Raising with PP from early and middle position

[raistlinx]

Many people advocating always or even usually open raising with any pocket pair from early or middle position. However, this is just bad and from the point of view of game theory just plain wrong. If I told you that you had a chance to win $1.50 but you had to risk at least $3 to do it and that sometimes, someone was going to contest you for it, with usually a better chance of winning both the $1.50 and your investment as well, how many would take it? Not many.

But of course that is almost exactly what you are doing when you raise early with these types of hands. You are saying "Those are my blinds and I'm willing to invest more than they are worth to prove it!" Unfortunately with 77 you have about 15% equity of the "pot" (blinds), with 22 about 12%. These are seriously not hands to be willing to wager 3-4 times the bb with.

Poker is not a game of winning the most pots it's about winning the most money. Most people learn that early on (many don't stick to it) but what they often fail to realize is that when you are in early position, what you are playing for are the measly blinds.

But no you say "I'm aggressive! I want to disguise my hands and be unpredictable! I want to be feared!" Well ok then boys, let's look at some numbers and situations. In all cases assume on-line play with no physical tells.

Suppose you raise 3xBB UTG with 77 and only the BB calls and let’s further assume he will call you only with AQ+ or any PP, he will reraise you with AA-QQ and AKs. You have about 53.8% equity in the pot. Not bad, especially since you will be in position for the remainder of the hand. You should show a profit in he long run. This is the perfect situation.

Now suppose the same situation with 22 (which I have seem some people suggest). Now we only have 30% equity in this pot. Now showing a profit is much tougher. Even with position you will have to make up a lot of ground here to even break even.

However, things get much more complicated quickly. What if he button calls as well? Suppose he will also call with any AQ+ or PP but also some zero-gap suited connector as well. Now with 77 your equity is about 34% which is pretty even, however here you will most likely win a small pot or lose a big pot if someone wakes up with a hand. These are not the kind of situations we want.

I don't think you even want to know how bad 22 is here...

The truth is, always raising from EP with pocket pairs is just not good play. You need almost perfect conditions to make this play profitable. But poker (and no limit especially) is a game of deception. So how then do you stop yourself from becoming easy to read when you limp with small/med pocket pairs from EP? Easy, you mix it up by "occasionally" limping with AA (less KK) and by throwing in the "occasional" raise with a PP. Also good is limping with a speculative hand with the intention of folding to a raise.

It’s as simple as that. You don’t need to make bad plays to make yourself unpredictable “dangerous” players. The observant players will soon realize you are sometimes limping with bigger hands and will be worried about raising you after you have limped in. They won't know if you are going to raise, call or reraise them. This also has the effect of disguising our hand on later rounds as well of course. The bad player are going to lose money regardless because you will outplay them for larger bets on future streets.

I'm sure some of the people who advocate raising with every pocket pair do very well playing against fish. They play aggressive where they shouldn't and make weak players lay down hands just on aggression alone (typically when they shouldn't have been in the pot anyway). But there is always those one or two seasoned players at the table who over time let the aggressive players overplay their hands. They understand the mechanics of cash game poker and in the long run the aggrodonks while may win money from the donkeys they will keep donating to the players who truly know how to play the game.

Every hand starts out in a contest for the blinds, the smaller the blinds in relation to your stack, the less valuable they are and the better hand you need to open (especially for a raise).

It's your money, but if you are one of those aggrodonks who feel you have to raise every PP you see from early or middle position stop and ask yourself "Why am I trying to win less with more?"

[diebitter]

It is wrong to do to for value, but usueful to occasionally do it (15%-20%) to do it to add unreadability to your hands.

EDIT: Maybe I should titled this 'cliff notes' [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[raistlinx]

[ QUOTE ]
It is wrong to do to for value, but usueful to occasionally do it (15%-20%) to do it to add unreadability to your hands.

