Tuesday, November 13, 2012

"Touch-bet"

I have twice recently come across the phrase "touch-bet" as a poker term, and I don't know exactly what it means.

Both times have been in Poker Player Newspaper columns by David "The Maven" Chicotsky. First, in the September 25 issue he wrote:

Remember also that even though our continuation bet of 375 is very small relative to the pot, it still represents about 25% of our opponent’s stack left behind. Quite often we’re able to use our stack leverage against our opponent by making polarized bets that are very small or big relative to the effective stack in the hand.  
This is one of those examples where I’d prefer to see us make a value- oriented-bluff touch-bet on the flop, or put our opponent all in. Just because you’re used to betting a certain size on the flop, doesn’t make it the optimal size for the given situation.
The second example is from his November 19 column (not available online yet):
We are able to bet larger or small in an attempt to mitigate risk; betting larger with a naked draw or betting smaller with absolute air (such as a touch-bet). Sometimes betting smaller gives off the impression that we have a strong hand against thinking players. It's possible to come up with a bunch of reasons to bet more or less than our normal default bet sizing. 
Obviously the context is virtually identical for these two instances. I can get a general sense that it's a small continuation bet after missing the flop. But is there something more precise about it than that--more conditions that define it or set it apart from other continuation bets? The fact that both instances of its use come from Chicotsky makes me suspect that it's a term that he and/or his pal Ari Engel came up with. But so far a Google search has been fruitless in coming up with a clearer description of what the phrase means.

Anyone? Anyone?



Addendum, November 13, 2012 

I asked Chicotsky via Twitter for an explanation of his terminology. His response:


3 comments:

Will R said...

The Maven is basically an idiot who built a small amount of notoriety breaking even mass multitabling mid stakes on line and winning the Cardplayer OPOY which he finds to be quite a big deal. He's not very good at poker, but he can sell his very limited skill pretty well and he can certainly go on and on.

Anonymous said...

Touch = feeler / probe

Will R said...

His explanation is as nonsense as his original verbal spew. I can't fathom what he thinks he means by value-oriented oriented bluff.