The Right Amount
There are few things that give away the inexperience of a player more than when someone bets an odd amount or incorrect amount at any stage of a poker hand. Knowing the basic betting amounts is important to building a strong table image and will help keep the veteran players from picking on you. For example, a common beginner mistake pre-flop is raising less than double the big blind. If you’re playing a $2-$4 no-limit hold’em game and you want to raise it up pre-flop, you can’t raise it to a total of just $5 or $6. Whenever you’re making a raise you need to put out at least double of whatever the current bet is. In this situation the $4 big blind represents the current bet, so you need to raise at least to $8 total.
However, raising just twice the current bet is called a “minimum raise” (or min. raise) and is not something you see a lot in most games. Typically only inexperienced players will put out a minimum raise, and the more knowledgeable players at the table will pick up on this very quickly and will soon learn whether or not you have a bad hand or a good hand when you decide to make minimum raises. Commonly you want to raise about three times the big blind pre-flop, though raising just 2.5 times the big blind is becoming very popular in online games. Putting out a raise of at least 2.5 times the big blind should get rid of anyone with a weak to medium strength hand, and will give you a better idea of how strong your own hand is when the flop comes.
Now as for betting amounts on the flop, you need to bet at least the amount of the big blind, but again in almost no situation is that the correct move. Generally, the concept is that if you want someone to call (if you flop a monster hand for example) you should bet about half of what’s already in the pot. If you want to make the decision hard on another player though and discourage a call, you should bet the full amount of what’s already in the pot.
You can follow this general rule of thumb on both the turn (fourth card) and the river (final card), and by doing so you’ll be playing poker like the vast majority of players. Betting the incorrect amount is practically never beneficial and will typically only hinder your hand with problems, so make sure you get the basic betting amount requirements down pat.
