I have noticed a lot in 1/2 live that some people will say "make it five" during pre-flop. Some even say "raise 4" and they make it 4 dollars. If they have a great hand no one folds and if they have a sucky hand nobody fears them after this raise. Why do they even bother with stuff? Any one know? I don't ask them because i don't want them to improve their play.

Fish be fishin.

Often it's a speculative hand and they just want to juice it up a bit and also discourage someone from making a serious raise. Depending on the opponent you can 3 bet this with nearly ATC and take it down most of the time with a c bet

It's something I have experimented with... Not sure what I think about it tbh....
When it's early and stacks are relatively shallow 100-150bbish I have tried opening some sc's or low pp's for 2.5x and 3x..... My main theory behind this is villans just don't 3bet anywhere near enough, but are calling wide, so it's like we are setting our own set mining price.
It's better than open limping Imo and allows us to keep our range that bit wider vs thinking villans, and is allowing us to immediately control pot size.
I dont knowing this is a good ploy, but I think used correctly can have some merit.... Maybe it's terra-bad and I just can't see why yet though?

Why don't you just set your set mining price at 1bb?

Well first it keeps our range a bit wider, and allows us to rep a bigger hand later on if needs be.
In my experience you are much more likely to get squeezed open limping, than if you open to 3x, just because players 3! Ranges are very rigid.
If we are looking to make a set and play for stacks,it is much harder to play 100bb+ pots when there is 6bb in the pot in the flop vs 15-18bb.
This is more something I am looking at vs decent regs, opposed to a fishy table, although I don't think it's horrible if you are oop vs the fish...
As I say Its something I have been experimenting with lately, seems to make sense atm, but it's not something I have used for long enough to have a set opinion on,

It's a popular phase for most players but they usually grow out of it.


If it's a tight table where you'll have a hard time getting 100bb in then you might as well just raise a normal amount and add some FE to your possibilities. If it's a fishy table then you're more likely to have a big pot with 6bb vs. 5 players then 6bb vs. 2. And you're destroying your set mining odds by raising.

Most people are creatures of habit and use the same patterns all the time. In the old days online, a preflop min raise with a middle pocket pair or a suited ace almost every time. Once you pick up any pattern you can destroy people.

Min raises preflop are a lot less common playing live but when you see someone do it with any regularity watch for showdown to see what they had. Then get ready to use that info to abuse them.

If they had KK, you call with a huge variety of hands because these clowns wont fold an overpair. If they had a middle pair, you can 3 bet them super wide in position and take it down on the flop almost every time.

Some people do it with things like QJs. Just pay attention because you can bet there will be a pattern that you can use against them.

Who cares what the purpose is.

Just figure out what their range is, and 3bet/call/fold accordingly.

But most people do it because they want to win a bigger pot when they win.

I really don't know we're to start with that post spikeraw.... 1) I'm not new to this game and have been playing long enough for this not to be a noob phase...
2) If I'm opening 44 etc utg I'm not really looking for fold equity
3) why would I get it 6bb vs two players, if Im opening small I'm expecting a bunch of callers...
4) how is raising 3bb destroying my mining odds....and as stated previously it makes it much less likely I will get squeezed to 7-8bb... Much better mining odds Imo

I used to open everything to the same value,but I think there is value in mixing our raise sizing alot.

Are you getting raised to 7bb every single hand you limp? Probably not.
Lets say it's 33% of the time.

Then 66% of the time you invest 1bb, 33% of the time you invest 7bb, total investment of 2.97bb/hand. If you raise to 2bb/hand, obviously you are seeing a flop on average cheaper. If you raise to 3bb/hand you are spending more.

What if you get raised on your 2bb bet or 3bb bet 15% of the time? Assuming we call:

85% of the time we spend 2bb, 15% of the time we spend 11bb for 3.29bb/hand
or
85% of the time we spend 3bb, 15% of the time we spend 15bb for 4.8bb/hand

So it really depends on how often you are getting raised in limped pots vs how often you are getting 3bet in these juiced pots that you are creating.

The less often that you are getting raised in limped pots, the less that you should be juicing it up. And the more that you are getting raised in juiced pots, the less that you should be juicing them.

