For the next few days, I'll be writing about ways to adjust the size of your bets in No-Limit games! For starters, here's a quick tip that can help you better size your bets after the flop in No-Limit Hold'em. As the hand goes on, your value bets (and as a consequence, your bluffs) should generally be getting larger in an absolute sense, but smaller in comparison to the size of the pot.
As an example, let's imagine you flop top pair, top kicker on a dry board. You're fairly certain your loose-passive opponent has a hand they believe is strong enough to call down with, but which you can beat (like top pair with a worse kicker). If the pot going into the flop is $20 (and assuming you're both deep-stacked), you might structure you bets as follows:
Flop: $15 into the $20 pot (new pot is $50)
Turn: $30 into the $50 pot (new pot is $110)
River: $50 into the $110 pot (final pot is $210)
Why do we structure our bets this way? Remember that on the flop, our opponents may have relatively high implied odds should they hit their hand; this both encourages them to call more significant bets, while encouraging us to make them pay more to draw out. On the turn, with just one card to come (and only one betting round to go), the player who is behind has significantly lower implied odds. Finally, on the river, implied odds aren't even a factor -- there are no more cards to come or rounds of betting to worry about.
Of course, there are other factors at work too, which we'll talk about in the next few days. But as a general rule, you don't need to bet as much on average (in comparison to the pot size) on the river as you should on the turn or the flop.
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