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Always raising on button heads-up
When I review some of the hands played headsup among the Big Players on Full Tilt (durrr, Antonius, Ivey, Hansen, etc), etc, it seems that the button makes a standard raise EVERY time.
Firstly... am I interpretting wrongly? Perhaps it's just that the hands I see are the big pots that get commented on on the net, so it's only these that are always raised, not every pot.
I understand that IF you're up against an opponent who will fold to a button raise not-infrequently, then raising every time increases profit. Or if you're against an opponent who doesn't himself always raise when he has button, then your constant raises make sense, since you're essentially playing at higher stakes when you have the position advantage.
But since this is all so well understood by the big players, it seems (from the hands I end up seeing) that almost always the button raises, and the other player does NOT fold. If this is the case on every or nearly every hand, it doesn't seem to accomplish anything.
If we know in advance that our constant button raises WON'T be met with folds, and WILL be met by opponent following suit and always raising when he has the button... isn't this game of pre-flop raising changing nothing, except essentially raising the stakes of the already-high-limit game?
That is, if the blinds are 500/1000, and on every hand the button raises to 3000 and always gets (at least) called, isn't this the same as playing 1500/3000?
Is this sort of like a "prisoners dilemma," in which the pre-flop raising described above helps no-one when both players do it... but both players continue doing so, because if you stop the "blind" pre-flop button raising and your opponent doesn't stop also, that'd put you at disadvantage?
Thanks,
Stuart (RandomStu)
Last edited by mikech; 03-21-2009 at 12:10 AM.
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