Over Betting Your Poker Hand
Over bets, every poker player experiences them. The over bet will do one of two things to you. It will either fill you with elation when you have an extremely strong hand, or leave you completely confused when you have a mediocre hand. There are not many better feelings in poker than when you turn the nuts and the other player just shoves his entire stack into you, it takes all the work out of the hand. By contrast, there are not many worse feeling in poker than when you turn middle two pair and a tight player shoves his entire stack in the middle. You have a strong hand, but at the same time you could easily be way behind. Over bets usually mean one of three things. The player has an extremely weak hand and is making a bluff, they have an extremely strong hand and want to get the most value from it, or they don’t know how to play a hand so they let you do the dirty work. It can be difficult to decipher exactly what an over bet means.
Over Betting Bluffs
Players do not over bet bluff very often, but those few times that they do are enough to convince many players to call over bets, well, over and over again. The one time that an over bet bluff is easy to spot would be when the over bettor was involved in a big hand just before the one you are playing. The over bet bluff is often used as a means of relieving some pent up frustration. If you saw that they had just gotten sucked out on and then open shoved the flop on the very next hand, it is very possible that they have nothing and are just angry. This would be the ideal situation in which to call an over bet bluff. You need to be careful though; some players will be thinking one step ahead. They will know that you think they are angry and open shove when they flop a solid hand, trapping you in the process.
Over Bets for Value
Most over bets are made for pure value. These types of bets are frequently seen when two deep stacked players are up against each other in a big hand. One of the hardest things to do in poker is make your bets sized well enough that you can effectively get a player all in. For this reason there is often a lot of money left in a players stack by the river. In an attempt to make up for lost ground some players will just shove their entire stack and pray for a call. This is of course not the ideal way to play a hand as it makes the strength of any hand quite obvious, but some players will call these over bets after convincing themselves that they are bluffs. These infrequent calls will lead to the occasional big win, but more often than not an over bet for value will just get a fold from the other player. It is better to make a true value bet under the size of the pot.
Over Bets When a Player Doesn’t Know What to Do
Many players will get a hand like JJ and 3 bet it pre flop. When another player 4 bets them they will have no clue what to do and just spazz shove their entire stack. They figure their hand is strong enough that they can’t fold, but it is not strong enough that they could effectively play it post flop. This is rarely a good game plan. You are much better off deciding whether you are ahead or behind and playing the hand accordingly. Mindless shoves may eliminate all the guesswork, but that guesswork is what leads to profitability.