How to Build a Pot

Irrespective of whether you are playing a cash game of poker or competing in a multi table poker tournament, there are going to be times when you are dealt a premium opening hand and want to attract as many chips into the pot as possible.

Pot building techniques can vary a great deal according to your position and the betting tendencies of your opponents, and one of the most important aspects of building a pot is that you vary the methods that you use in order not to become predictable.

Continuation Betting

Continuation betting is the most commonly used means of building a pot in poker. This practice consists of making a pre-flop raise of three to five times the Big Blind and then repeating that same sized bet after the flop, river and turn.

As effective as continuation betting is in building a pot, there are a number of reasons not to use this method too frequently. The first is that when another player recognizes the action, they will know (with a raise of 3x BB) that it is going to cost them 12 Big Blinds to see your hand by showdown. Even if the flop is very draw-friendly, and gives that player a range of possible outs, they are likely to think twice about calling your post-flop bet – knowing in advance how much they will have to commit to the pot in future rounds.

Another occasion when it is unwise to continue with a continuation bet is when you have multiple callers to your pre-flop bet. This may be because you are playing on a particularly loose table (in which case you should make it as expensive as possible for the other players to get their next card), but the more hands that get to the flop, the more likely it is that somebody will connect with the board and bust your premium starting hand.

Bet Leveraging

The principal behind bet leveraging is that you increase the size of your bet at each betting stage, starting off smaller than if you were continuation betting, but raising the stakes significantly after the flop hits the board and again after the turn and river.

The typical progression of bet leveraging would be a 2x BB raise before the flop, 6x BB raise after the flop, 18x BB raise after the turn and then 54x BB after the river. The size of the bet has increased by three on each round of betting, and the major benefit of this type of betting strategy is that once you are seen to be using it, observant players will fold their hands post-flop – allowing you to collect a number of pots without going to showdown.

The downside of bet leveraging is that if you are called all the way to the river, there is the potential that you will lose 80x BBs. Although this may happen once or twice (if you are selecting the right occasions on which to use this strategy), you will usually find that the number of pots you collect without going to showdown make using bet leveraging a viable alternative to continuation betting.

Alternative Strategies

Whereas these two strategies use a “bet, bet, bet” process to build the pot, and give you an inexpensive escape route at the flop if you meet any opposition to your betting action, posting larger bets at an earlier stage can also have the desired effect of building a monster pot.

Again, much of the success of posting a substantial bet is going to rely on the betting tendencies of the players you are seated with and how they perceive your betting action. A large pre-flop bet may be interpreted by some players as a bluff on the basis that you are not looking to build a pot by guile, and others will just fold their cards if you make their participation in a hand too expensive.

With the potential for having everybody fold to your betting action, or slow play against you hand with the nuts, it is important that you choose which technique you wish to use to build a pot with care. Observing the players around you and using notes you made in previous encounters with them, will help you determine the most appropriate betting action to help you build the pot successfully.