Value Bet! Getting the most from a winning hand….
You’re in a big pot and hit the card that you were hoping for, and now you have the best hand. What do you do? Well now, that depends on one thing. What is the most your opponents will call? If your bet chases them out, you have wasted an opportunity to get the most out of your winning hand (and they don’t come around often enough for me).
You need to make a value bet.
That is simply the bet that your opponent will feel compelled to call, even if they think they might loose. Going all in will many times just cost you the opportunity to increase in your chip stack. In some situations, going all in will make 
sense depending on how committed your opponents are, but in most cases it’s too much. If you have several players still in, a well placed “value bet” becomes very important indeed. How much depends on your feel for the strength of their hand and how many chips they have. What amount will they call?
Good players get called when they have the best hand, usually because they make the right value bet. Sometimes they draw an all-in bet from their opponent trying to bluff in a desperate attempt to push you off of what they hope is a mediocre hand. Just another advantage to understanding how to use a value bet. . .
Paul Smith
Poker Night in America
