you sitting at that poker table, right? So of course, guys, you want to have the maximum amount of chips in front of you so that you you can win the most. And all of the math and everything in this video is going to be dependent on you buying it for 100 big blinds. All right, so let's get into the actual bet sizing now, guys. So tip number four, betting tip for beginners, and that is to always raise preflop.

And let's talk about the actual amount now. Now, I would recommend raising it to three times the big blind preflop. So once again, as an example, you've got ace king offsuit, ace of hearts, king of clubs, in a $1, $2 cash game, you should raise it to $6. Now, guys, as I've mentioned before, you always want to be taking control before the flop in poker. This is going to make it much easier for you to win the poker hand, as we're going to discuss in a second on the flop turn and river.

And also, you can take advantage of the weak players who limp in a situation like this. And limping, by the way, is just calling preflop, which I absolutely do not suggest you do. Guys, you always want to take control. Now I want to point out that the ideal situation when you raise preflop is that you get one color. If you find that you are getting significantly more than one color, say two, three, four, five, or the whole table calls you, don't use three times the big blind.

Raise it up more. Try four times the big blind, five times the big blind. If you're playing in a game versus a bunch of drunk, loose maniacs, try 10 times the big blind. Guys, whatever is going to get you one color, that's the correct amount in your game. And on the flip side, if you're playing in a high stakes game full of world class professionals, perhaps three times the blind is too much and you should try making it just two times the blind.

Guys, bottom line, three times the blind is a default raise strategy before the flop that I've found works well, but you need to tailor it for the specific poker games you are playing in. All right, guys, let's move on to betting tip number three for beginners.

And now let's talk about re-raising before the flop. Now, I didn't mention in the previous example that the actual hands that you should be playing and raising with pre flop, I'm not going to get into that in this video. But because I've covered it in detail in many other videos. And if you want to know all the hands that I actually suggest playing as well, there are charts and diagrams in my free poker cheat sheet, and I'll link that up in the description

below. But now let's talk about premium hands. You guys already know we're definitely going to be playing these hands. I'm talking about pocket aces, pocket kings, pocket queens, pocket jacks, and ace king. These are referred to as premium hands in poker. And typically, not only do you want to be raising with these hands, but you want to be re-raising if somebody has already come into the pot for a raise. This is also called a three bet, by the way, before the flop.

Once again, guys, two things here. You want to take charge and you also want to start building the pot. Guys, you need to always remember that aggressive poker is winning poker.

And not only am I always looking to come into the pot with a raise, but I'm also looking for clear situations to re-raise as well, to let people know that I'm going to be in charge of the hand and definitely want to have one of these insanely strong hands like aces kings queens jacks or ace king now what amount are we using here once again guys i think a good default three bet or re-raising size in a lot of small stakes games is three times their raise so as an example you've

got two red queens queen of hearts and queen of diamonds in a one dollar two dollar cash game and somebody has already raised it to six dollars so what you want to do here is you want to make it three times times their raise. So that would be $18. Now once again, just like before, guys, you need to tailor the amount here to the specific games that you're playing in.

If you make it $18 here and you're routinely getting five callers, don't make it $18, make it $30, make it $50, make it whatever amount is again going to get you one caller. And once again, if you're playing in a high stakes game versus a lot of world class professionals, perhaps three times their raise is too much. Maybe you want to try making it $15 or even less.

Find out the amount that works the best in your games. But as a rough rule of thumb, you want to look to re-raise three times the amount that they raised it. All right, guys, let's get into the bread and butter now. Tip number two for betting that all beginners need to know. And this is the real heart of my strategy now, which is the 50-75-75 rule. All right, so what does this exactly mean? Well, it means you bet 50% of the

pot on the flop and you bet 75% of the pot on the turn and river. And I'm going to explain why right now. So first things first, guys, why do we bet less on the flop? And by the way, when I say 50% of the pot, as an example, pot's $10, you bet $5. So starting on the flop, guys, you need to realize that the ranges are their widest on the flop. And what I mean by that is people can have the widest range of hands. They can have all sorts of stuff that doesn't have any pair, any draw, or anything.

Guys, two out of every three times you go see the flop with a random hand, you're going to miss the flop completely. You're going to miss the flop, and also they are going to miss the flop. So it only stands to reason that in situations like this, you should bet less in these situations, because it's simply going to give you a cheaper price to get folds.

Now, I always need to point out, as I mentioned in my first book, Crushing the Micro Stakes, that versus recreational players, a.k.a. our fishy friends who will call with any draw, any pair, ace high, jack high, anything. I don't use any of these rules versus those players. When I have a strong hand versus those players, I just bet 100% of the pot. If it's some drunk maniac, I'll just go all in.

