Explanation of Five-bet
Bets in poker can be assigned numbers to show where they fall within a sequence of bets.
One-bet – The first bet in a sequence
Two-bet – The first raise in a sequence
Three-bet – The first re-raise in a sequence
Four-bet – The second re-raise in a sequence
Five-bet – The third re-raise in a sequence
Note that the first open-raise preflop in Hold’em and Omaha is referred to as a “2-bet” because the mandatory blind payments are considered as the first bet of the sequence. This can cause some confusion amongst novice players. It’s common for a postflop 2bet (the first raise) to be mistakenly referred to as a “3bet”.
Example of Five-Bet used in a sentence -> We had to fold our preflop four-bet after our opponent decided to five-bet jam over the top.
How to Use Five-bet as Part of Your Poker Strategy
It’s somewhat rare for 5bets to occur postflop in Hold’em and Omaha since a postflop 4bet is usually enough to get the stacks all-in. In limit poker, postflop 5-bets are usually impossible since the fixed-limit structure typically allows for a maximum of 4bets on each street.
The most common application of 5bets is hence preflop play in no-limit and pot-limit variants of Hold’em and Omaha.
Although it’s possible for a preflop 5bet to be non-all-in, the majority of 5bets get the entire stacks in preflop. This usually implies one of the following -
a) The 5better has a very strong premium value-hand.
b) He expects his opponent to be folding too often to 5bets and is bluffing.
5bet bluffs are rare apart from in very tough line-ups. As a rough guide for playing with 100bb stacks, 5-bet bluff jams start to become overtly profitable as soon as the 4better is folding more than about 50% of the time to a 5bet. The average player only folds to a 5bet around 30% of the time however.
See Also
Three-bet, Four-bet, Omaha, Hold’em, Structure, Raise, Actions