EDIT: Maybe I should titled this 'cliff notes' [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]


[/ QUOTE ]
LOL True indeed, I guess I didn't quantify when I said "occasionaly". I like something more like 5-10% but that's just a style difference. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[jack frost]

When I start losing money I will consider to start open limping. I have checked my po stats and all of my pocket pairs are showing a profit at well over 100k hands.
I do very very well with raising my small and med. pp against tag's and nits.
I also would like contest your statement that your only getting called with a-q + from the blinds. I see many players of many different styles (nit,tag,lag and donk) Severely over defending their blinds with much much worse and quite a few of them are 2+2er's.
I think your math is right but only if your playing against a machine that ALWAYS does one thing. You simply can't say ALWAYS when your dealing with a human opponent. When I am raising A's or a-k or j'S or K-Qs the same as I am 3's from ep it totally dumb founds opponents.
If you say that we should start open limping with your A's or other big hands to mix it up and make it look like your not only limping small pocket pairs I think you are giving up way more value by going that route than to just open raise every hand. We all have open limped and it can and does work but I just can't see myself doing on a basis regular enough to make all of the regs see it and think that I might be doing it.

[diebitter]

I do it exactly 16.66% of the time. (the first 10 seconds on my watch).

[Renton]

Im pretty sure almost every aspect of your post is incorrect.

Where should I begin? Well, lets start with your incessant use of pot equity to justify your claims. When there is 10-12 times the size of the pot in each of our effective stacks on the flop, our equity in an 8bb pot on the flop is meaningless. Actually, its worse than meaningless. In fact, in deep stacked nl, the only time pot equity has any meaning is when we are all in, or when the pot is protected in some way.

On to the next thing. If u are only raising hands that figure to be a favorite when called (an outmoded concept as illustrated in the previous paragraph), that means you are raising like 88+ AQ+. This is less than 6% of all starting hands. What this means is that you are raising a such a tight range, that you actually usually have an overpair or TPTK on any given flop. This means that anyone can call you profitably with any pair, because they are literally guaranteed to win a flop PLUS a turn bet from you AT LEAST, since you always have a pretty strong hand. And if they are profitably calling you with small pairs, guess what? You are losing money.

Disadvantages of limping early:

First of all, you get raised off a lot. A smart player will raise pot after limpers with a pretty wide range, but not such a wide range that you'll be able to profitably call out of position. Now, you might say "Well, that same likelihood exists when you raise your small pairs, and someone behind reraises!" However, the likely hood of getting raised off when limping is much greater than the likelihood of getting raised off when raising.

Second of all, what else are you limping? JTs? 89s? Are you limping in and calling raises with these hands? Since you seem to be concerned a ton with pot equity, i doubt you are, which leads me to assume that you are only limping in pairs. Now, if thats the case, obviously this isn't good, because any time you are active postflop, you are going to have a very polar range (that being either a flopped set or a bluff), which means you aren't going to make any money vs decent players.

Limping in small pairs in early position against decent players CAN work, its just that you need to balance. You need to make some negative ev limps with suited connectors sometimes to balance, and you also need to limp-reraise KK/AA/AK and sometimes 22/33/44 as a bluff so it becomes a lot more difficult for good players to take advantage of your passive limping style. But even if you do that, you won't make as much money as raising.

Advantages of raising:

You've heard all of these. You gain a chance to win right away (1.5bb, not very significant as you mentioned, but it does matter). You build a pot so you can easily get all in after the flop in 4 bets (b3b flop ai on turn, betflop c/r turn shove river, bet flop bet turn c/r river, etc). No one is gonna go broke with top pair in a limped pot, but in a raised pot they often will. Actually, if you get all in with bottom set in a limped pot, chances are your hand is dominated.

Here's the most important reason though. When you raise a wide range under the gun (I for example will raise something like 22+ AJo+ ATs+, KQo, KJs+, QJs, JTs, T9s and possible more or less depending on the table and my image), you protect your big pairs and TPTK. I raise a range so wide in early position that the nitty stars regs can't profitably call me with pairs because I don't have an overpair enough on the flop to pay them off. In fact, i haven't done the math, but I bet I could stack off vs them every single time I have AA/KK unimproved and I'd still make money in the long run because they just AREN'T STACKING ME ENOUGH. To add insult to injury, im able to fold overpairs to their obvious strength when necessary.

