Sports & Gaming
Overbetting
Lesson time 10:32 min
Learn the ideal conditions for using an overbet, how to price it, and how to use this advanced tactic as part of your winning strategy.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Price Overbets According to Your Opponents' Ranges • Conditions for Overbetting as a Bluff • Make Sure You Don’t Block the Hands You Need to Call • Blockers and Overbetting as a Bluff • Overbets and Fold Frequency • If It's Too Close to Call, Fold • Don’t Overbet If You’re a Beginner
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What is overbetting? So overbetting is essentially when a player decides to bet more that's in the pot. And traditionally in poker if there's 2,000 in the pot, you wouldn't see a player bet more than 2,000. They're gonna bet in the neighborhood of 1,000, 1,500. But very rarely, especially 10, 15 years ago, did you ever see players overbetting. Not until a player by the name of Viktor Blom, who was known as Isildur online, he started to use this as part of his strategy, where he was putting players in really tough spots by betting twice the size of the pot. So if there's 1,000 in there, he'd bet 2,000, which really has a major impact on the percentage of hands your opponent can call with. It's a very, very tricky move that you can use. And it's important to understand, well, why would anyone make an overbet, OK? So why would you ever choose this as a strategy? Well, there's a couple of reasons why. Obviously, one is when you actually have a nutted hand, where you're super strong and you want to get maximum value. So if your opponent-- if there's 2,000 out there-- if your opponent would call 1,500 but would also call 5,000, well, obviously the better bet would be to bet 5,000. So what condition has to be present for that to be a possibility? Well, you have to have your opponent's range as being very, very strong, except yours is slightly stronger. So when you're looking for value with an overbet, you want to make sure you're identifying their range as being quite strong because that's more likely to get paid off. The advent of overbetting is essentially a new sort of pricing for how much you're charging to see your hand, right? And really the way it's developed is there are certain hands that your opponents are gonna have that they like their hand. They're gonna call 1,000. They're gonna call 2,000. They're gonna call 3,000, 4,000 or 5,000. Where there are other hands that you may price out, right? So you have to be thinking in terms of your opponent's range and realize that you should be pricing according to that range to get the desired result. So again, if you think your opponent has a very, very strong hand and will call a big bet and you have a better hand, well, now that's a spot where you might want to bet the maximum amount you think you can get away with, right? Whereas let's say in the same situation you don't think your opponent has very much. Well, you can make a much smaller bet sometimes with two possible variables that can happen. One, you get paid in a spot that you might not. Or two, maybe your opponent sees that as weakness and decides to go for a bluff-raise in a spot where they wouldn't have even called. They're like, well, I don't have anything. I'm not gonna call, but maybe I can raise you off the hand. So being able to price correctly is a super important aspect of playing poker. And the fact that overbetting is now something that's a tool you can use in your arsenal, you can really maximize value a...
About the Instructor
Put yourself across the felt from Daniel Negreanu, the biggest live tournament poker winner of all time. The six-time World Series of Poker champion teaches poker strategy, advanced theory, and practice through hand-reviews of his winning games. Learn how to sharpen your mental game through demos on reading opponents and spotting tells. Join Daniel at the table to increase your win rate, grow your ROI, and get your game “in the money.”
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Daniel Negreanu
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