The Overbet

The overbet is the term used in No Limit poker Where you bet more than what is currently in the pot. It’s often seen as a weak play used by poorer players to try and get people off hands.

The reason why it’s unique to No Limit poker is that in CAP and Pot limit games obviously there are limits on how much you can bet at any given time (i.e. the pot).

However, as the game of poker develops there can be situations where an overbet will gain you more profit than say a regular bet, but its very situation dependent.

Some of the best pros are specialist of the over-bet move, such as Isildur1 who can be considered the master of optimal overbetting.

Whilst I wouldn’t advise using it as bluffs too much, it can be used correctly gaining value from players who pay off the river too light (fish) or at spots where you think a player just cannot fold their hand no matter what the bet size. Let’s take a look at an example of this:

Optimal overbetting

So you pick up pocket 5’s in the big blind and call a raise from early position. The flop runs out A55, giving you the flopped nuts with quads. Now the action is on you and you decide your play is to check raise this board in the hope your opponent has a big Ace.

You check, they bet, you raise, they call. Turn brings another A (the board now reads A55A). Bingo! You bet again and they decide to call. Now at this point your opponents likely thinking that by just calling they keep all of our bluffs in and at worst only really get it in for a split pot.

Or we hold a 5 and they decide to slow play or at the very back of their mind, they may think we have quads, but this is unlikely. The river falls a 2 and changes nothing.

Here we have a situation where this guy has nothing or a big hand with an Ace giving them a full house. This situation is perfect for the overbet as we know they won’t fold a full house because at worst they’ll think they will split the pot, only for them to call and see we have quads.

When to overbet

So that’s an example of how to play against a mediocre player or even a good player as the situation arises. There are however times where we can do it with a much lesser holding. This requires for us to pick our opponent carefully though.

So who can we target? Well, fish for one. Fish often have a hard time folding medium to high hands such as top pair or two pair type hands. If we feel they aren’t going to fold and we have strong holding such as a set, flush or straight, then an overbet could work out to be the most profitable play in this situation.

As a general rule the overbet is one that should be used sparingly and targeted towards a specific player or hand situation. Your can also use it once in a while for restealing, but usually it is best to stick to betting within the pot amount for maximum value from your hands. It is best for bankroll management.

Ideally you want to be using a poker tool such as Pokeredge so that you can easily spot the players who know how to use the overbet.

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