But what if the pot has already been raised and you have a raising hand yourself, well remember BIG POT BIG HAND, either fold or learn to raise properly. Let us say that you have KK so you have the best poker hand unless you happen to be unlucky enough to be up against aces.

The raiser likely has a hand like AQ, JJ,10-10, etc; the chances of him having AK are lessened because you have two of them. But the chances of them having AA are increased because of the fact that they are less likely to be raising with AK because you have two kings, many people fail to comprehend this fact.

This is where pot limit Texas Holdem concepts come to the fore, if a player in a 10-20 game has raised to 60 then if you act as though the game is PL then you will be well orientated. In pot limit play, a re-raise of the pot would mean that you would be sticking in 210 because your 60 call would make the pot 150 and that is the amount that you could raise.

But lets say that there had been a couple of limpers before the raiser and the raiser bet 100 after two limpers, again make a pot limit raise. Your 100 call would make the pot 270 and that is the amount that you can raise so stick 370 into the pot. These PL plays help you to avoid under and over betting.

When these concepts must be broken is when you have short to medium stacks. Let us say that you are playing in a 2-4 No Limit Texas Hold’em game and there have been two limpers and someone raises to 25. You can now re-raise to 89 using pot limit principles. But in these situations then the size of your own stack becomes a very important consideration. If you only have 100 on the table then leaving yourself with $11 for flop betting is silly.

In this scenario you would obviously deviate from PL to NL and simply go all in. Only when you have the chips to make a pot sized bet on the flop or close to it should you refrain from going all in. Knowing when to over bet the pot is a very important skill in no limit play. It is like when you hold the nuts and you are sure that your opponent may be holding a good second best hand that they will likely call with because they are weak enough to do this.

This is the time to over bet the pot and move all in because you can take their entire stack before the board gets too scary. Let us say that you raised with 9-7 and flop a straight with 8-6-5 and the big blind has called you with 8s-6s before the flop. They bet the pot on the flop and if you only call or raise the pot and they call, you could lose them on the turn if a really scary card hits that prevents them from wanting to risk anymore money. The final part of this three part series will conclude in part three.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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