Does it help to think in BB vs Cash?

Does it help to think in BB vs Cash?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I view my bets during games, specifically whether I should be thinking of them in terms of BB rather than actual dollar amounts. This hit me while playing a 1/3 game where most open raises are around $15, pretty close to the 2/5 games where you see open $15-$20 raises. This got me thinking, that’s around 5BB at 1/3 and 3-4BB at 2/5, making me wonder if I’m really adjusting my strategy between stakes as well as I thought.

Here’s an example when I was t thinking in BBs: playing 1/3, someone under the gun limps, and then a hijack with a big stack makes it $20. (6.6bb) The cutoff calls, the pot is now ( about15BB) I’m in the small blind with AKo and a $240 stack. Without much thought, I pumped it up to $120, (40BB) trying to leverage my position and the strength of my hand.

When I was thinking in BB: I was in a 2/5 game with a $500 stack. UTG+1 opens to $25, and two players call. I’m on the button with 10s-10c. The opening bet is 5BB, but with callers, the pot’s 15BB. Instead of just calling, I decide to raise to $125 25BB, trying to isolate or take down the pot pre-flop.

However, thinking in BBs, was my approach too aggressive for the situations, or was it justified given the pot odds and implied odds? Does anyone else do this? Does thinking in BBs change how you play, or am I just overthinking things?

07 February 2024 at 08:06 PM
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8 Replies



In my experience you should think of it as money because that’s what your opponents will do—especially your bad opponents.

In particular, many of your opponents will have a threshold where they start to view a bet as “serious money.” This comes into play more postflop than preflop, but really it is always useful when bets are getting big.


Post flop, I would be thinking in terms of % of pot. 1/3 pot, 1/2 pot, 3/4 pot, full pot, etc.


Money is guns. Don’t think of it as money. Think of it as guns (bbs)


by AzOther1 k

Post flop, I would be thinking in terms of % of pot. 1/3 pot, 1/2 pot, 3/4 pot, full pot, etc.

Yes, mainly, but with a few caveats

1. In low $ pots post flop, I think you should strongly think about the amount. In $5-$15 limped pots, I'm rarely betting less than $10
2. Be wary of how others view. A lot of low stakes players think in terms of $, so while you bet half pot in a $200 river pot gives him good odds to make a crying call, he may be thinking of it just as $100.


it makes no difference. Pesos, rupees, sheckles or jiggies. Currency is currency. The only question you have to answer is whether you're getting odds to play. If a 1/2 game is really a stealth 5/10 with $30 opens then you cant setmine your opponent only has $120 left. If however the stacks balloon to 2k then the game has evolved.


Yes, you're probably over-thinking things. But, I've never tried to stop myself from thinking in dollars in order to force myself to think in terms of bb's, so I don't know if it would change my play.

Pre-flop, I tend to think of it as both, but only far enough to arrive at the correct raise size in dollars.

If the usual raise at 1/3 is $15, which is 5bb, and at 2/5 it's also $15, but that's only 3bb, the dollar amount is obviously the same, but the bb amount is different. The reason is that the rake is the same in those two games (at least where I play), but the stack depths are different, allowing for more 4B'ing and 5B'ing at 2/5 then we see at 1/3.

When discussing the action, no one says, "He opened to 6.7bb's". They just say he opened to $20, or whatever. When looking at remaining stack depth or pot size, we're counting dollars, not bb's.

Thinking about an open size in terms of bb is useful only as a starting point. It's important to understand why opening 2bb-2.5bb is correct in the late stages of a tournament, where the blind size is increasing, but doesn't work as well in a low-stakes cash game with a rake and a lot of loose action from players with multiple buy-ins available.

Once the raising starts, continuing to think about it in terms of bb's takes up mental energy doing math to convert dollars back into bb's, when we really ought to be thinking about things in terms of bet size compared to pot size or stack size, and pot-to-stack. All of that is typically counted in dollars, or fractions, not bb's.

When we read online articles, they usually do things in bb's rather than currency, so that the concepts are quickly applicable to any size game, without the reader having to do the mental math to reduce the bet sizes to their preferred game. So, a 3x raise is a 3x raise, whether you're playing 1/3 or 2/5. When discussing a concept, bb's are the universal increment.

So, pre-flop, I think in terms of $ and bb's - my standard raise is Xbb = $X. Post-flop, I think of it in terms of bet size as a percentage of pot size (1/3 pot, 2/3 pot, etc) or remaining stack size ($200 with $800 behind).


It helps to think of it in terms of BB because while your opponents may be thinking of it in pure dollar terms, the profitability of actions is based on how much money is in the pot, which is a pure product of how much the blinds are and what the open raise sizing is.

Yes, postflop we think of it more in terms of what percent of the pot is the bet. But we should still be thinking of how many blinds we started with and what our thresholds should be to play what size pots. At 100bb in a 3bet pot, an overpair is very often going to be good enough to get stacks in. At 1,000 bb deep, there are situations where you might have to pot control with sets.

Going back to preflop, say you are $300 deep in a 1/3 and and UTG raises to $15. You are on the button with 87s. While a solver might flat this hand a lot when the open raise is 2-2.5bb, chances are with rake and facing a 5bb open when you are not that deep, calling with 87s will be a losing play. And it just doesn't matter that $15 is the normal open and no one is thinking of it as 5bb. The basic math makes it a losing call.

Another situation, say you are $600 deep in a 1/3. Action goes bet, 3bet, cold 4bet, and now you have a hand like AKo or JJ and action is on you for the first time. Maybe everyone in this game is always sticking off for $600 with AKo and JJ+. But the reality is, given the action, having put $0 in the pot and facing the action ahead of you, chances are that calling or cold 5betting these hands are not going to be profitable. It doesn't matter if the whole table treats $600 like it is 100bb. The math is just not going to be on your side.


Understanding the game OUGHT to be thought in terms of BB while exploiting how your opponents are thinking is the way you should play.

The correct way to react to large (in terms of BB) raises is to 3 bet or fold. The exploitative way to raise large when others will call is to tighten your pre flop range and make those large bets.

That 3 bet with TT was a good play, and one you should be making with a wide range there, something like suited aces, suited kings, 77+, or suited connectors insteas of suited kings if the pfr is likely to call.

My personal 3 bet sizing is 4x +1x if OOP and +1 per squeeze, so I actually wouldve gone $175 there. My game is $1k deep, with the shorter stacks maybe id go 125-150.

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