Let your opponent make the move

In tournaments especially, but also applicable in cash games, you must allow room in your bets to allow your opponent to make a move on you. You must allow them to try and outhink themselves to force them to make a mistake. I'll start with an example, then elaborate.

Here I am playing a $20 buyin 180 person tourney, we are down to about the last 50 people.

Seat 1: bellakitty (1605 in chips)
Seat 2: big kahuna52 (6694 in chips)
Seat 3: RikkiDee (5205 in chips)
Seat 4: gismo2kr (9320 in chips)
Seat 6: treydog333 (4030 in chips)
Seat 7: Taffy7 (5405 in chips)
Seat 8: AVENGINGLOKI (7962 in chips)
Seat 9: PutU2TheTest (8445 in chips)
gismo2kr: posts small blind 75
treydog333: posts big blind 150
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RikkiDee [Ks Kh]
Taffy7: folds
AVENGINGLOKI: folds
PutU2TheTest: folds
bellakitty: calls 150
big kahuna52: calls 150
RikkiDee: raises 650 to 800

Here I make what I consider the optimal play. I'm on the button with kings, but with 2 limpers already I'm not taking any chances. But often times, when you make this type of raise after a few limpers, people start to think, is he stealing? I made sure my raise wasn't big enough to visually pot commit me, and if the big stack in the blinds decides to make a move, they can invision me folding if they indeed put me on a steal.

gismo2kr: folds
treydog333: folds
bellakitty: folds
big kahuna52: calls 650
*** FLOP *** [2s Ts 2h]

After one caller from the 2nd limper, I'm clearly not worried about any hands he may have. With TT or AA he surly would have raised preflop, and there is no way he has a 2. Only thing I'm marginally concerned with is a spade draw, but that is pretty unlikely. So it is pretty tempting to check here, and thats not a bad play, but it is kind of suspicious as well you may see an ace on the turn and regret your decision. So I like betting here, but how much? Well there are a few options. You could bet the minimum, hoping he will interpret it as weakness and bluff you, bet 1/2 to 2/3 the pot - which is the standard continuation bet I had been making this tournament, or you could go all in, which is an overbet at this point, hoping that he will interpret your overbet as weakness and call with a weak holding himself.

Now there a few things I don't like about these bets. With the minimum bet, if he indeed does have spades, then you are giving him the proper odds to call. If you overbet he may not have anything, even ace high to call you with and you lose that opportunity to make more on this pot. And I see this play all the time, the overbet with a very strong hand, hoping that it will be called by someone who thinks you are weak. When it works, you are a genius, but with a flop of 2T2, its highly doubtfull that they have anything to call you with. Heres what I like, bet enough so they have the opportunity to reraise you. Once the pot gets big, people get wierd. When they are faced with your 1/2 pot bet, and they still have the opportunity to reraise you, a lot of fish will get too stubborn with their hand and imagine that one final reraise will somehow get you to fold (usually they have no concept of pot odds, which works for me). You have to put that bluff in their hands. If they fold, you wern't making money on this pot anyways. If they see you have chips left, they'll start imagining, "well maybe this guy has been stealing all along, he can't call a reraise, and I've already put so much in this pot", and they reraise all in. I can't tell you how many times this has worked for me, especially when you have been betting just like someone would bet if they were stealing. Big pairs on the button is one of the best places to do this with, as its a natural stealing position. If its folded to you on the button, and you have QQ, throw an occassional 4-5xBB raise in there, as long as you and your opponent are deep stacked, they will make this play back at you especially if you have had a history of blind thefts recently. The key is to make your bets large enough so they look like a steal, but small enough that they don't represent a super large portion of your chips in which a reraise would force you to call with any 2 cards anyways. Never underestimate the stubborness of players, they want to make plays at you, let them. And it never hurts to delay a bit before you make any of these plays, people still read that as weakness for some reason.


big kahuna52: checks

(big delay)

RikkiDee: bets 1500
big kahuna52: raises 1500 to 5894 and is all-in

(insta call)

RikkiDee: calls 2905 and is all-in
*** TURN *** [2s Ts 2h] [6h]
*** RIVER *** [2s Ts 2h 6h] [Th]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
big kahuna52: shows [Kd Qc] (two pair, Tens and Deuces)
RikkiDee: shows [Ks Kh] (two pair, Kings and Tens)
RikkiDee collected 8785 from pot

Boo ya.

I mean, on paper, it looks pretty standard, you raise with kings and bet the flop blah blah blah. But there a lot of ways to play this hand that won't allow you to double up. It is quite suprising sometimes how people read so much into bets that they completely miss what is truly happening. I'm sure my opponent in this case went through a whole heap of mind bending to find an answer to justify his check raise, when if he stood back and realized that I am indeed representing a big hand, he can fold and tell himself not to get involved with KQo ever again. Since this seems to be a common thread in players in online tournaments that I play, I'll stick to my straight up play and let them make up their own story to "outplay me".