Exercising pot control in NL Texas hold em
In tournament poker then you are often in a situation where the best course of action is to move all in. This is usually to do with the size of your stack compared to the blinds. But in cash game situations then not only can you buy in and start the session with 100 big blinds but you can also top up whenever you lose as well. Also when you amass chips which you will eventually do then you will end up with a deep stack. You could be playing NL100 and be four buy-ins down for the session but yet have doubled up on the next buy-in and be sitting on 200 big blinds.
So you need to know how to play deep stacks in cash games and one such area is in betting your hand relative to the action that it merits. This is where pot control comes in and this is also one of the key skills of no-limit Texas Hold em. Let us say that it had been folded to you and you raised from the button with Jc-10c and the big blind called you. You both had over 100 big blinds before the hand started.
The flop comes Jd-9c-4h and your opponent checks and now the action is on you. In a deep stacked situation like this then you have a marginal hand for the situation. Your number one criteria here is to not let the pot escalate beyond the strength of your hand. You know before the hand starts that a top pair and mediocre kicker are not worth 100 big blinds. So you have a delicate balance of wanting to protect your hand and also wanting to extract some value but also not wanting to carelessly escalate the pot.
One thing is clear here and this is that you will not extract three streets of value from a weaker hand and one may be all that you get. So you cannot keep betting this hand and escalating the pot because pots escalate geometrically in no-limit Texas Hold em. Basically this means that the bigger a pot gets then the bigger it has the capacity to become. I would bet this flop partly for value but also because I would want to end the hand right here for such a marginal hand. If I get check-raised then I would really need to know my opponent to make a call as this is starting to escalate the pot with a hand that now looks quite weak given the action.
If I bet the flop and got called then I would proceed with care and depending on what came on the turn then I would probably check it back assuming that my opponent checked. Many players bet the turn but yet it is difficult to get weaker hands to call and many players fear giving free cards. The giving of free cards is not as disastrous in no-limit as it is in limit play for one simple but very important reason. This is because controlling the pot with marginal hands that may be good is always a primary consideration.