The concept of pot control is a very important one in no limit hold’em cash games. This is especially true in deep stacked situations where your hand strength could in fact be very mediocre compared to how big you want the pot to become. Let us look at an example here to show what I mean. Firstly you get dealt Q-J in the cut-off and you have to ask yourself do you want to get all in at this stage for 100bb with this hand……..clearly then the answer is no as anyone would have at least QQ in their hand and your hand would be dominated. But what if your opponent calls and the flop comes Q-10-4…….now what?
Well in some instances then you have a better hand because your queen has paired but this is double edged. Your opponent is unlikely to have a hand that is weaker than yours and can call with it. So if you bet here on the flop then you are really hoping that the hand ends here. You clearly want to control the size of the pot here because betting and your opponent folding means that you win the pot but you have also risked a high percentage of money as well compared to what is in the pot. So even though you are handing your opponent a free card then you do not need to fear this as much as what you do in limit play.
