Since I haven't been playing much, I haven't had a lot of poker content in the blog.  It occurred to me the other day that there are a lot of noobs out there who don't really know the basics.  So I thought I would try and do a new segment called:

NOOB CORNER

Before you put in any money in the pot, you should always consider your stack size to the size of the existing pot.  Because planning the optimal bet sizing starts on the flop.  Waiting until the turn is too late.  A Stack to Pot Ratio is the size of your effective remaining stack to the size of the existing pot.  I think most small stakes+ players are familiar with this concept.  But here is another way of thinking about SPR that I've never seen in print...

This table basically says what all good players should know.  That if you pot three barrels, you will eventually get 13x the pot of your stack by the end of the hand.  So if you open 3bbs and get called only by the CO, there will be 7.5bbs into the pot.  If you both have 100bb stacks, your SPR is 12.9.  So if you pot three barrels, you will get stacks in.  If you 3bet a 3bb CO steal from BUT to 11bbs, creating a 23.5bb pot, your SPR will be 3.8.  You will only need 50% pot barrels to get stacks in.

Most regs will know sizing just based on experience.  But sometimes, you play a multiway pot, or have non-standard effective stack sizes, or play a 3bet pot with deeper stacks.  In those cases, it's good to know what sort of "average" bet sizing will get to the desired result.  Obviously, if you want your river barrel to be larger, you can adjust accordingly.