See also
This will be a brief guide. It's a simple (and seemingly obvious) philosophy for playing deep stack no limit, but one that you ignore at your peril. We call it the pot size philosophy.
Big pots and big bets are for big hands.
For a moment, take a 30,000-foot view of no limit. Ignore specific hands, situations, and bluffs. Just think in general terms. On most hands you don't bet much. On a few hands you bet a lot. If you want to win, you have to, on average, bet more on your good hands than you do on your bad ones. If you consistently get it backwards, if you build big pots with bad hands, but keep the pot small with good ones, you'll get crushed over the long haul.
Obvious, right? Except many players frequently get it backwards. They slowplay and milk with their good hands and make too many big, daring bluffs. Sometimes they do it in the name of deception. A little deception is good, but it's only a balance to normal behavior. And normal behavior should be big pots and big bets for big hands.
For instance, some no limit players opine that that they are more likely to call a big bet on the end than a small one if all they have is a bluff-catcher. They figure that, with a good hand, most players would try to "milk" them by making a reasonable-sized, callable bet. So a big bet must be a bluff.
Sometimes these players are right. Against some rare opponents, they might have it close to exactly right. But, as a general principle, calling big "bluffs" but folding to small "value bets" is horrendous strategy.
If you don't understand why, think about how easy such a strategy would be to exploit. In principle, the most profitable general betting scheme against players like that is to bet small when bluffing and bet big when betting for value. That way, you risk little when bluffing, but you get the most value for your big hands.
Naturally, a bettor has to mix that pattern up to avoid being too readable against most opponents, but he wouldn't have to mix it up against someone who calls big bets and folds to small ones. It would be a double whammy for the perverse caller: He'd tend to lose both more money and more often to value bets, and he'd snap off bluffs for less money and less often.
Habitually playing big pots with small hands and small pots with big hands will leave you swimming upstream against the Amazon. Even if you're the best swimmer in the world, eventually you'll make a mistake or tire and be carried away.
The pot size philosophy, however, is about far more than which bluffs to call. It should be with you at every decision you make. Look at your hand. Look at your opponent. Look at the size of the stacks. Think about how the action might go down if you bet $30. Then think about what might happen if you bet $60. What about if you checked?
Do you want to play a big pot with your hand in your position against your opponent? If you do, choose the action now that makes a big pot likely by the river. If not, choose the action most likely to produce a small pot.
