Pot Control is a concept that is very popular in No Limit Hold Em. The idea has been around for a long time although it is something that is often overlooked by inexperienced players.

Pot Control means that the player “manipulates” the size of the pot based on the strength of his hand. The stronger the player’s hand is, the larger he wants the pot to be. Coversely, if his hand is weak or has showdown value, then he obviously does not want to build a huge pot. But doing so can often be difficult since the opponent’s actions cannot be completely controlled. Since pot control is one of the most important skills a No Limit player must possess, learning the proper ways to control the pot size is crucial to success at the tables.

Small Pot

The way a player controls the size of the pot depends on his opponent. For example, if the opponent is super aggressive, a player’s line would look something like – Check/Call – Check/Call – Check/Call- with a hand like top pair, which most likely is good, but a hand, which does not play well in a huge pot. That is, on the flop, turn and river, the player would check and call the aggressive player’s bet, in order to let him bluff away his chips while keeping the pot relatively small.

When in position, to play a smaller pot, you can simply check behind to avoid the risk of being check raised. Normally this is done with hands such as 2nd pair on dry rainbow boards where it is hard to get called by worse if you bet. It can also be done with stronger hands such as top pair in order to induce bluffs. It is often good to check a hand such as A7 back on A2J, as it is hard to get called by worse on this type of board and our hand is normally not good enough to call a checkraise. We can also induce bluffs and disguise the strength of our hand as most players will expect us to bet top pair.

Medium Pot

A medium pot should be the goal with a hand such as a strong top pair or two pair. Strong draws with many outs can also be played aggressively. Such draws include a flush and straight draw combined (not a straight-flush draw). The way to do this is to take a similar line to creating a small pot, but instead of calling the flop, raising the flop. This will not only get in more money on the flop, but on the river as well, since the bet will be the same percentage of a bigger pot.

Large Pot

Large pots are generally the easiest to “try” to build, but not so easy to keep the opponent in the hand. Obviously, a large pot is desired when holding extremely strong hands. We don’t need the nuts or second nuts to play big pots. We should also look to build big pots with hands such as sets, two pairs, straights and flushes. Building big pots generally requires betting all 3 streets as well as raising leads when in position or check raising when out of position. One final way to play a big pot is to use overbets, where you bet more than the size of the pot. Be careful though. Overbets need to be balanced with bluffs, so make sure you’re not only overbetting your monsters!