Smooth-Calling your Button: Always a Mistake? NL

[cwar]

NLTRN or Cash, very important distinction, Harrington is also talking about a situation where there are antes.

[jay_shark]

We talked about this at pocketfives when the book came out and many disagreed with his recommendations for changing his raises .

He is blatantly wrong in saying that you should only raise twice the BB with your better hands and 3 x the bb with your good but not great hands . Sure , if you're playing against a brain dead poker player (which there are lots) then his strategy is really good . On the other hand , it's not world class advice . Any good player can exploit his strategy and fold every time he doubles the bb because of his propensity to play premium hands this way .

I prefer keeping all your raises the same . If you do decide to vary your raises , then it should not be dictated based on the value of your cards . It should be as random as possible .

Secondly , I think he's mistaken in suggesting that you should always at least call on the button . This definitely depends more on your opponents than anything else . He did mention somewhere that if your opponent raises a lot then you can fold your very worst hands so I can't be too hard on him :P .

For the most part I think it's a raise or fold on the button but this isn't always true . If you believe that this player will likely fold to your raises pre-flop but that he is a terrible post-flop player , then it's actually a good idea to limp with hands like a-8 , k-10 .Sure you may win 1.5 BB's by raising but you may incur him to make additional errors post-flop which exceeds 1.5 BB's .

[PrimordialAA]

The general consensus of most of what i've learned from this forum and otherwise is that raise/fold at 75bb (10/20 in NLTRN) and 50bb (15/30) deep is typically how this should be played against MOST opponents, however as stacks get shallower it is much to your advantage to be able to utilize the limp in position