There’s nothing mysterious or deceptive about betting for value. A value bet is what it appears to be. You started out with two good cards before the flop. The flop helped you in some way, and now you have a hand which appears to be the best hand. How do you play from here on?
There’s no need to be particularly clever here unless you have flopped a monster. Generally, it isn’t a very good idea to slow play. You only have three streets on which to extract the maximum possible value from your opponent, so you can’t afford not to bet when you have a strong hand. The money you don’t make is money you’ve lost. In the context of a tournament, this is even more crucial, since every single chip matters.
Just lead out with a hand like top pair and hope that someone with the second-best hand comes along for the ride and pays you for the privilege. In such situations, I like to vary my bets between half the pot and the whole pot. If I’ve assessed the situation accurately, I’d make more money with a larger bet. But, as I’ve emphasised before, you need to pursue a balanced strategy so your opponents can’t read you easily. Betting just half the pot gives you balance between your value bets and standard continuation bets, while also serving as a good way to disguise strength while still getting a lot of money in the pot.
How strong does your hand need to be in order to slow play? It all depends on what kind of flop, turn, or river cards show up, and what sort of hand you think your opponent might have. If you have flopped the nut full house and the other player checks to you, I suppose it would only be right to check back and give him a free card to improve his hand, since you’re not really going to get much value in the event that his hand doesn’t improve. But in most situations, that’s simply not the case.
It is easy to value bet the river when you have A-K and the board is A T 6 2 2 with no flush and your opponent checks to you. The other player can easily have a hand like A-Q, A-J or some other Ace, and will likely pay off your value bet on the river. However, there are a lot of situations where scare cards hit and players lose a lot of value by checking, thinking they might have been outdrawn on the turn or river. You have to understand that checking after showing aggression is always a show of weakness, and gives your opponent a chance to gain the initiative in the hand. You have to always bet to protect your hand as well as to extract value from draws or weaker made hands in spots where you might be tempted to check for pot control.
Here is an example that might better illustrate this point:
Say you have A♥ J♥ on the button. A pretty loose player limps in mid position, and you decide to raise 4 BBs on the button. The limper calls, and the flop comes:
J ♠ T♥ 4♠
It’s a pretty great flop, being in position. The flop is also one on which it will be very easy to get action from lots of different hands, such as weaker Jacks, flush draws and straight draws. Say the villain checks, you bet 6 BBs, and the villain calls.
The turn brings the Ks, and the board now reads Js T♥ 4♠ K♠.
The villian checks, and you’re looking at that terrible turn card which is an overcard to your Jack and also makes a flush possible. Most players in this situation just automatically check behind without much thought, but you need to know that there is an incredible amount of value and information to be derived from betting this turn card after the villain checks.
In this situation, your hand is still strong, and most of the time is still very much ahead against your opponent’s entire hand range. Of course, he could have already hit the flush, in which case you will be drawing dead, or maybe the King might have made him a second pair. Good for him if the King really helped his hand, but if you check behind, you will be put in a spot where you might have to make a crying call on the river, or just fold with no information since you gave away the initiative in the hand.
If the King really did help your opponent, he will most probably check/raise you or make some type of move after you bet the turn, and it will be easy to lay your hand down knowing where you are at.
Also by betting this turn, you will be getting calls from hands like A-T with a spade, J-Q with a spade, J-9 with a spade, Q-T with a spade or just plain Q-J. Also, since you hold the initiative that you haven’t given up since the beginning of the hand, whatever card comes on the river, the villain is most likely to check since you also look like you have a really strong hand, betting two streets. This way, you can check back the river and go to showdown.
Thin value bets like this don’t always need to be made on the river. A lot of times, you can maximise value by betting a lot of tricky and scary-looking turn cards. Playing passively or slow-playing will kill a lot of value a lot of the time. Of course, in the later stages of tournaments when everyone is holding 30 BBs or less, you can always check your top pair and make a move after inducing a bet from the villain, but in the early stages of tournaments (as well as in cash games), it’s generally good to always bet your pairs and make thin value bets in situations such as the one described above, since you and your opponents are both holding a lot of BBs and he is more likely to spew away his chips.
