can you explain how raising to juice the pot makes it more profitable? Seems like raising to get initiative and to be able to win the pot other ways makes it arguably more profitable, not to hit sets.

Raising to juice the pot reduces your implied odds if you are just looking to hit sets, and you lose more when you miss, and limit the upside of what you can win relative to what you put in preflop. Limping $2 and winning an average of $20 with sets is the same as "juicing" the pot to $8 and winning an average of $80.

I can't see more than one player or two at the most falling into the "terribad" category. Unfortunate, but there it is. If this weren't Madison, WI where there is only $1/2 and that's it, then half the table would probably be playing $2/5. Soon, I'd like to try my skills at the casino in Milwaukee where they do have $2/5, just to see how different it is. However, the 90 minute drive has kept me grinding at $1/2 so far.

Case in point, I actually got Aces back to back at the end of last night's session. The first time, there was a straddle, a $10 raise from UTG and I raised it to $30. Everyone folded. Pretty standard. I look down and see Aces again the very next hand. No straddle. I open to $15 and everyone folds. An old timer says, "looks like he's got another big hand" before he folds. Perhaps this is being results oriented, but I have a feeling that a $10 raise would have gotten 1 or 2 callers. I think every time I raised to $10 earlier in the night, except maybe once, I got at least 1 caller.

I'll keep experimenting with pre-flop raise sizes versus certain opponents and see what happens.


VS