The cards have been dealt and after a round of betting the pot already has some meat to it. The flop comes down and your King-Jack has improved to two pair. After a couple of checks and a small bet it’s your turn to act. You make a move to your chips while crunching the numbers in your head. How much do you bet?

That’s always the tricky part when you’re playing No Limit Texas Holdem online. Whether you’re the first player to act out of the blinds or last off the button you always have to decide how much to bet. It’s not always that easy either. If you bet too small a player on a draw might hang around longer then they should only to hit that miracle card on the river. However, if you bet too big you’ll end up scaring away everyone and lose out on what could have been a big pot.

When you’re deciding how much to put into the middle you should keep two things in mind. The first is winning the pot, and the second is protecting your hand. To do both you should use the best tool at your disposal – implied odds. If you use implied odds correctly you should be able to get your opponent to fold or at least make a mistake if they decide to call.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you have that two pair we mentioned up above. The turn card just hit and it was a lousy 2 providing you with no help. With one card to come you’re pretty sure you’re in the lead with your two pair, but there’s also a flush draw on the board that has been there since the flop. It’s down to you and one other player who you believe is looking for the flush on the river. You’re first to bet. How do you use this info to figure out the size of your bet?

Your flush-draw opponent has nine outs with one card to come. This gives him an 18 percent chance to make his flush, or 4.5 to 1 (100/18 -1). Let’s change that to 4 to 1 to make the calculations a little easier. The pot contains $200, so to put the screws to your opponent you must bet more than $50, because 200/50 = 4/1. So if you were to bet $60 the correct move for your opponent would be to fold. Even if he calls he’ll be making the wrong move. If he keeps this up (the wrong moves) you’ll end up busting him in the end.