Raising with PP's from any position... +EV in uNL? +EV ever?

[cubase]

After watching some Green Plastic and Muddywaters videos, I noticed they have a tendency (particulary in 6 man, but Muddy will do this in FR) to raise PP from any position.

How do you guys feel about this for uNL? +EV? One side benefit I see is that if you don't hit your set, you can still C-bet into 1 or 2 players with a good flop texture vs limping with PP that you end up folding when you don't hit.

I did experiment with this a few sessions ago and did find a lot of folks folding to C-Bets, but obviously no conclusive evidence that this would be +EV in uNL long term.

The theory in doing this said one of the two guys was that, when you hit your set the pot is already getting bigger and it becomes easier to create a massive pot. When limping, you may be hard pressed to get the pot to the desired level when you hit that set unless you had called a raise.

Thoughts?

[orange]

raising pf w. pps is great in almost all situations. builds the pot easier, disguises your hand as well, allows you to take most pots down with a c-bet (as opposed to c/f-ing).

i only limp if there is a total lagtard/calling station and i have 0 FE both pre and postflop.

[TJgniL]

I think that many of the posters here (myself included) do raise any pocket pair from any position. The only time that I won't raise these up is if my raises are getting called often, I'm in the blinds, I have a small pair, and there are 3-4 limpers.

[dashman]

The whole idea is to build that pot for when you hit your set because its easier for people to go broke in a big pot, they are getting the odds to call with more things/more money to play for.

Especially at uNL this is profitable for two reasons:
1.People's willingness to go broke with TP any kicker/Over pairs.
2.People don't know how to lay down draws, medium pairs etc when they aren't getting the proper odds. Which, they shouldn't be getting if you hit your set and you are sizing your bets properly.

The one thing you will find is that when your cbets start getting snapped, you are normally behind, especially with mid PPs and overcards are out etc....therefore this works doubly well because when you hit your hands, you normally get paid and when you don't hit your hands you normally know right away due to villains actions which will allow you to get away from the hand.

Try not to get carried away with cbetting too many flops with mid-under PPs though as THIS can/will turn into spew.

[BukNaked36]

I always used to question raising small PP's, but after doing it for a while you realize sets & boats are just too powerful in taking down big pots and you need to be raising preflop to build them.

[cubase]

bump to see if I can elicit a few more thoughts, particularly around the C-Betting portion and the when not to do it... (we've already seen advocates of not raising mid-low from the blinds, with multiple limpers, etc).

This is something I am going to start playing with a bit more.

[Javanewt]

I used to always raise with PPs in any position, but I've started mixing it up depending on the table. If they fold to any raise pre-flop, I limp sometimes. If I know that my limp will induce a raise from someone behind me, I'll wait for him to make the pot a bit bigger. It really depends for me. Thanks for this post--maybe I'll go back to always raising? However, I quit that because it didn't seem to be working very well;)

[bmk67]

This is so situationally dependent that it's difficult to give a single answer.

If you're at a table where the other players are folding to c-bets a profitable percentage of the time, by all means, raise more often and c-bet more often. Picking up a lot of small pots is very profitable.

When you limp/call with pocket pairs, you lose the opportunity to c-bet, and you depend on making the best hand to win (at micro levels, I'm operating on the assumption that pure bluffs work so infrequently as to be unprofitable). At a table where I'm getting played back at frequently, I'll adopt this strategy as a small to medium pocket pair can't often call a reraise for set value.

At a table where my c-bets are getting too much respect, I'll certainly raise with any pair in any position, and in fact it doesn't matter much what my cards are at all when I've got position and the right table conditions.

[keikiwai]

basically you only flop a set 1/8 times, so usually your hand sucks, the pfr give you initiative, and you'll take down the pot... sometimes you won't but oh well

sometimes you'll flop a set AND villain(s) will have an ok hand... if you haven't pfr-ed you'll be playing for nothing, so in this case the pfr has given you more money to win

combine these 2, plus deception value, it's easily +EV at 6max

FR from EP it's only +EV at certain predictable tables probably

[Quester]

[ QUOTE ]
bump to see if I can elicit a few more thoughts, particularly around the C-Betting portion and the when not to do it... (we've already seen advocates of not raising mid-low from the blinds, with multiple limpers, etc).

This is something I am going to start playing with a bit more.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd recommend experimenting with c-bets after you raise with PP's in your play, then post some of your hands here for analysis.

I can say that in general, I almost always c-bet regardless of position, board, or opponents. But I tend to be more aggressive here in general than most I think. A lot of it winds up to personal preference.

