Betting types: the VALUE BET
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
In poker a bet into a pot isn’t just a bet of a randomly chosen amount. Definitely there are different kind of bets, each with an own goal. You have value bets, probe bets, bluffs and semi-bluffs.
THE VALUE BET
Value bets you make when you believe you’ve got the best hand and you just would like to spice the pot a bit. You don’t need absolute certainty before contemplating a valuebet. Except when having the absolute nuts in your hands, your belief of having the best hand at the table is just a well-thought guess. In poker however, you have to act on these kind of guesses so in this case, you will just bet. A normal value bet is usually in the range of half the pot to the whole pot 
What are the distinct possible goals of making a value bet?
- Getting more money into the pot when you’re a favourite
- Chasing away hands better than yours
- Denying proper odds to drawing hands
- Taking control of the hand
One of the primary goals in poker is to build big pots when being favourite, and to keep the pot small when you’re less likely to win. A value bet can accomplish this first goal.
If you are wrong and you don’t actually have the best hand right now, a bet might still chase away somebody with a slightly better hand. That way you could win a pot you wouldn’t have caught elsewise.
If you have the best hand at this time, but an opponent has a good draw to beat you and you bet an amount which denies him good odds they have two choices. The obvious option is to fold, but in the other case they voluntarily put some extra value in the pot. Then you just hope they don’t hit, but in the long term these kind of drawers will earn you a nice profit :p
If you bet, you say to the others at the poker table you have a good hand. It sends out some kind of authority ^^
It could prevent some of your opponents to bet on the turn or the river, despite maybe having a better hand than you have. In that case you’ll get the opportunity to see a free card.
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