Value bets represent one of the biggest lost opportunities in poker.  Poker players around the world are missing out on all kinds of money by not value betting enough. 

Value bets are bets you place on the river when you think you have a better hand than your opponent.  It sounds easy enough but value bets aren't always as cut and dry as they may sound at first.  Sure, it's easy to value bet when you have the stone cold nuts on the river, but it's not such a clear value bet in situations like when you have 2nd pair in an unraised pot or top pair in a bigger pot.

It usually goes something like this:  Joe gets AQo in a .50/1.00 NL game on the cutoff and raises it to $4.00 preflop.  An opponent who limped in UTG calls the raise and the flop comes something like AK6 of all different suits.  The opponent checks and Joe bets about $7.00 into the $10.00 pot and the opponent calls.  The turn brings another 6 and again the opponent checks to Joe.  Joe figures his ace is still good so he bets about $18.00 into the $24.00 pot.  The opponent calls yet again and the river brings an offsuit 5.  The final board is AK665 and again, the opponent checks to Joe.

Right here is where a lot of players like Joe go wrong.  The pot is now $60 and Joe only has about $70 left in his stack if he started the hand with 100BB.  Joe decides that his hand is good but not great and the pot is big enough for him so he's not going to take any chances with a bet.  He checks it down and takes a nice little $60 pot.

Joe's decision to skip the value bet was completely wrong in this hand.  The worst thing of all is that there are all kinds of players out there doing the same thing.  They are floundering around in small and medium stakes games not value betting enough.

If you're stuck at any stakes between .25/.50 NL and $1/$2 NL, I bet you could move up within two months if you started value betting more.  If this describes you, try it out and send me an e-mail and tell me how it worked out for you.

Let's analyze Joe's decision in a little more detail.  First of all, he didn't even attempt to read his opponent's hand.  The only hand he was worried about was his own.  If you look back at the hand, was it very likely the opponent had Joe beat?  Nope.

The opponent limped in under the gun, so it's not very likely he had AK.  Even if he did have AK for a strong two pair, he would have made some noise earlier in the hand. 

Ok then, what about a set?  A set isn't very likely either because the only likely set on the flop was 66.  The six on the turn would have made Joe's opponent quads, which is highly unlikely.

With a set made by AA or KK, the opponent probably would have raised at some point preflop.  If not that, the opponent probably wouldn't have checked to you three streets in a row with such a strong hand.  How often do you play a super strong hand by checking on the flop and turn and then trying a river checkraise?  Probably not very often.

What's more likely was the opponent having a weak ace.  If the opponent was bad enough to open-limp under the gun and then call a raise out of position, it's very possible he had some sort of weak hand with an ace.

The other mistake Joe made was when he looked at the size of the pot and told himself that he was satisfied with $60.  That's a big no-no in poker.  You don't let the size of a pot affect any decision you make.  You should make your decisions based upon the profitability of each action, not on how many weeks' worth of groceries you stand to lose if you're wrong.

Joe should have made a big bet and hoped for a call.  River checkraises are hard to pull off, so people don't try them very often.  The odds that Joe had the best hand were overwhelmingly in his favor and he lost out on a lot of money by not value betting the river.

If he would have placed a nice, healthy-sized bet out there, it would have put his opponent in a difficult situation.  Big bets don't really look like little "please call me" value bets, they look suspicious.  Most of the time people either have very strong hands or bluffs when they bet big on the river.

Even if the opponent had folded, that wouldn't have been a terrible thing either.  He would have left the hand wondering if he just got bluffed out of a huge pot.  The next time Joe catches a strong hand, you can be sure that opponent will be more likely to pay it off.

The keys to successful value betting are being able to read your opponents' hands (like we did in this example) and estimating how much your opponents will call with those hands.  If you can do both of those successfully, you'll be able to extract the maximum money out of every decent hand you catch.  Those additional profits quickly add up to significant sums of money so don't neglect your value betting game