Re: preflop raise?
Hi ProDonkey - Slotboom suggests a way of playing a short stack in pot-limit Omaha-high that, though irritating and probably game destroying, makes sense, at least in terms of selfishly getting what you can out of the table. Probably works for Omaha-8 too.
It's a simple strategy and you don't really need much skill to extract a profit from the game. Just learn what good starting hands are, get all your money in on the first betting round and let the law of averages take care of itself. I think it probably works fine for on-line play where you're multi-tabling six tables at once. Drop out of any game when you've collected a profit and after a few minutes (or whatever) but back into that same table for the minimum, so that you'll be short-stacked again.
I play one table at a time in a casino. (I've never even seen a ring game of pot-limit Omaha-8 in a casino, although I guess they crop up from time to time).
There are people who make their livings (such as they are) playing in my games. It seems a poor life choice to me, but anyone who even ekes out a living playing poker in a casino is not stupid and the short-stacked strategy would simply not work in my games. For one thing, you have to play enough hands to beat the rake, For another, when you play ultra-tight you don't get any action when you do play a hand. My games are relatively low stakes, but many of my opponents are rather good poker players, probably better than me.
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Wouldn't raising more often vs the guy calling with 23 and A3 be more profitable then? Since you're going to have the best of him many times.
[/ QUOTE ]I think it depends on your hand, on your other opponents, and on what you expect to accomplish in later betting rounds.
If you're playing skillfully, you want to maximize the amount of money going into the pot on all betting rounds when you will end up with a winning hand, not just the first betting round (unless you're short stacked and have a premium starting hand). And you want to minimize your investment when you will end up with a losing hand.
You've played the game. You know how things change going from before the flop to the flop, from the flop to the turn, and from the turn to the river. If you only jam with good starting hands, reasonably intelligent opponents know when you have a good starting hand - and they know when you probably have a good fit with the flop and when you don't.
There seem a lot of different strategies and tactics used successfully. Some very excellent players, indeed better players than I am, seem to advocate lots of pre-flop raising. And that evidently works well for them. But somehow it doesn't work well for me when I raise before the flop too often.
How often is too often? I don't know. I try to answer that question for myself every time I play. It seems to me the answer is different for different mixtures of opponents, and different at different times for the same mixture of opponents. I just kind of feel my way, hoping I'm sharp enough to cope at any particular time I'm playing.
Buzz
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