How you size your bets hugely influences the pot’s size. And while player tendencies, effective stack sizes, and ranges are the main components of bet-sizing, understanding how your bet-sizes influence future play is important to know.

What you bet now shapes the pot size and affects future bet sizes. Which pot size you’re looking to create is an issue for another day; the concept here is how to size your bets to build the desired total pot.

Say you’re playing $1-2, open for $6, and are called by one opponent. With $15 in the pot, a half-pot bet on the flop would be $7.50, making the pot $30 on the turn if called. A half-pot turn-bet of $15 makes the pot $60, setting up a $30 bet on the river for a total pot of $120 if called.

Now, say you want to bet 2/3rds pot on every street. With the same pre-flop action, an approximately 2/3-pot bet would be $10 on the flop, about $24 on the turn for an $83 called pot-size, and around $55 on the river for a total pot-size of $193.
But, if your wagers are pot-size, you would bet $15 on the flop, $45 on the turn and $135 on the river. A three-street called hand swells the pot to $405.

Different bet-sizing creates very different pot-sizes. What pot size you’re looking to create is a function of other issues, but knowing how a pot escalates based on bet-sizing is an important thing to include into your strategic planning. Think about how the pot-size will play, and how it should affect your decisions?

Do it correctly, and your conclusions will be more precise!

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