Not bragging here. Just confused by everything I've ever read about adjusting my opening size by my position. People smarter than me suggest opening larger from ep when your range is stronger and opening smaller from lp when your range is wide. But I do the opposite. In passive games with lots of limpers and callers and multiway pots I raise small from ep and large from lp and here's why.

In the games I play any ep open that isn't sized absurdly large is going to get a couple of callers. Sometimes it seems like ep opens are more likely to get calls because opps like playing juiced pots with their speculative hands and they don't expect to get squeezed once a pot has been opened. The few times I have raised large from ep I just find myself in gross spots playing bloated pots from oop with the betting lead. If I open small from ep, however, I have risked less and gained a lot of maneuverability. If I open small from ep I am able to either maintain the betting lead when I connect with the flop or I can easily yield the betting lead and play poker when I don't smash (and/or the situation turns out to be less profitable than anticipated). I also find my opps making way more mistakes to my small ep opens. Small ep opens often induce overcalls and then squeezes, often with total garbage, and my 4 bets are often more likely to get called. Good starting cards can shrink up so fast in these multiways. Why would I want to bloat the pot when I don't have a bread and butter situation?

And the LP contrast to this is: Why wouldn't I want to bloat the pot when I do have a bread and butter situation? More often than not by the time it gets to the button there are already several limpers or there is a raise and some over callers. These situations are so good that it would be crazy to raise small with a good hand right?

I'm not really claiming to be correct here but this makes sense to me and it's really hard for me to see the other side of this so I'd love it if someone would pick apart my reasoning. I take this approach to mild extremes in my local games by opening to no more than 2.5x from ep and to at least 6-7x from lp and these sizes seem to accomplish what I want. I wouldn't do anything like this online but in a llsnl game it seems totally profitable and also very difficult to exploit.

Am I terrible?

1) it depends on stack sizes and table dynamics and your range, what hands are we talking about raising? 76s, AK, and AA I think about differently, I want to play 76s multi-way with a large spr, AK I want to play heads up

2) some people are going to make the argument you need to use the same sizing every time, or most times, I think you can potentially go smaller in ep because it looks stronger and decent players will recognize that strength without a larger size, most of the people I play against won’t realize this so I wouldn’t implement it and I believe 2.5x is probably too small

3) unexploitable? Aggro opponents will raise that 2.5x open, do you want to play oop vs an aggressive opponent who has the betting lead?

I presume that you're talking about 1/2? You might want to try this thread.

Id like to know who exactly suggests opening larger in EP and smaller in LP? I mean in a 2/5 game you might see good players opening $20 in EP and $15 in LP, but the best players dont vary much more than that other than to account for raising a number of limpers.

If anyone is telling you to open to $35-$40 in EP and $15-$20 in LP, they are nuts.

It's a balancing act. You want bigger pots with stronger ranges and in position, and smaller pots with wider ranges and out of position, but you want to play stronger ranges out of position and wider ranges in position.

What did I just read?

Opening larger in position is advocated in NLHT&P. So it is not the case that the entire "literature" says you should open larger in EP than you do in LP.

I play mostly 1/2 and I generally raise to 10 in unopened pots from ep to hj and in the co and button I usually go 8. Not a huge difference but the 2 reasons behind this (for me) are because I generally steal a lot from co / btn so I want to lay myself a better price on these steals. Also, my ep - hj raises are usually somewhat decent hands, and I like to discourage action from going 6 ways. Bigger raise size discourages this. If its 2-4 ways then I dont have to worry about reverse implied odds as much with top pair and overpair hands, and I can bluff on favourable flops more often. If its 6+ to a flop, top pair is a scary situation, and bluffing is usually a horrible option. That's my reasoning

In my 5/5 game, my EP range is 88+, AQ+, JTs+. I open to $20 with the weaker part of my range and open to $25 with the strong hands. $25 gets fewer callers which I am fine with when I have AA-JJ. With suited connectors and $20, it is usually multiway which I am fine with. I might size it up with + 1to2 BB if I feel people are calling way too loose.

Overall, I'm fairly in-line with OPs thinking overall (mostly play small pots OOP and big pots in position), although I take it to a bigger extreme (raising a very small $0 OOP by mostly limping and typically raising very large when in position, although it does depend on stack size and whether I have a speculative hand versus TP type hand).

GcluelessraisetheorynoobG

If you are opening to 6x without any callers in LP you are either:

- 6x with 50%+ of hands and are massively exploitable by people 3betting this sizing

- Only opening 20% of hands and missing value to steal blinds/play a wider range in position

If Raising 6x over 3-4 limpers it no different to 2.5x UTG

Chen's book too.

This thread is better than the COTM

Those $12.50 opens at 2/5 are next level.