A Beginners Guide to Poker Betting

I was in the process of writing another article about a new poker variant (which I will get back to) but found myself revisiting and editing the article based on which set of card rankings I was going to use and which betting formats to write to, and frankly, I was confusing myself.

As someone who isn’t a super regular poker player, but the founder of an online poker company, I’ve had to familiarize myself with the game and I have to say, it can be very intimidating and confusing.

So, I’ve decided to try and distill what I’ve learned into a series of articles, starting with betting, to help make the game a little more approachable for a newbie (which was me not that long ago).

If you want to continue receiving short emails like this one please subscribe! Most of these are about new poker variants, strategy tips or poker learnings, or updates for my poker site — Unshuffled.io.

Betting

No Limit — You’re probably most familiar with this style of betting. No limit simply refers to a players ability to bet any amount of their chip stack during a hand. It’s most commonly played with Texas Hold’em (hence the name, No Limit Hold’em or NLH).

In 2019 (since the 2020 World Series of Poker was canceled), Hossein Ensan won the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event. There were 8,569 entrants with a purse of over 80 million dollars. Hossein took home a cool $10 million for his victory.

Pot Limit — Another super common betting style. In a pot limit game, the size of the pot is the most a player can bet at any given time. You’ll often see Pot Limit Omaha at casinos and card rooms (more commonly referred to as PLO), but I’ve seen it with Seven Card Stud and a game called Badugi as well.

The hardest part about pot limit games is figuring out what exactly the max bet is at any given time — it seems relatively straightforward but, unfortunately, it really isn’t.

There are a few formulas for calculating the max bet in a pot limit game, but my favorite is the following:

3 x Last Bet + The Pot Before the Last Bet

The “last bet” always refers to just the current betting round, so if you’re first to bet post flop, the “last bet” would be 0. Here is an example to help make things clearer.

Pre-flop with blinds of $5 and $10. Player A and Player B both call the big blind of $10 before the action is on you. The max bet would be:

3 x 10 (the last bet) + 5+10+10 (the pot before the last bet) = 55.

Fixed — Exactly what it sounds like, players are only allowed to bet in fixed intervals during each betting round. It’s most commonly played with 7 Card Stud and Omaha although there are fixed limit Hold’em games out there as well.

The fixed amounts can be whatever you want, but the standard practice is to have 2 fixed amounts, one for the first two betting rounds, and one for the remaining betting rounds. It is also common practice for the fixed amounts to be in increments of the stakes at that table.

So, as an example, if we are playing Omaha at a table with blinds of $1 and $2, the fixed amount for betting/raising in the first two betting rounds would be $2/$4, respectively. The final three betting rounds would have fixed betting/raising increments of $4/$8, respectively. It is also super common for there to be a maximum number of raises in any given betting round (usually it’s four).

A final note on fixed limit games — fixed limit games and no limit games read differently on paper. If you go online or to a casino and see a table playing fixed limit $2/$4 Omaha, that refers to the fixed limit in the first two betting rounds (meaning blinds are $1/$2). The same casino might have a NLO $2/$4 table, which refers to the blinds themselves.

Betting Terms You Should Know

3Bet — Okay this is a term that I hear ALL the time when talking to people in the poker community and I always would just nod along like I knew what they were talking about when that couldn’t have been further from the truth. A 3bet is an initial re-raise before the flop. So, if you are playing and someone raises off of the big blind, and someone then raises again, they will have executed a 3bet.

The name comes from fixed limit games, because the re-raise ends up being 3 times the fixed limit (Fixed limit is $2, first raise is $2 + $2, and second raise, or 3bet, is $4+$2).

Straddle — In it’s purest form, a straddle is a 2x blind raise BEFORE the cards are dealt. It is more common in live cash games than online, but it is fairly common in the Hold’em world. There are two types of straddles, under the gun (UTG) and Mississippi.

A UTG straddle gives the player sitting next to the big blind the opportunity to bet 2x the big blind before cards are dealt. Without going into too much detail, this can be thought of as a third blind for this hand. Players bet accordingly and if all players call the UTG straddle, that player has the opportunity to raise or call.

A Mississippi straddle is the same thing, except it is the player on the dealer button who gets the opportunity to raise the big blind pre deal. If deferred, players to the right of the dealer each get the same opportunity, and then betting starts to the left of that player.

There are a lot of variations to straddling — re-straddling, deferring straddles, even limitless straddles, but we’ll save that for a separate article.

Limping — Calling a big blind is what is referred to as limping as it is generally viewed as a not aggressive (and often times, weak) play.

Pot Committed — Sometimes you’ll be in a position where it doesn’t make sense to fold given how many chips you have remaining and the size of the pot. This unfortunate position is called being pot committed, and most often occurs when you become short stacked (smallest number of chips at the table)

Position

This is an important concept for the betting section because of its relationship with straddling and blinds. There will be a separate article on the advantages/disadvantages of each position — we’ll just define them here.

One thing to note is seat positions and names depend a lot on the number of players at a table, so just keep that in mind!

Early Position — The small and big blind players, as well as the player directly to the left of the big blind. This player is referred to as Under the Gun or UTG.

You’ll often see a players position referred to as UTG+1 or UTG+2, this simply means the player one or two seats left of the UTG player.

Middle Position — The players between the UTG position and the final 3 positions on the table, which are the dealer (last position) and the two players to the right of the dealer (will explain those in the next section).

Late Position — A bit repetitive, but the three late position players are the dealer (also referred to as the button) the player to the right of the dealer (the cutoff) and the player to the right of the cutoff (the hijack).