Basic Theory - Raising preflop

[BukNaked36]

I think open limping is fine at 25NL because the tables are generally so passive preflop. See a few more hands cheaply with your small SC's or Axs.

[gumpzilla]

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well, you can probably give yourself a rebate on c-bets and not give anything away by balancing it with the times your practicing pot control.

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Sorry I don't follow what you mean. Could you elaborate please?

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He means that there will occasionally be hands that you're betting for value but that you don't want to make a giant pot with - something like AJ in a raised pot on an AT4 rainbow board. With those hands, you might want to make a slightly smaller bet on the flop so that the pot stays smaller all along. If you're occasionally making bets somewhat less than pot for value, then you can make your c-bets somewhat less than pot and not have it be a total giveaway, although you're probably still leaking a little information. Whether most of your opponents will notice that at these levels is a good question (probably not, in most cases.)

[quarkncover]

King Spew-

Interesting post. You're almost advocating a loose passive strategy that I see among countless micro players. You know the type, your 35/5s, 40/8s, etc. From some datamining, I have very large samples on these sort of loose passive types. Many with samples over 5k hands. I have often found, this is particularly true at 100NL and lower, is that many of these "loose passive" players do fairly well in the games. Sure they have glaring leaks, but in general I have found many of these players to be much better hand readers and better post-flop players than many 2p2ers at these stakes [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] It's funny when I look at 2p2ers with 18/13/4 type stats and see glaring postflop mistakes. These "Tight Aggressive" players wait so long for a decent hand, that they get far to attached to their hand postflop.

It was shocking to see these "TAG" 2p2 style players not beating the game!

The bottom line is that in NLHE, your preflop strategy is much less important than games such as Omaha 8/ob. A 50/20 may be just as profitable as a 20/16. There are many different styles of play, and while the old saying "Tight is right" is good for beginners, it is important to note that a tight preflop strategy is not the key to success in winning poker.


I've gotten off topic a bit here. So to adress the OP:

IMO the most important reasons for raising preflop are:

1. Betting initiative
2. Stacking donks [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] (You're much more likely to stack someone in a raised pot)

[BukNaked36]

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These "Tight Aggressive" players wait so long for a decent hand, that they get far to attached to their hand postflop.


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This happens to me when I'm:
A) Card dead
B) Tired

The biggest improvement I have made in my game in the last 3 months is making good folds.

[matrix]

wow - you start a thread - go to work for the day and when you get back it's enormous!

I'm sticking to preflop raising here - there will be another thread in this series soon that delves into C-Betting.

The way I see it we are raising preflop for a grand total of 4 reasons... there are other sub-reasons but I think everything comes under one of the following 4 headings...

i) for value - we have the best or something that is likely to be the best hand at the table and we bet to get money into the pot for us to win.

ii) for protection - we have a hand like Aces or Kings or AK that doesn't want to see a family pot, so we raise to thin the field and hopefully leave ourselves Heads Up after the flop comes down.

iii) for control we raise preflop sometimes to gain the initiative in the hand and setup a flop continuation bet/semi-bluff, and also to take control of position where you raise in the CO to try to fold the button, or when we raise after a bad player has limped in front of us so we can isolate them on the flop.

iv) as a bluff - sometimes we raise preflop as a bluff/semi-bluff in order to steal the blinds

I think everytime we raise preflop at a Micro Stake NL table it should be for one of those reasons.

So if we know why we are raising how much should we raise??

ideally you want to raise as much as you can and still get at least one caller (unless you are stealing blinds) so if we have AA ideally we want to push all-in preflop and get called.

If we are raising to isolate a bad player then we want to raise as much as possible so that everyone else folds but the limper.

Because a lot of decisions we make at a NL poker table are related to the size of the pot, raising the size of the pot preflop is a good idea. This cuts down the implied odds we offer to the villains - and it means that if they call generally they won't be getting much better preflop odds than 1-1. It turns out that a pot sized raise is roughly 4-5BB depending on what the exact blinds are.

And if there are limpers in front we need to increase our preflop raise to ensure that each limper after we raise is faced with a call where the pot is offering them very short odds.

So the 2p2 standard of 4BB +1BB per limper seems to be based on raising the size of the pot preflop in order to cut the odds as much as possible so that most villains facing our preflop raise will be making marginal/bad calls if they do decide to call our preflop raise, and the more mistakes we can make our opponents make in every hand the more money we win in the long run.

There's one last thing to consider - giving away information about our holdings. It is of paramount importance that however much we raise preflop that we do not tip our hand to the opponents.

If we push every AA we are dealt - bet 10BB+1 with KK 8BB +1 with QQ, before too long some of the opposition wil pickup on what our bet amounts mean so that we might as well turn our hand face up when we bet. Obviously this would be a disaster.

We have 2 choices - 1 use a fixed amount or some fixed formula to decide our preflop raise amount for each and every raise no matter what our cards are. 2. Vary the amount we raise pseudo-randomly everytime we are dealt a certain hand - e.g. raise 8BB usually (say 80% of the time) with AA, but sometimes only raise 4BB, and sometimes raise 8BB with 76s.

NLTAP advocates varying your raise amounts and mixing up your play to throw off the opposition, but I don't think that this is good advice for Microstakes.

