Phil Gordon's Little Green Book - Preflop Open Amount ... Wha?!

[vapourtrail]

Hi Guys,

Found something very puzzling in the Green Book.

He advocates the following:

When open-raising preflop, you should raise to a larger amount while in LATE position. ex: open for 3BB UTG, while open for 4.5BB on button.

I was hoping to get some discussion on this. I feel like this is completely backwards...

1) When in EP, you can negate positional disadvantage by getting more money in as early as possible. In the degenerate case where you are all-in preflop, obviously there is no positional disadvantage.

2) When in EP, I don't really mind simply picking up a small pot with muscle, rather than playing tough spots on late streets OOP.

3) When in LP, I don't mind getting called by the blinds as much, as my opponent is then playing bigger pots OOP.

4) When raising less from LP, I also get better odds for stealing the blinds.

Ok, anyways, was wondering if *i* am the one who has been playing backwards... That passage in the Gordon book really caught my eye and am wondering what you guys think ... Thanks a lot , and GL ...

[Lyric]

Did he offer any explanation?

[Dan Bitel]

While I know you wanted a HSNL take on this, not too long ago, we hand a thread about this in SSNL and decided we don't like phil's idea

take a look

[mak15]

i agree with phil. i thought this was standard?

[Durer]

one explanation could be that he wants to play smaller pots out of position because it is harder, and that the early position raise has an inherit power because of the perception that you only raise good hands from early position. I think Thunder Keller wrote something about in Cardplayer magazine before, but i could have that wrong.

edit: Thunder Keller article CPM

interesting...will check/post later

[soah]

[ QUOTE ]
one explanation could be that he wants to play smaller pots out of position because it is harder, and that the early position raise has an inherit power because of the perception that you only raise good hands from early position. I think Thunder Keller wrote something about in Cardplayer magazine before, but i could have that wrong.

edit: Thunder Keller article CPM

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah... you just linked to an article about stealing the blinds in tournament poker.

[Durer]

"Therefore, I will often raise more from late position and less from early position to balance out the impact that position has on how strong my raise looks"

[vapourtrail]

> one explanation could be that he wants to play smaller pots out of position because it is

The problem I have with this argument, is that opening for less isn't really going to do this, it only encourages big multiway pots.

My feeling is that the slightly smaller pot size on the flop that is achieved by under-raising the pot UTG, is negated by the fact that good players in position can really put you to the test by making big bets on late streets when checked to. You don't play small pots by making small bets preflop. You play small pots by NOT making big bets postflop.

There seems to be some similarities with raising limpers out of the blinds. When you see a player raising UTG or OTOB, his hand range is usually fairly strong. He is giving away vital information on his hand, PLUS he has no position. In order to counteract this disadvantage, he then makes a large raise to counteract the implied odds of his opponents.

Another way to say it, is that when UTG, you often cannot safely raise with anything but your strongest starting hands, for fear of a player behind you waking up with the near nuts. Therefore, when an opponent sees you raise UTG, he can call your (relatively small) preflop bet as an underdog, because he can play perfectly against you postflop and induce (relatively large) errors on late streets. So, if you are going to raise UTG, you might as well raise big to try to narrow the field and deny your opponents such juicy implied odds...

[yellowbastard]

I think (and I hear this from a lot of those "Full Tilt guys" Lederer, Ferguson, ect...) that Phil advocates betting less when he wants to get called and betting more when he doesn't. This make since as he also (obviously) teaches to open in EP with more premium hands and in LP with a wider range.