So long story short, you make TON more money from your decent one pair hands when you raise a wider range preflop, so it opens up a whole other avenue of +EV.

[Falc]

Some short thoughts:

[ QUOTE ]
Also good is limping with a speculative hand with the intention of folding to a raise.

[/ QUOTE ]
People doing that is why it is so good raising lots of hands from the button/co.

Also in your scenario when you're raising UTG and getting one (or two callers). Why are you bringing up the equity of your hand vs his range when you're not gonna go to showdown very often? Your cb is gonna take down the pot alot even when he got the better hand.

Ofcourse this is very table dependant, but on a tight table raising is better than limping. (You say fish about weak players. Fish is high vpip players imo.)

I'll post more later.

EDIT: Nice post renton.

[threads13]

Using much math when it comes to PF play is extremely difficult because there are so many factors that have yet to play out. Having said that, I feel this is the correct way to play against observant players. Raising with PP's is a marginal IMO. Marginal decisions can easily be swayed one way or another.

My default play is to limp many of these hands in EP. I mix it up with random raises with game theory.

If I notice that a lot of hands are ending PF or on the flop, then it is time to start raising some of these hands instead of limping them because I feel that extra probability of picking up the pot will make this a more profitable play.

EDIT: Good post!

[raistlinx]

[ QUOTE ]
When I start losing money I will consider to start open limping. I have checked my po stats and all of my pocket pairs are showing a profit at well over 100k hands.
I do very very well with raising my small and med. pp against tag's and nits.
I also would like contest your statement that your only getting called with a-q + from the blinds. I see many players of many different styles (nit,tag,lag and donk) Severely over defending their blinds with much much worse and quite a few of them are 2+2er's.
I think your math is right but only if your playing against a machine that ALWAYS does one thing. You simply can't say ALWAYS when your dealing with a human opponent. When I am raising A's or a-k or j'S or K-Qs the same as I am 3's from ep it totally dumb founds opponents.
If you say that we should start open limping with your A's or other big hands to mix it up and make it look like your not only limping small pocket pairs I think you are giving up way more value by going that route than to just open raise every hand. We all have open limped and it can and does work but I just can't see myself doing on a basis regular enough to make all of the regs see it and think that I might be doing it.

[/ QUOTE ]
A couple of points:

I never said always do anything, I did say occasionaly raise and occasionaly limp with big hands. What I did do was refute the people who say "always" or "usually" raise.

You don't have to vary your play as much as you think to make the regs unsure what you are doing and wary of raising into you.

I didn't mean to imply that you would only get called by AQ it was just an example. But even if you expand his hands to include ALL broadway (suited or not) your equity remains the same.

You can still play incorrectly and beat other players who play worse than you.

[futuredoc85]

you seem to have not mentioned the effects of c-betting when you're called, both good and bad. Also no mention of the extra profit you show when you do hit because your bets will by default be bigger on every street. your equity calculations are meaningless without factoring these things in. If betting was capped at 4X and everyone had to show down their hands you'd have a point though.. other than that i guess i better hope i never play against a good player since game is based on aggression in the wrong spots, seeing as how im an aggrodonk who never open limps. Saying things like "this is just bad" and trying to make everything black and white is silly. Believe it or not there is more than one way to play profitably, even against good players. Im also curious what caliber of play you are used to since people who play and win higher than you do currently (no offense at all here im seriously just curious) can only succeed against fish due to the huge flaws in our game that you know well enough to offer sweeping generalizations about it (this part is meant to be offensive).

that said, i think the majority of people may be better off open limping their small and medium pairs. I show a very nice profit w/ all of my pairs 22-AA and my UTG VPIP=PFR,(i do open-fold small pairs in EP at some tables so im not raising 100%) and i think it can definitely be just as profitable and probably moreso than open-limping them if you are skilled enough in hand reading and picking good spots for aggression/ dont mind variance. I also show a nice profit w/ mid suited connectors raising from EP as well FWIW, although i do that more in the way that you raise small pairs. I dont think your post is bad but i think trying to pass it off as definitive proof that open-limping is better is rather presumptuous.