4xBB + 1 per limper... why?

[Fallen Hero]

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The basic idea behind sizing your preflop raises (and many of your other no limit actions) is that you want to maximize the chance of what you want to happen happening while minimizing the chance that bad stuff happens.

That may sound kinda superficial and circular, but so it goes.

Preflop raising follows this principle. Before you answer the question, "How much should I raise?" you have to ask yourself the question, "What do I WANT to happen, both before the flop and throughout the hand?" The answer to that question will depend on your hole cards, your opponents' tendencies, the size our your (and your opponents) stack, and your history in the game.

Sometimes your main goal will be to win the pot without a flop. Sometimes you will want to build a pot against a number of limpers to try to win a huge one. Sometimes you will want to isolate a bad player and play heads-up against them. Sometimes you just want to make the game play bigger because the stacks are very deep.

Usually you will want to raise an amount that will make your postflop decisions easier while making your opponents' decisions harder (or at least make them more likely to make an error based on how they play). You don't want to raise an amount that will leave you with an awkward stack to pot ratio after the flop GIVEN your hand and the action.

Using formulas like 4xBB + 1 per limper is ok... but it's only ok. A good player can be a significant winner using that formula, especially at small stakes... but a good player can also be a significant winner at small stakes and NEVER raise preflop. I doubt any of you would agree that playing that way is optimal.

The bottom line is... there are lots of simplified preflop formulas that "work" as long as the stacks are deep and as long as you play a superior postflop game. But if you want to improve your game, you should try to move beyond simple forumlas and think about the principles involved.

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For all of you who say Ed advocates basing your raise size solely on hand strength, I suggest you review his original response in this thread (See above). He mentions hand strength as one factor to consider, not the only or deciding factor. He also notes that using the 4+1 rule will allow a good player to be a significant winner.

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I don't think anyone said (I might obviously be wrong) that Ed Miller thinks we should raise solely on hand strength. In fact what many of us (those that are disagreeing with him) have said is that changing your pf raise depending on a ton of conditions is great and better than 4+1xlimper but hand strength shouldn't be one of these factors.

[Kyriefurro]

Guess I came late to the party, but I'm gonna bump this anyway.

This weekend I decided to experiment with Ed's advice about adjusting the size of your PFR based on how you wanted the hand to play out. Like many people here, I initially thought it was a bad idea, but after thinking it through, I decided to give it a shot. The results were interesting.

To begin with I did NOT base my PFR size on the "strength" of my hand. Instead I based the PFR size based on a combination of what I wanted to happen in the hand, and what my hole cards had the potential to turn into on the flop. This second part is important. While hole card strenght plays a part of your hand strength at show-down it doesn't tell the whole story.

Some examples....

If I had hole cards that could easily turn into a hidden monster, I tended to bet less. If I was trying to isolate a LAG donator, I tended to bet more.

If I had AKo and there were already a couple of limpers, I tended to bet more so I could knock as many people out of the hand as possible. If I had AKo and I was first in on the button, I tended to bet less, since AKo tends to make TPTK type hands and those like smallish pots. Note here that I'm betting two possible amounts with exactly the same hand - this is great for deception.

With SC's I tended to raise on the smaller side, EXCEPT when I was in late position and the one or two of the people to act behind were TAGs or nut-peddlers. Raising hard into the TAGs maximizes fold equity, and if they do call, you know they've got something big. If you hit, you've got their stack. And there I go playing the same hole cards two different ways.

PP's of any size almost always received a raise that was about in the middle of my spread. Occasionally I raised more, and sometimes I limped, but generally I bet the same amount with all PP's.

So, without a whole lot of effort, and just a little bit of advanced planning, my raise amounts seemed completely random to my opponents.

I know that some will argue that playing this way cuts into your implied odds. From a strictly mathematical perspective, you're correct. But my experience was that I was more likely to get villain's stack when I'd bloated the pot with a larger than normal PFR than I did when I limped or raised small. The simple PSB's that followed the big raise seemed more normal and did not set off the alarms that any other line (like bet/3-bet or check/raising) would. Villain folded less often against this straight forward line. So, while I wasn't getting 15-1 or 20-1 implied odds when I raised big pre-flop, I was successful in acheiving the 10-1 or 12-1 odds much more often.

Last thought: All this occurred over a pretty small sample size of hands, and a lot more play will be needed before I draw any solid conclussions. Still, I offer my experience, for what it's worth, as food for thought.

[dd323]

Ed,
I may be wrong about this, but I think that it makes a big difference if it is a shorthanded game or a full ring game. What I mean is that in a full ring game you play many more multi-way pots, but in short-handed games very rarely do you get a pot with more than 3 opponents unless its limped or a total fish min-raises, and the only time you would have a chance to make a pot juicer raise is in the blinds which is not ideal because you are then out of position for the hand. Maybe you could do it if there are two limpers to you on the button and the blinds are really loose, but that situation is rare.

Also, it is much less likely in 6-max that someone with make a good enough 2nd best hand to pay you off even in a juiced pot. I think in these games even if you have a hand like 87s or 55 unless the opposition is incredible loose, it is more profitable to attack the open limpers and get it heads up or take it down post flop with these type of hands.

I have been playing some full ring hands at a smaller site that doesn't have 6-max tables, and I used to play in LA card rooms alot, and a lot of bet sizing strategies make a lot of sense there.

Many of the HSNL regulars have been theorizing recently that the top winners up through 10-20 have, above all else, figured out an optimal pre-flop strategy for shorthanded games with 100BB stacks, and it is primarily based on aggressive raising and re-raising.

I hope this isn't too rambly and it contributes to the converstion.

Edit: I also wanted to mention that you also win bigger pots with sets in this case, and it makes up for the times you just get open limps and the blinds..

[lorenzo4ever]

Hello,

I find this topic very interesting. As I am an online beginner, I will try the 4BB+1BB/limper raise. But what about a situation where there is one raiser and X callers ? Do you reraise like a normal raise ?

[ikestoys]

raise pot

[The Bryce]

This isn't really my area, but one thing that people mention a lot (including DS) is that you can always mix up your raise sizes a little bit to vary your play and negate the information that you sometimes make strong raises with a stronger hand. The problem here, particularly in an online environment with many revolving door opponents is that this doesn't come into play at all, since you play so few hands with your opponents that there's often no way to let them know that you're mixing it up. So if you go ahead and raise to 7BB with your aces and most people will assume that that means that your range is super-strong mixing up your play will have no impact because it is very difficult to make your opponents aware that you are mixing up your play. Of course, this may speak in favor of occasionally raising larger amounts with weaker hands, but that's another topic. In games where you do play many hands against the same opponents (small sites, high limits etc) varying your betsizing may potentially be a very powerful tool, but in environments where there's no value in information exchange you should usually just play for the highest immediate value for the hand in question based off what you assume that people will, on average, be likely to do.