In a no-limit cash game getting paid on your good hands and maximising your winnings is vital. Here’s a concept that will help you to put this into practice. At the river it may often be most profitable to make big over-bets or even all-in bets against your opponent.

Here’s a simple example: you hold K-K and the board at the river is A-8-K-4-2 with no flush possibilities. You’re heads-up with one opponent and you’re certain your hand is good so your mission is to get paid. You can make a smaller bet to make sure you’re called or make a big bet. Let’s say there’s $100 in the pot and you each have $100 behind.

First, let’s discuss the smaller bet of, say, $20. Let’s assume your opponent has some kind of hand and the odds are so tempting he’ll always call. The profitability of this bet is $20 x 100% chance of being paid off. This equals an expectation for this bet of $20.

Now let’s take the big all-in bet. And let’s imagine this bet will be called only one-third of the time. So the bet is $100 x 33% chance of being paid, which equals an expectation for the bet of $33. This means that moving all-in is more profitable, even though the smaller bet is always called and the all-in bet is usually not. In the long run making the big bet will make you more money. So start considering these types of theoretical sums now and your judgement of when to make these bets will improve.