preflop raise?

[Olrik]

assuming you dont raise with this starting hand. is there any hand you'd raise with in this spot?

[Gar Pike]

I think, after reading lo, these many Posts by Buzz, that if you're going to raise PF you want to do it with many hands, not just the strong ones. And sometimes ust limp the strong ones.

Doing it that way increases your opponents Marginal Propensity to Call Your Raises Later (Pcyrl) and you get paid really well when you make a hand.

Of course, it also increases your opponents Marginal Propensity to Play Back At You (Ppbay) when they see you raise PF and fold Post, but that's life in the fast lane.

There's an inflection point somewhere where your curves for raise/limp % vs number of opponents (for your pulling and pushing hands) intersect, I think if you shape those curves right and play at that point you'll maximize your profits.

Regards,

Gar

[1MoreFish4U]

Gar - I really like the acronyms or whatever they are called.

Reminds me of this guy.

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/MogamboGuru.html

[Buzz]

[ QUOTE ]
There's an inflection point somewhere where your curves for raise/limp % vs number of opponents (for your pulling and pushing hands) intersect, I think if you shape those curves right and play at that point you'll maximize your profits.


[/ QUOTE ]Hi Gar - That's very good. I like it.

A problem is all opponents do not play the same. In a public casino game, people come and go during the course of a playing session, so that there is a constant change, more with some opponents than others, in the table dynamics.

If Charlie Milktoast is yet to act and if I think he will get out of my way with 2-3-Y-Z or A-3-Y-Z, then I'll raise with A-3-Y-Z or A-4-Y-Z, and maybe with some other hands that might make you wonder about my sanity. But with the same hand, I'm not going to raise if Gambling Gus, who loves a lot of action when he holds 2-3-Y-Z or A-3-Y-Z, is in the game.

I'll raise with A-2-3-4 against some groups of opponents and not against others. It's hard to be specific because there are many various factors that influence the decision, including how some other hands have recently been played and where people are sitting relative to me and each other.

As soon as you recognize that some starting hands are better than others, you start ordering the hands, ranking some above others, wondering what the premium ones are - and it's a natural progression to think that the better the hand, the more you want to get more of your money in the pot. I think that's a logical way for some, if not most, intelligent people to think as they evolve into better poker players.

A-2-3-4 with a suited ace is a premium hand. A-4-5-6-rainbow is marginal at best. Against some groups of opponents with a special target opponent, I'll raise with both of these. Against others I'll raise with the first hand but not the second. Against still others I'll raise with the second hand but not the first. Against still others, I won't raise with either.

How I play any hand also depends on how I have played similar hands and other hands. There is a guy who caught me raising with a marginal starting hand once. He declared (with some disdain), "Nobody bluffs in Omaha." Since then he has called every single time I have raised, not only before the flop, but any time. And, of course, I own him. But when we're both in the same hand, there may be other opponents to also consider.

I realize this is all very vague.

My point is: Raises are opponent and opponent group specific for me.

I believe I can raise or not with almost every hand I'll voluntarily play.

Buzz

[ QUOTE ]
I think, after reading lo, these many Posts by Buzz, that if you're going to raise PF you want to do it with many hands, not just the strong ones. And sometimes ust limp the strong ones.

Doing it that way increases your opponents Marginal Propensity to Call Your Raises Later (Pcyrl) and you get paid really well when you make a hand.

Of course, it also increases your opponents Marginal Propensity to Play Back At You (Ppbay) when they see you raise PF and fold Post, but that's life in the fast lane.

[/ QUOTE ]That's good too.

[prodonkey]

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.

[Buzz]

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.

[ QUOTE ]
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

[prodonkey]

Well normally whether to raise a hand preflop or limp, fold.. I look at things from an equity perspective on that street. A234 has 35% equity in a 5 way pot vs random hands.. obviously all these people don't have random hands though.

Giving 1 A3, 1 23, one some high cards.. you're still at 28% equity in a 5 way pot. So any raise is still +ev.. I think an important consideration here is that a raise could also buy us the button, and possibly even get it checked to us on the next betting round.

[Buzz]

Hi ProDonkey - Clearly A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img],2[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img],3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img],4[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] is probably the best starting hand at the table and has a +e.v. before the flop. It's a premium hand!

Some people believe that's all there is to it.

Rightly or wrongly, at least in a fixed-limit Omaha-8 game against intelligent opponents who are trying to put you on cards in order to out-play you, whatever the stakes, I think there's more.

I like your line of play better in a Texas hold 'em game where fortunes do not change as much on the turn of each board card.

I also like your line of play better in a pot-limit game.

To each his own.

Buzz

[Gar Pike]

Here's another analogy. (or maybe it's like a simile, whatever)

Poker actions are used to elicit a response from your opponents. If you know your opponents, you can predict how they will react to your action. you can use that knowledge to string several actions together that will lead to their downfall.

Just like in fencing or judo, you string togeter a series of passes designed to get your opponent more and more off-balance or out-of-line, so you can then defeat him simply and with minimal effort.

But you have to know your opponents and how they tend to react, and you can't look at one move in isolation and ask "is this the best move?"

You have to ask "how will Ed react if I raise here, and if he does that, will he be vulnerable to this next move, or that one, and if I do this and he does that, then when I do the next thing, will that give me the result I desire?"

You can bet, bet, bet with 5678 rainbow and win the hand. I wouldn't do that very often, but when I do, you can bet that people are going to call, call, call, the next time I bet, bet, bet with the best starting hand and the 2-way nuts on the river.

You can also think of poker like a river. You do something at one point and something else happens downstream. If you know enough about hydraulics, you'll know what to do at point A in order to get result 1 to happen at point B. It's just not always the same river.

Anyway, I have a meeting to go to.

Regards

Gar