keeping pots small and pot button

www.dudeopia.com

Lately instead of raising to 3.5-4x as the first into a pot I've been raising to 3x or 2x if I'm close the the button with a short stack still left. Now I've been wondering about why my cbets are not working as much and the conclusion I came to today is simply that the pots are smaller which causes smaller cbets. The great thing about it is it throws people off what they are used to. Some people go into a hole b/c a raises is smaller so it will be harder to get me off a marginal made hand, some like the idea of not having to raise as much as a bluff but a lot of times have few or no outs.

The pot button on full tilt offers some interesting dynamics in that certain players, mostly fish, love to use it. The problem is that a good top pair hand ends up being a complete bluff catcher as the pot grows exponentially. There's not a better situation than having a set with the preflop raiser mashing pot oop.

The funny thing is I'm only up 1/2 a buyin over 17k hands this month at nl50fr. Extending on my last post I've pretty much accepted that I'm only able to play 1-2 hours of my A game each day. Hopefully that changes but grinding fpps at $15/hr while mentally preparing for the bigger games isn't so bad.

This hand sums up both of my thoughts. not sure why this guy thought I was folding the river after calling a pot sized turn bet.

***** Hand History for Game 13858140193 ***** (Full Tilt)
$50.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, August 06, 03:24:29 ET 2009
Table Timber Canyon (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Seat 1: liveblind ( $23.20 USD )
Seat 2: dtorres3 ( $9.40 USD )
Seat 3: momo99 ( $31.50 USD )
Seat 4: DONK4LIF3 ( $9.25 USD )
Seat 5: Kairos_X ( $16.85 USD )
Seat 6: elgreenhornet ( $50.00 USD )
Seat 7: primemutton ( $64.15 USD )
Seat 8: MeiBra ( $18.55 USD )
Seat 9: celQ ( $12.10 USD )
MeiBra posts small blind [$0.25 USD].
celQ posts big blind [$0.50 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to elgreenhornet [ Js Kc ]
liveblind folds
dtorres3 folds
momo99 folds
DONK4LIF3 folds
Kairos_X folds
elgreenhornet raises [$1.00 USD]
primemutton calls [$1.00 USD]
MeiBra folds
celQ folds
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jd, 4c, 6d ]
elgreenhornet bets [$2.00 USD]
primemutton calls [$2.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3s ]
elgreenhornet checks
primemutton bets [$6.75 USD]
elgreenhornet calls [$6.75 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 6c ]
elgreenhornet checks
primemutton bets [$20.25 USD]
elgreenhornet calls [$20.25 USD]
primemutton shows [Td, 8c ]
elgreenhornet shows [Js, Kc ]
elgreenhornet wins $57.75 USD from main pot