Can anyone please offer any insights on this subject, apparently only sketchily covered by Negreanu and other writers?

If everyone's folded up to you in the small blind, it seems fairly clear that one should expand one's range for raising, in an attempt to win the BB? My concern relates more to situations in which one or two have called before you. Position being so important in this game, and the SB being the worst position for future betting rounds, it seems that the opposite might be the case, if anything?

Even if one is "getting good odds" in the sense that one has made half a bet already, am I right in thinking that one loses more than one gains by calling with a normal sort of "opening range"?

At the moment I'm raising (and re-raising) in this position with two-card wheel draws and one-card smooth 8-draws, and folding more or less everything else, if one or two other players have already called/raised. But I'm thinking this must be a little bit too conservative? What's the recommended policy here, please?

I'm assuming you meant you are raising two and one card wheel draws. I think your play here is good. Like you said you don't want to play pots out of position, especially when there are multiple players behind you. That being said, it there were a ton of limpers, I might be inclined to call and see a flop with a slightly wider range than we are raising.

Thanks for your reply, Asidrane. (Yes, I am raising two-card and one-card wheel-draws). I suspect that the number of limpers reduces a bit as the stakes increase. I'm certainly finding fewer of them at $1/$2 and $2/$4 limit than in the tiny stakes games, it may be that if I increase my stakes a bit (which I don't mind trying as I'm winning at the smaller stakes) my question will partly answer itself for that reason! ...

Hi Riga,
I believe we've met on the felt before.
Anyway, I'd go with asidrane's philosophy with one slight exception:
with 2-card draws to a wheel, I have no problem with raising to 2 bets in the blinds, but I'm quite gun-shy about making it 3-bets with any 2 card draw OOP
[however, i'll 3-bet my smooth-8 1-card draws though]. I will call 3 bets with a 2-card draw in the blinds, however. The philosophy behind this is that to me,
2-card draws are quite weak in capped pots pre-draw in early position [especially multiway]. You don't have to see 1st and 2nd draw dirt cheap,
but you don't want it outrageously expensive either.

Hi Spike,

How was it for you? ...

Thanks very much for your thoughts. I do see what you mean, I think. I think I raise 1-card smooth-8 draws (even to 3 bets) in any position. I think I'm probably re-raising 2-card wheel-draws to 3 bets even out of position at the moment, though. I'm probably taking Negreanu's remark that you shouldn't be in the pot if you're not raising it either out of context or a bit too literally ...

I seem to recall Negreanu saying it was fine to smooth call a 2-card draw to a wheel from the SB to disguise the strength of your hand and keep from building a pot OOP.

I posted a thread on this a long time ago, and got some good responses. I still mostly play based on those recommendations. They're pretty tight, because position is just that important in triple draw. You should definitely play tighter in the SB than OTB. I probably play tighter in the SB than I do UTG.

I strongly suggest that you stop giving advice

That's fine, Seb. Such a comment is not very useful to me or the OP, though. In what way do you disagree? What extra hands do you think are playable in the SB when it folds to you vs. UTG? Do you call more hands from the SB to a BTN opener than you would play UTG? What about to an UTG opener?

I agree with Jig here. There is no reason to get involved in a hand the SB permanently out of position without a real hand, unless no one has entered the pot and you are stealling from a tight BB.

i tihnk main thing is if someone says hey, you wanna play <specific hand> OOP in 3bet pot, you probably say no a lot of time, but same deal in 2bet pot you say ok.

utg you get 3bet a lot, sb you call raise BB is not gonna 3bet much.

also sb you get >2:1 on money even if BB folds.
in 1/2 blinds,
a) 3bet pot - (3+1+.5):3 = 1.5:1
b) 2bet pot (2+1+.5):1.5 = 2.3:1

I'm coming around to the idea that it's generally correct to play quite tight against raises in the SB. Opening, though, playing tight is a very bad idea, for the obvious reason that BB will have unplayable crap really often, so you don't have to win many contested pots to make a profit. (And nearly everyone underdefends their BB against SB opens, so you may not need to win any.)

let's take say the average starting hand which i've just now defined as 258.

play utg? play in sb against raise?

I don't play 8-high two card draws UTG. I will defend this in the SB against a BTN steal-raise all day, unless the BTN hasn't played a hand in 2 orbits.

Can anyone name a hand we would play UTG but fold in the small blind for a single raise? I clearly fall on the "play more hands in sb" and I find it really obvious.

-DeathDonkey