One of the most exciting aspects of poker is when you manage to win an entire stack of chips from one or more of your opponents. There are fewer feelings that beat this in the game. Anyone can win a large pot when they move all-in with pocket aces and some poor soul at the table is sat with pocket kings and is compelled to call but it is winning the small pots regularly that will see your win rate rise significantly.
Whilst winning large pots is more than welcome you also need to try and win plenty of smaller pots to keep you afloat until a big hand occurs or to build your stack so that you have a nice steady income. Ten-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Doyle Brunson said winning small pots on a regular basis allowed him to play his aggressive style and gamble when big pots occurred as he could offset his potential losses against the dozens of small pots won earlier in the session.
One way to pick up these small pots is through making continuation bets on the flop. One of the unwritten rules of poker is that everyone checks to the preflop aggressor and when they do so, the person who raised preflop will often fire a bet on the flop, a continuation bet. Although players are becoming wise to this move in today’s game, a c-bet will still win the pot more often than not, albeit usually a smaller one than one that goes all the way to showdown.
Another way to continually pick up small pots is to start three-betting your opponents. This works particularly well against aggressive players who habitually raise first-in in one of the later positions as against these players your hand does not really matter as the chances they are attempting to steal and will give up to your three-bet are high. Even if you are called a continuation bet will more often than not scoop the pot.
Finally, bluff-raising the flop is often a great way to win chips even if you are out of position. If you have position on your opponent and they lead out with a bet you can sometimes make a raise and represent a big pair or a very strong hand such as a set. This is particularly true if you have raised preflop an the board is very dry. Check-raising the flop is also a good move to make if you have called a raise preflop. Say you have limped then called a raise with a pair of eights and the flop comes J74 rainbow. When you check your opponent will frequently continuation bet and by check-raising you are representing a very narrow range and you hand, on this board, would look like a set of sevens or fours and should force a hand such as AK or AQ to laydown their hand.
Winning small pots is more important than winning large ones especially as the former occur far more frequently. Learn how to win the small pots and the large ones generally look after themselves.
