One of the most overlooked concepts in poker is how the nut advantage should shape your betting strategy.
Most players think about bet-sizing in pretty static terms, meaning they bet the same thing across nearly all situations. In fact, you may have even heard top players advising to keep your bet sizing consistent. But poker-solvers advise us to do something very different: when you hold the nut advantage, you should be betting big, and with purpose.
What is the Nut Advantage?
Simply put, having the nut advantage means you’re the player more likely to have the strongest possible hands in your range. It’s about how the previous action points to the hands that both players can realistically have on later streets.
For example, imagine you raise on the button with 50BB effective stacks and only the big blind calls. The board runs out Js4s8d2d and as the preflop aggressor you cbet both the flop and turn, both of which your opponent check-calls. Since you’ve still got top set in your range while your opponent generally does not (since most players would reraise it preflop), you hold the nut advantage.
Why Does Nut Advantage Matter for Sizing?
Because when you’re the player who has a higher share of the nutted hands, you’re in control. And when you’re in control, you need to bet big to maximize value and pressure. Your strongest hands benefit from building the pot. If you’re sitting on top set or an overpair, small bets are just leaving money on the table and letting your opponent off the hook. Meanwhile, big bets apply maximum pressure when you’re bluffing and force your opponent to fold their equity share.
Betting a Polarized Range
When you bet big, you should be doing it with a polarized range, aka your strongest value hands and your bluffs. Why? Because your middle-strength hands don’t benefit from putting in large amounts of money since you’re either trying to get paid by weaker hands or maximize fold equity when you’re bluffing. If you size down with strong hands, you lose value. If you size up with weak, middling hands, you risk getting blown off your equity. Betting big with a polarized range keeps your betting range balanced and tough to counter.
How Does The Solver Apply This Strategy
Returning to the J842 double-barrel hand, imagine the river comes an offsuit 3 and you’re holding a no-pair hand. When your opponent checks for a third time, you have to decide: do I check, bluff small, or bluff big? According to the solver, there are in fact only two options: check, which it does about 30% of the time and shove which it does the remaining 70%. What’s most interesting about that is that within that 70% shoving range, the solver chooses to go all in with NINETY-SIX PERCENT of hands that are worse than king high and another 35% of all the ace and king-high hands!
This shows just how valuable the solver considers the nut advantage; it’s willing to put its tournament life on the line with the vast majority of its weakest holdings. It recognizes that when it holds the nut advantage, the threat of its strongest hands does the heavy lifting. By choosing to shove 96% of its worst hands in spots such as this, it’s sending a simple message: nut advantage is power, and power demands pressure.
So the next time you find yourself considering a big bet on the river, ask yourself a simple question: Do I have the nut advantage? If you do it’s more likely than not, the time to grab the bull by the horns and let your opponent know the bad news: I’m all in.
