Monk, I noticed that you recommend always betting pot in your article, and I wonder about this in some cases--largely based on this workshop of a few weeks ago (prior to that, pot-sized bets were all I'd make).

Anyhow, here was Scotty Nguyen's example: You have 456A of some sort in MP and the flop comes 678. What do you do?

Scotty's answer was "bet half the pot." (I actually don't do this in unraised pots, because pot usually isn't huge, but in raised pots, I like it). Anyhow, he obviously viewed check-calling as well as a pot-sized bet in a big pot (we were talking hypothetically, so he just came up with a $5,000 pot and suggested betting about $2,100--but it was unclear to me what we were looking at in terms of stack-depth, whether it was tournament or ring, etc.) as flat out mistakes.

My question in the workshop (which got more of a nod from Scotty that I was interpreting as agreement but didn't get fully addressed) was, "Well, if you're betting half pot on that hand, shouldn't you also bet half pot on some extremely strong hands." I was thinking here something like 889T or 9TJQ or 9T whatever with bonus flush draw of whatever kind.

In any case, it seems to me that half-pot bets in already inflated pots can serve a purpose if you do them both on hands like the uber-nuts as well as these "might be good hands."

Then, if you get raised pot, you've found out your info and can fold the "might be good" ones, but you can then move in on the super-nut hands (i.e., nuts with a strong freeroll) and the pot-sized bettor is getting his whole stack in on what is probably at best a split pot for him.

Where I think a pot-sized bet is almost a must is on most dead-end nut hands. Even on a rainbow board with the nut straight or a seemingly uncoordinated board with top set, things can get dangerous pretty fast (like the turn pairing the board in the former, in which case you're now going to have to fold to any heat).

Generally makes very good sense to me, and I'm sure your field is stronger than mine. I agree that half-pot is a good idea to make the exception rather than the rule.

Oh, one exception I will mention where I've gotten to the point of pretty much routinely betting half pot is on the river in a pot that has been contested pretty strongly up to then. There's nothing to protect there in terms of draws, so if I'm pretty certain my hand is good, I'm for half-potting it there more often than not (again, if pot is a huge bet). If the pot is already big, I find that even the fish will lay down much too often to full pot.

Full pot on the river is more my exception, for example, if I made the nut flush but think there's a strong probability that a fish was drawing to a less than nut flush.

Agree or disagree?