Theory and Practice-Preflop

[melioris]

I am reading Sklansky and Miller’s No Limit Hold’Em. They advocate not having a standard preflop raise amount. From pg 121 “Preflop raise sizing is important. Don’t listen to pundits that tell you to keep your raises a constant size. Don’t get lazy and just raise the “table standard”. Controlling your raise size intelligently will help you control your opponents, the pot sizes, and many other factors.”

They convincingly detail out the reasons why 4XBB+1BB per caller (or whatever) is not preferable to mixing up preflop raises and if you want details on this you should read the book. But I wonder if this is somewhat a B&M (or tourney) vs multi-tabling online argument. They do not address this issue from a multi-tabling online perspective, which I think offers the strongest reason for having a standard raising amount (simplicity). However, the counter argument would be that if you cannot figure out the right raise amount to get the job done, you are playing too many tables.

I am not sure what I think about this. It seems to me that the typical online player utilizes some standard formula and mixing it up might be yet another way to exploit the typical online player. But it is really nice when 6-tabling or more to be able to fire a standard bet. What do you all think about this?

edit-fixing typos

[Talking Poker]

It's an interesting topic for discussion, and I can see both sides.

Frankly, I like Harrington's take on this. He has standard RANGES of raises that he makes, varying them randomly (For a certain situation: 80% of the time, 3x; 10% flat call; 10% 5x, etc). I think it's important to vary your raises (randomly - not just situationally), but I also like having a STANDARD raise amount to work off of, and I usually make my standard raise. In fact, I would say 90% of my opening raises are for my standard amount.

I dunno.... overall, I think I prefer having a standard to raising just situationally. If you must vary your opening raises, at least do it based on position and not based on the cards you have (meaning, you can typically get away with raising less in EP and need to raise more in LP).

[Zybomb]

A problem Ive seen with raising light in EP, is when you get a caller from early middle position, it tends to encourage a lot of other calls (its cheap and theres odds)... much more than youd like. Then if you have a top pair hand like AQs and the flop comes Qd 6h 7h, its tougher to access where your at with multiple opponents in the hand. You dont wanna donk your chips with TP, yet at the same time you dont want to give people the impression that everytime they stand up to you youre going to back away either

[Zybomb]

This has been brought up once before (by me) for discussion.

The basic concept is that certain hands are ideal for big pots while others arent.

Hands like AK AQ etc generally dont win a big pot, as chances are if your ahead the high cards scare off players and if you arent you donk your chips to a hand which outdrew you. He advocates raising less with these hands (as you want to keep KJ AT and other dominated hands in the pot to pay you off

Hands like middle pairs he advocates raising more, and even gives an example of how adjusting your PFR from $30 to $60 (in $5 $10 blinds) could mean the difference between 300 dollars and your opponents entire stack, 1K!

Its a solid theory, but like most, has its holes... the biggest of which are that you give away your hands by raising these amounts too often. In addition, he doesnt address raising big with a middle pair when you MISS the flop (as you will 7 out of 8 times...even say you flop an overpair 1 out of 8 so 6 out of 8 times) and waste money or be forced to make a CB of twice as much as you would have otherwise. IN addition by underraiising with AK or AQ type hands, you're inviting connectors, one gappers etc into the pot cheapily, and risk tougher decisions if you flop top pair with your hand.

I like making a standard raise with any hand. It keeps my opponnts guessing and doesnt reveal anything about my hand.

Online this is 4x BB + 1x BB per limp

Live it depends on the table:

In Vegas the PFRs were generally a little smaller than I'm used to, so I opened for 25 on most occassions. Occassionally I went as low as 20, and other times I went to 30

When I go to AC/Foxwoods it is generally the same as when I play live here in NY. Standard raise of $30-$40 I'll mix it up (2/5, 5/5 , 5/5)

[melioris]

I must have missed your thread Zy, sorry. But thanks for (reposting) your response here. I have been thinking the pros and cons of each system and I was feeling a little suspect that the Miller and Sklansky method did not sway me, as usually I trust the experts more than myself.

[Zybomb]

Here's a cut and paste of the the post


================================================== ======
I meant to comment on this as well.

In David Sklansky's new Book No Limit Holdem: Theory and Practice, there is a section on preflop raises where he goes against common practice to raise the same amount with every hand (or vary it by position). He says you should want to play big pots with certain hands and thus raise more and smaller pots with other hands and thus raise less.... he states that the information you give away by allowing opponents to put you on a tighter range of hands is trivial compare to the benefits of deciding the pot size depending on your hand (he encourages you to occassionally mix up your raises, saying that simply mixing in a few different amounts here and there is enough to keep the opponent from getting too good of a read on your hands) Im not gunna quote the entire section, but he basically states there are different reasons for raising (for value, for isolation, to blind steal, as a semi bluff, for deception, and to manipulate pot sizes) and you should raise different amounts depending on the reason why.

He goes behind what he calls the Pot Size Philosophy, which basically states big bets and big pots are for big hands.

He states that big raises make big pots and small (or no) raises make small pots.

Without recopying his example, he uses pocket 4s in this instance. You're playing 5-10 holdem with 1500 stacks. You raise to $30 on the button when its folded to you and your opponent calls from the BB with AKo

The flop comes K 9 4, and your opponent leads out with 60

He basically says that theres 1400 left in his stack and u wanna figure out how to get it

If you make a move early in the hand, a good player will know he's in trouble, and even if you smooth call the flop and then smooth call his 120 or so bet on the turn, he's gunna know somethings up and either lead with a blocker bet on the river or check.

He estimates you'll make a few hundred more off the hand, not 1400

He compares this to raising to 60 instead preflop, making the pot 120. Your opponent now leads for 120 and you call making the pot 360. If he pots it again on the turn and you move all in, theres 1900 in the pot and 800 to him to call with TPTK and 2.4:1....which may may it hard pressed to fold. Or you could min raise the turngiving a 1420 pot and 360 to him 4:1 odds, then obviously committ him into calling the last shell on the river (although a good player would realize if he calls this 360 the rest is going in on the river)

The downside to this is the more you raise preflop the more getting reraised costs you, which is why he says when raising with speculative big pot hands (small pairs for example) raise enough to build a big pot, but no more.

He says with a hand like AK a $60 raise makes no sense, as rarely can AK win a big pot, since if you connect it will likely scare away many players unless they can beat TPTK. Furthermore you can win a moderate pot if you run into AT/AJ or KJ/KT -- so why would you make a larger bet preflop and force these hands to fold preflop?

Very interesting section with some interesting points...although Im not sure if I agree with it completely (simply because I think an aware opponent would eventually pick up the type of hands you are raising different amounts with, even if you mix it up every once in a while) -- just thought I'd add this in, since we were discussing pre flop raises (the section didnt mention big pairs in the discussion)

[murkosk]

This helped me a lot.