[Spleen]

I always open-raise with PP's in any position. I am working on raising wiht limpers. What conditions do you guys have for raising with 1, 2, 3 limpers ahead? It seems like if you are raising for deception/to hit your set you may as well have 4 ppl in the pot more so that 1. Not quite sure.

[4_2_it]

In 6 max:

Open raising any PP is +EV
Raising a single limper with any PP is +EV (though limping behind in certain situations can be even more +EV)
Calling a raise with 22-88 is fine (with full stacks)
Limping 22-88 behind several limpers is fine

[Triggerle]

(To complete the advice the others have given and because I just recently thought a lot about this)

In 6 max:

Say you raise 22 to 4BB and an opponent 3-bets to 12BB. Should you call?

You flop a set roughly 1 in 8 times. If you adjust for set over set situations and losing to flushes/straights I believe you can expect to win the hand roughly 1 in 10 times. This means you have to make more than 10 times your investment the times you win.

So when the action comes back to you after his 3-bet you have to pay 8BB and therefore need to make 80BB the times you win. This sounds like a sure call but we can't forget about the money you pay post-flop in the rare cases you lose with a set. The maths for this goes over my head but my gut feeling would say you need to win at least another 20 to 30 BB on top of the 80 to make this break-even.

This means with full stacks you are about neutral in EV to call a 3-bet with 22 for set-value.

So should you call? There are several factors that can swing this to a call for me:

<ul type="square"> Obviously if effective stacks are deeper than 100BB and you expect to get it all in frequently. This requires reads as a good player might get away from his AA on the turn or river.

If there's a lot of dead money in the pot. Often there are one or two callers of your raise that folded to the 3-bet.

If there is a chance that you can take it down on the flop. Some opponents are so scared by you calling their 3-bet that they fold AK on an undercard flop. This requires reads: A good player might bluff a missed AK, Loose-Agressive/Passive player might 3-bet a lot but lay it down to any aggression because of his wide range.
[/list]
In general I find that at NL50 most of my opponents are just beginning to experiment with 3-betting and don't play well in re-raised pots.

[cubase]

Just thought I'd share with you guys that I did indeed implement this in a recent live $1.00/$2.00 game.

I bought in for $300 (max buy-in) and played extremely tight aggressive. I ended up doing a lot of folding for the first 2 hours, but when I did get involved, I ended up showing down great hands.

Finally after getting all in with AA (my hand) vs KK vs T9o (shorty stack), I picked up a big pot (I was down at the time) and found myself with $500 in front of me. I decided to open up my game a bit and start raising with PP's from any position.

This, combined with the 4xBB + 1 per limper (and occasionally 5xBB + 1 per limper, because raises were getting called pretty light early on), seemed to start working great!

With my tight aggressive image, I found myself getting heads up more often than not (and at worst 2 callers). I would CBet 2/3 pot everytime as long as the texture of the flop seemed reasonable (which most of the time it was). More often than not, I would pick up the pot. If I was called by one or both, I would often try to get to the showdown cheaply (read: checking), and I also surprisingly found that my PP held up frequently.

I ended the night with $800 in front of me and was pleased with the results overall.

I think a key that helped me execute this play was that first two hours of doing a lot folding and playing tight. I probably entered the pot with a raise 3/4 of the time if not more, but probably played less than 10% of my hands that first two hours. All of this worked out even better once we got short handed, as I was the guy doing most of the raising and had everyone at the tabled well covered.

Obviously one session isn't going to paint the whole picture, but I was definitely happy with the results in this live game.

Comments and thoughts welcome...

[checkmate36]

[ QUOTE ]
Obviously one session isn't going to paint the whole picture, but I was definitely happy with the results in this live game.

Comments and thoughts welcome...



[/ QUOTE ]

You mentioned playing tight early in your session.

I just played a session at stars. I have been card dead all week and today was no different. After 3 orbits I finally was dealt a pair of 4's from UTG+1. I opened for 4x's and both blinds called. Flop was draw heavy with 2 hearts and TJQ. I bet 3/4 pot after both blinds checked. They must have put me on AK because they folded. I thought they would think AK so took a shot.

Im thinking my tight image is what helped this work on this particular hand. Im thinking if you have a tight image, you can change gears a bit with some sucess later in your session. Eventually, I imagine I will change back and forth and keep villians guessing.

I guess this is what good poker is all about. I wouldn't know as I have lots to learn still. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

(Hand was played at full ring)