Until recently over-betting the pot, that is betting more chips than are currently in the pot, was a move that was frowned upon, and only ever made by weak players. However, poker evolves with time and making an over-bet can be a powerful tool whether you are doing it as a bluff or for value.
Over-betting as a bluff usually occurs as an all-in bet on the river and is a great move if you think your opponent will call a normal sized bet on the river, say two-thirds of the pot, but will not call a much more significant bet. It should be obvious that over-betting on the bluff has more risk attached to it and has to be successful more often for it to show a profit.
The move is one employed by a number of the high-stakes cash game players and was on show on numerous occasions when Tom “durrrr” Dwan took on the mystery Swedish player “Isildur1″ in a series of $500/$1,000 no-limit Hold’em heads-up matches earlier this year. The move is more suited to cash games as you have a better chance of creating some history with your opponents where as in a tournament you will rarely come across the same players often enough for them to know what you are trying to achieve. Furthermore, if you make an over-bet bluff in a tournament and are called then you are out of the tournament but in a cash game you can simply reload and continue to play.
If you only make over-bets as a bluff then your observant opponents will soon realise this and will call you extremely lightly, making the move one with negative expectations. To combat this you need to, from time to time, over-bet the pot not only with the absolute nuts but also with medium strength hands too. This is because if you only make this move with the nuts or air, it is much easier to have nothing than the nuts so again you will be called too frequently to make the move profitable, but if you mix in a wide range of hands you over-bet with you will be extremely difficult to read.
Winning poker players always have a wide array of moves in their arsenal to extract chips from their opponents and over-betting the river is just one of them.