Okay, so these rules do not apply to fishy poker players. I'm talking about decent players in this video. So I like to standardize my bet sizing on the flop, 50% of the pot.

Mathematically, you only need to get them to fold around one out of three times in order to show a profit in a situation like this. As mentioned, we already know that two out of three times they didn't even hit the flop. So this is a perfect amount to maximize your success in getting them to fold, but also getting you some value if you do manage to hit the flop. Like we do in this example.

So you have ace, queen, offsuit, ace of hearts, and queen of clubs, and the flop comes down with the ace of diamonds, seven of spades, and two of hearts. So guys, this is one of the times when we did hit the flop, so we're betting for value in this situation. So versus a decent player, once again, on the flop here, you want to bet $5 into $10, and I want to be clear here.

If we had totally missed this flop, if it came instead with an 885 or something, we have nothing at all, I would also be betting $5 into $10. It is very, very important, guys, to standardize your bet sizing here, whether you have the strong top pair here like we do in this situation, or you have nothing at all. All right, so let's go to the turn now. It honestly doesn't really matter what the turn card is. In this example,

we have top pair with one of the best kickers. So I am going to be laying the hammer down on the turn and bidding $15 into what will be a $20 pot on the turn, which is 75% of the pot. And now let me break that down for you guys. Why do I bet 75% of the pot on the turn? And I'm going to do that on the river as well. Guys, the reason why is because when somebody calls you on the flop, it narrows their range tremendously.

They basically told you that they have either some sort of pair or some sort of draw. There's not really any draws on this flop of the ace-seven deuce. There's no flush draw. and there's really no conceivable straight draws either. So they're basically telling us that they have something like ace-jack, ace-ten, ace-nine, or perhaps they have some sort of middle pocket pair like a pocket tens, pocket nines. Maybe they got something like a king-seven that doesn't want to go away.

So they have something. They're not calling here randomly with jack-ten, for example. They do have something. So guys, you want to charge them on the turn and river. You want to let them know that you're serious. And once again, I'm going to be doing this both with value hands and with bluffs. It is unbelievably important, guys, that you balance your bet sizing in both of these situations so that they can never tell if you're bluffing or if you really have top pair like this.

And what this 75% of the pot does is it draws a line in the sand and says, hey, look, it's going to be very, very expensive for you to find out if I'm bluffing or to find out if I really do have it. it. We do have it in this hand. But once again, I'm going to be betting 75% of the pot even if I'm bluffing as well. All right, guys, let's move on to betting tip number one now.

And this is going to be my 50% of the river value bet sometimes versus decent players. So we just talked about how we're going to be betting 75% of the pot on the turn and river in most situations. But there is one clear exception. And that is when you are making a thin value bet on the river. But But let me quickly explain first what a thin value bet is.

A thin value bet is when you have a strong suspicion that you have the best hand, and you also have a strong suspicion that they have a pretty good second best hand, such as middle pair. So in the example here, you raise it up with queen, jack of hearts, and by the river, the board reads the queen, 10, 7, 4, deuce. There were two diamonds on the flop, but that draw has missed by the river. The straight draws have also missed.

The prominent straight draw on the flop was a hand like King Jack or Jack nine, which were both open ended straight draws. Both of those hands have absolutely nothing on the river. But guys, there are a whole host of good second best hands. We've got top pair, of course, so we are assuming that we're going to have the best hand here most of the time.

But there are a whole host of very good second best hands that this player could potentially have, Such as ace 10 King 10 jack 10 10 9 pocket Jack's ace 7 ace 4 So guys, what do we know about all these hands here? Well, one thing we know is that these are decent hands But these are hands that are unlikely to call a big bet a strong decent player who's watching videos like this who is even a somewhat Disciplined is going to be able to lay down many of these hands.

Especially if we make a big bet like 75% of the pot pot. However, if we were to only bet something tiny like 20% or 30%, well, they're just going to call right away. But we're missing value because often these hands would have called a 50% or half pot bet.

So I've often found that 50% of the pot is an excellent bet sizing when you're making one of these thin value bets on the river where you think that they have something relatively decent, but not super strong, where it is likely that they will not call a really big big bet, but a really small bet is not maximizing our profits. So half pot often works in a situation like this.

I hope you enjoyed this poker podcast episode. If you want to know my complete strategy for beating small and mid stakes poker games, make sure you go grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet that's available on my website at blackrain79.com. And also make sure you hit like and subscribe here to the podcast as I'm putting out new episodes every single week to help you You guys quickly get beating your poker games. I wish you guys all the best at the poker tables. I'll catch you next week.

This has been Nathan Williams with BlackRain79.com.