maglame's blog

“Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth.”

Archimedes

You’ve probably heard someone refer to “leverage” when discussing big bet poker. I certainly have, and it’s about time I figured out what it’s all about.

Essentially, leverage is when a bet is backed up by the promise of future bets. If I bet the turn, you may feel inclined to call with a marginal hand. You would certainly consider calling if this was the river. But because the river hasn’t been dealt yet, and because you’re afraid I’ll bet again, you might be more inclined to fold. This means that I have gained fold equity.

I can think of three things that contribute to your leverage.

1. That there is further action in the hand. You have no leverage when you bet the river. Your bet stands alone.
2. You also have no leverage when you bet all-in. There is no promise of future bets.
3. And lastly, you gain leverage when you are in position. If you check to me, I’m almost certainly betting!

We should then, consider what gives us more leverage in terms of which street we are on, how much chips we have behind, and if we are in position or not. What might not be obvious is what street we have the most leverage on. You might say it’s before the flop, because we have so many chips behind. But I’ll argue that it’s on the turn. In most hands the bets grow larger for every street. They start out small, before the flop, and increases rapidly all the way to the river. The river then, is where the really big bets are made. Considering this, you have the most leverage when you bet the turn. You are making a promise of a very big bet to come.

Leverage also applies to raising. Say I raise to three and a half big blinds, before the flop, and get re-raise to twelve. Now, when I 4-bet, I need to think about what I want my bet to accomplish. Really what I’m trying to do is to put my opponent in a position where he has to play for his entire stack. And to make this happen I really won’t have to make that large of a raise. If I raise it to 28 big blinds total, I have successfully applied leverage. My 28 big blinds bet is basically committing him to play for his entire stack, while I still have the option of folding.

I think that Archimedes guy was really on to something!