The real game of poker is played postflop. Microstakes players are trying to learn an incredibly complex game. Postflop is what we ought really to be concentrating on learning. If you are taking time and effort out to make your preflop game the best it can be, then you are not spending the same time improving your postflop game.

NLTAP is not really meant for microstakes play. It assumes that you are playng against good observant opponents for example - almost noone of the players at microstakes are good OR observant, true they pay a little attention to what goes on - if you push 2 hands in a row preflop all-in and everyone folds and then push a 3rd hand all-in expect to get called, but thats very far away from being observant and picking up and exploiting your betting habits...

So I say stick like glue to the 4BB+1per limper standard raise. Forget about preflop play until later on in your poker career, we can tune the engine later right now we need to put the wheels on first..

[matrix]

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and doesn't NLTAP recommend varying your preflop raise amounts.. ?

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Actually, this standard naturally leads to varying your PF amount. That's kind of the beauty of it. When you raise it to 6bb with 2 limpers and 9bb with 5 limpers... I don't think most observers realize why your bet size is varying. So you have some deception.

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This is true but it's not what NLTAP advocates - and for lots of reasons, but mostly cos NLTAP was not written with microstakes in mind I say ignore NLTAP and stick to the 4BB+1 standard.

I'm pretty sure as well that many of my opponents can't quite figure out why my preflop raise amounts change a little here and there - I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] the modicum of deception this formula gives me as well.

[4_2_it]

matrix,

This thread is excellent. Here's my 2 pence (I just spoke British, heh):

Whenever you decide to raise pre-flop, have a default plan for how you intend to play the hand post flop if you 1) hit, 2) miss or 3) partially hit the board.

Have an idea of what you will do if villain shows aggression or is passive. Anyway, I do not want to hijack an excellent pre-flop thread with a lot of post thoughts, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Cliff Notes: Before you raise pre-flop, have a post-flop plan.

[Mal_Pais]

Quark said:
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but in general I have found many of these players to be much better hand readers and better post-flop players than many 2p2ers at these stakes

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I find this to have some truth. Those LPPs become better hand readers because they play a lot of marginal hands and put themselves in marginal spots. Certainly not advocating a loose-passive game, but I notice this as well.

[Montezuma21]

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Most of your money at micro stakes comes from two sources. The preflop raise followed by a cbet bet on the flop and pounding calling machines for as big a bet as you can get away with on every street. So let's take a look at these two situations.

(I'd like to note that these are over simplified but serve to prove a point)

1. C-bets

If you could guarantee that your opponents would fold the flop every time you cbet for any amount then you'd want as much money in the pot already and to then make a tiny bet to pick up the huge pot. Sadly this isn't the case because there is an upper limit to what most limping donkeys will call and the amount you need to bet to get them to lay down on the flop.

At a typical micro stakes table you will find the limpers happy to call raises up to around the 4BB + 1 per limper range. After that the amount they fold goes up dramatically, so what we are doing is putting as much as we can in the pot now so we can take an equal amount from them on the flop with our cbets. If you were to bet 3BB + 1 per limper when you could be making it 4BB then you are missing 1BB every time you take it with the cbet.


2. Pounding calling stations

You have AK and are up against a calling machine with KQ and you know that he can't let go of top pair unless you overbet the pot. Voila! The magic of creating whatever situation I want brings a flop of K82 rainbow. He checks, you pot it, he calls and the turn blanks. He checks, you pot it, he calls and the river blanks. You get as much as you can into the pot.

So how much is as much as you can?

Let's imagine the SB disappears in rake and that villain is in the BB to make the numbers easier. You raise the button to 3BB and he calls (pot is 6BB).

Going by the sequence above -

Flop (6BB) -> You bet 6BB he calls 6BB.
Turn (18BB) -> You bet 18BB he calls 18BB.
River (54BB) -> You bet 54BB he calls 54BB.

You take just over 80BBs from him but have to pot every street to do it. But when was the last time you were able to pot *every* street against someone like this?

Now imagine the same thing happens but you raise to 4BB preflop and he calls.

Flop (8BB) -> You bet 8BB, he calls 8BB.
Turn (24BB) -> You bet 24BB, he calls 24BB.
River (72BB) -> You push and he calls.

By raising 1BB more preflop we were able to pound the calling station for nearly 20BB more by the end (assuming 100BB stacks of course).

Yes, these numbers and situations are greatly simplified but hopefully they show the point of squeezing out that extra big blind preflop and why 4BB+1 per limper is better than 3BB+1per limper.

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great post. hadn't really considered the importance of that extra BB PF.

[Montezuma21]

I usually vary my bet size according to the number of limpers (either 3bb+1bb or 4+1). With some holdings, i think raising to 4bb regardless of the number of limpers may be the correct strategy with decent but not great hand which plays fairly well HU and also fiarly well in a multiway pot:

EG: 6-max 25NL table, hero is on the button with KJs

3 limpers, 1 fold.
I like a raise to $1 here because:

- If i raise more it is likely only dominating hands will call and i don't want to build a large pot with marginal holdings and reduce my implied odds too much
- On the other hand, by raising to $1 i have: taken the initiative, and i have position,
- value bet worse hands,
- driven out very weak hands,
- given myself nice implied odds if i hit a str8 draw or a flush draw ,assuming 2 or 3 calls (prob. the most likely scenario)