What should be your number one goal when playing poker?
There are many potential answers to this question, but if you ask us, we would be pleased to reply: winning as much as possible (whether we talk about chips or money).
A concept to help you achieve that goal is geometric bet sizing.
What's the point?
Any poker hand has a maximum of four betting rounds (preflop, flop, turn and river). It means that most of the time, you'll have four opportunities to bet and put as many chips into the pot as possible. Of course, since the game's name is No Limit Hold 'em, you can go all in at any point in the hand, but as you're probably aware, that's not the most effective way to choose your bet sizing.
How should you decide what's the optimal sizing? Let's look at an example.
Suppose you're playing a cash game with 100BB effective stacks. You open 2.5 BB from the CO with AK and get called by the Big Blind.
FLOP (5.5 BB): On the A72 flop, you bet 2 BB, and your opponent calls.
TURN (9.5 BB): On the K turn, you bet 3 BB, and your opponent calls.
RIVER (15.5 BB): On the A turn, you bet 5 BB, your opponent calls, and you scoop a 25.5 BB pot.
Many players won't think much after winning such a hand. They probably will be happy with hitting the top boat and moving on to the next hand.
Let's look at the same hand, assuming you'd bet ⅔ instead of roughly ⅓ on every street. In this case, you'd bet 4 BB on the flop (making the pot 13.5 BB on the turn), 10 BB on the turn (increasing the pot to 33.5 BB on the river), and 20 BB on the river (effectively winning 73.5 BB pot).
Even if you only bet bigger on the flop and bet ⅓ on the turn and river, the final pot would be roughly 40 BB. Of course, we assume that your opponent would be inelastic to the bet sizing you choose and always call, which is unrealistic, but at the same time, many opponents in the games you should be playing will often not care much about your sizing (unless you go very big).
How does the geometric bet sizing concept work?
Knowing the geometric bet sizing allows you to set up all-in as the final bet for the exact % of the pot as used on the earlier streets.
For example, if you start with 78 BB and the 6BB pot on the flop, your geometric sizing would be 100% of the pot, meaning you would bet 6BB on the flop, 18 BB on the turn, and 54 BB on the river.
What's the geo sizing for the 100 BB stack (assuming the pot equals 5.5 on the flop)? That would be ~117%, meaning you should bet roughly 6.5 BB and 21.5 BB on the turn and river, leaving you with a slight overbet of ~70BB on the river.
The point here, however, is not to choose a so-called perfect sizing on every street; it is to be aware of how big you should bet to maximize the expected value of your range (and sometimes exact hand) and foresee how big the pot will be on the future streets.
Remember that your game plan should start preflop; while the 2.5 BB open size in online games is close to optimal, it's a different story in soft live games. Many times, people will call your opens regardless of how big you go, and it's up to you to find out the biggest price your opponents are willing to call to see the flop.
Do not bet small if you can get away with betting big
When you're at the table where people are willing to put money into the pot, you'll have to plan your bet sizing accordingly, especially as the stacks grow deeper. Most of the time, especially in the cash games, increasing your bets by a few Big Blinds here and there will allow you to get your whole stack in the middle with your strongest holdings without having to use massive overbets (which will often make even very splashy opponents vary that they should fold).
You should know when and against whom betting a handful of BB more on the flop will allow you to bet much bigger on the river. Identifying such spots will skyrocket your win rate.
Train you intuition
The practical application of geometric sizing is not to come up with the "perfect" sizings that you'll mindlessly follow (that's why we deliberately omitted the mathematical formula for it); its primary purpose is to point you in the direction of betting big enough to make your life easier on later streets.
As is often the case when playing poker, going all-in won't always be possible or advisable. Sometimes, there will be no way to increase the pot realistically; other times, your overall range of hands won't be strong enough to validate going for the geometric bet sizing.
Nevertheless, the ability to recognize when the geometric bet sizing idea can be applicable will positively affect your bottom line. That's why working with poker solvers is the way to improve your poker skills in 2025 and beyond.
With the help of Deepsolver, you'll be able to find out when you should bet and how big, and with enough practice, you'll improve your intuition to find the best sizing against the opponents you face daily.