I've only been dabbling with this is a concept really, but where I play most often there is a limited player pool and you find the same regs time and time again.... There is a group of players who seem to be very squeeze happy, especially from the sb..( I don't know if one of them read and book and it's filtered through or something) and so when these guys are at the table basically no pot geta limoed around, equivalently 3bets are basically always JJ+ aq+ and alot of the time you can range a 3! As exclusively qq-aa.
I don't think this play type is Untypical of llsnl either, certainly not in the casinos round by me,
Players 3! Ranges are just so inelastic, yet as mentioned the bet is so small they will call as if it is basically a limped pot....
As I said it's something I'm dabbling with atm, and I think we as a whole should pay more attention to our raise sizes pre-flop rather than just always 6x-ing every hand..

Fwiw I never min open, 3x is smallest...
I also never (almost) open limp....it's a play I just don't get along with

Ronrabbit has pretty much explained why most fish do this. They want to build a pot but not build it too much because they're scared of how to play it postflop. It's effectively a gamblers move with a hand that has little to no showdown value. Obviously this doesnt really make any sense with a hand like 44 since you can only win by hitting a set in this circumstance. The whole point of keeping balanced bet sizing is that you can win both by bluffing or hitting a set since you could have 44 or AA. Everyone can rule out AA with a minraise so now you can never bluff, and if you do hit your set the pot will be so small that people will likely have decent implied odds to draw against you anyway, so all you're really doing when you minraise is just building a pot for somebody else to win.

I frequently min raise these bets.

Do villans really look at bet sizing to determine our range? When I played online I was all about balance, using the same raise sizes for every hand, etc.... But live is anyone paying that much attention to what hands.we 3x,4x,5x,6x....
I genuinely dont know the answer to this,
What I have noticed is that regardless of my open size I get 3! The same frequency.
I'm not 3xing because I'm scared to build a pot....I'm doing it because I want to build a pot,
I want to take 44 multi-way to the flop in an inflated pot,
I dont want 44 heads up in a 12bb pot, because I'm just so rarely going to play for staks if I make my set....
If I can play 44 vs 5villans in a 15bb I am much more likely to get stacks in if I hit my set....

Maybe my mentality is wrong, but I'm not really looking for bluff opportunities oop with marginal holdings, I save 'creative' play for when I'm in position. (fwiw all my bet sizings are bigger from CO and button) utg I just want to raise make my set, bet,bet,shove and have done with it.....like the good old days....

3x-ing in my (half-baked) view gives us a higher chance of that happening,

If villains are not paying attention to your bet sizing, they are not likely paying attention to anything you're doing and so you're going to crush them anyway. There are good players at 1/2 who will pay attention to your bet sizing, and they will notice if 3x means speculative, while 5x means strong.

Yeah but you're doing it with a hand that cant win unless you spike, so what you're really doing is just gambling. Might as well minraise any two cards because you could flop whatever and build a pot. There's no reason to build a pot with a hand that flops sets because as the aggressor you're only going to get action from hands that draw to beat you. It's not like you're giong to minraise 44, get flatted by QQ. This is why weak hands are better played passively since your goal is to stack someone else who has QQ when they are the aggressor, or as a bluff.

Dont build pots with air that cant win without hitting.

And yes I think even bad players pay a little bit of attention to bet sizing. For instance they'll notice if you open for $4 vs $20 and put you on AA vs whatever. They might not adjust to it properly and call you with the same range and frequency either way.

I like to open for $12 at 1/2 regardless of hand strength. Many players vary their bet sizing according to hand strength? QTs ? Make it $5 to go. a $4 - $7 PF raise to me smacks of 22-88/QTo+, but less than AQ etc. Sometimes SCs. I like to imagine a specific hand that it might be and hope it goes to showdown so I can hone my gut instinct. A very underrated play at $1/$2 is the squeeze. In the games I play there's a lot of passivity in hands where a $5 raise is made. If 4 people call $5, it's a safe bet that nobody has a real hand and can't withstand a raise to say $35.

Ron, in your KQs utg HH, you said, "Playing 1-2, it's late, it's the only game running, and for a 1-2 game this line up is tough. Every villan is a reg, some are decent regs, some are good regs...." It seems like in your game, there are at least a few V's who will be able to pick up on your betsizing tells. For those of us where 1/2-1/3 is the only HE spread, not all our V's are lolbad, and you have some respect for yours. I like the idea of setting your own price, but depending on how pronounced the difference is between your normal opens and these price-setting opens, someone will pick up on it.

