Poker – The Bet It All Strategy For Nlh-yuck
In the “bet it all” strategy you raise all your chips to open a pot or to reraise in a pot. So if the blinds are $10-$20 and it’s your turn to act from late position in a hand, then you just go ahead and open for the whole $1,000 you have in front of you. You will win that $30 in blinds quite often when you bet $1,000, but you’re risking $1,000 in order to win $30! You do the math! Actually, a lot of poker players use this crazy strategy these days. The downside is that you’re risking all your chips, and if your opponent picks up a strong hand you’ll lose the whole $1,000; and for what: $30 in blinds? If someone else opens a pot for $60, and the slider (he likes to slide all his chips in!) decides to play his hand, then he just bets it all. (“Your $60 and $940 more.”) I think the main reason these players do this is that they’re afraid to play their hands after the flop, although some of them just fail to understand the long-term implications of betting a lot in order to win a little.
The good side of betting it all is that it prevents someone with a marginal hand from raising or reraising you before the flop. Suppose that I have A-J on the button and now you raise it to $60 to go in late position. I may reraise you, thinking that you’re weak because you raised the pot in late position (“He’s just stealing the antes”), and therefore I think you’re just trying to steal the blinds. If you have 10-10 and decide to reraise me as well, I may have to call you if I don’t have a lot of chips left. Now we’re going to play an even-money pot (actually, not quite even money, because the 10-10 is about a 13-to-10 favorite over the A-J), which the champion players like to avoid. It’s difficult to win consistently when you play a lot of coin-flip hands in a tournament! When you do bet it all before the flop, my only option left is to fold my marginal A-J.
For a while in the 1990s a lot of sliders reached the final tables at NLH events. Sliding all one’s chips in is probably a good strategy for a weaker, inexperienced player. This way he will get lucky for a big pot or he will be eliminated, but at least the great players won’t be able to slowly pick him apart. Still, for a good or great player, or someone aspiring to be a good or great player, anything that takes away your options in NLH is bad. Sliding a mountain all-in to try to win a molehill takes away all your options and is a very risky play as well. One bad move like this, and you find yourself out of options when the player behind you jumps up from his seat because he has pocket aces. It’s too late now to take advantage of this new information, because you’ve already made your big move all-in!
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