The kqs hand is not particularly indicative of what I'm trying to suggest here, there are absolutely players at that table who would pick up in varied bet sizing, and there is a relatively meta-game that goes on between me and some of the villans at that time. that is not a usual line up, and you would usually play vs some rec fish and some bad regs, with maybe 1-2 decent-good players....

When I'm talking about playing for stacks here, I am talking about stacking players who will stack kt on a k,7,4 board or whatever (maybe this is optimistic) but the bad regs, who stack aj on jhigh boards etc.... These are the players I'm targeting in particular, not the crazy fish who are easy to stack, or the tough regs who will pick up on the obvious bet size tells....

You may be targeting the bad players like this but I promise you the tough regs are targeting you back when you do it. I have 4-5 regs in my games that have the most obvious preflop sizing tells imaginable and I make them pay all the time.

The other day one guy with a horrible preflop sizing tell raised to $15 after a limper. He got 3 calls and I 3 bet to $80 with total garbage. He actually said to the guy next to him "no way he is 3 betting ME there without a big hand" after everyone folded. I had total garbage.

If I were you Id be really careful and be aware of who is watching you because the good regs are.

You really think you won't be able to stack them in a limped pot in those situations?

I don't think you can stack the bad regs in a limped pot, that easily....if we are talking 100bb...
Pot is 6bb on flop, we bet 5bb get one caller
Pot is 16bb on turn we bet 15bb get called pot is now 46bb
Unless I am jamming 75bb into a 45bb pot on the river I'm not getting stacks, and that's with big bet sizing that will fold out even the bad regs.
If I can make the same play but the flop is 15bb....
Then bet 14bb one caller
Turn is 43bb I can now bet 35bb get called
River is 110bb easy shove....

Besides I don't want to go down an open limp discussion because it's a play I don't like or use.....

The good regs will sniff this out I have no doubt, and vs some of the better tags to make this work you would need to balance your range obviously... That's the rub I guess, we can open everything to 6x and not worry about it, that's sort of my default line, or we can mess with bet sizing and worry about balance vs good players.....I'm not sure how many 'good regs' I'm sitting with consistently but it's rare to have more than 1 at a table I would say.... Most of the winning regs I play with are just uber nits so not worth worrying about, there are a few players I respect, and will generally mess my pkay up vs them, but mostly the players are average at beat...imo

Sure but that's only good when you hit a set. How often are you flopping sets? With such miniscule bet sizing your only way to win this hand is to flop a set. If you had raised larger you could cbet and get people to fold on a bluff, as there would be fewer callers and their ranges would be tighter thus missing more flops.

Thats the point I'm trying to make. This "build a pot with junk" strategy is flawed. 44 is junk. It only has value when you suckout for lack of a better term. By your logic you should be minraising 60% or more of your hands that stand just as decent a chance of hitting because you would suckout with 2 pair+.

Then why do we ever set mine.... The only point of that is to 'suck out' as you put it....
Yes I could raise bigger, and my default as I have said numerous times is to 6x, but at a table were we are still getting multiple callers at 6x what is the 3bb more doing to benefit us? We can still easily play for 100bb stack with a 3x, 6x will gii on the turn for us, but does this matter?

Fwiw I'm not trying to suggest that this is some brilliant strategy, it is just something I have been trying lately, I'm a regular 6x every hand type normally, but I have been testing lowering my raise size when oop and raising bigger in position.... This is an extension of that, not sure if it's going to work out good or bad, but it's a variation I'm trying..... Shoot me down

When someone else raises they are announcing they have a strong hand. Obviously this isnt always true but when it is, our set can crack that hand and win a big pot. You dont setmine if you are the raiser. The only reason anyone would ever raise a small pocket pair preflop is to balance their range so everyone doesnt always put you on QQ+.

But if you're minraising then the same hands that would have limped behind for 1BB are going to call for 2BB. So you havent really accomplished anything other than bloat the pot with a hand that is only going to win when you flop a set. One other facet of raising preflop with small pocket pairs is that because your range is balanced, and because opponents know you COULD have a big hand, they are more likely to fold to postflop aggression. This way you can win on a bluff. If you minraise players wont feel so threatened, the pot will be smaller, and thus you will probably never win postflop on a bluff.