Preflop raise sizing:
So, what is preflop raise sizing? Well it's the amount that you raise preflop ldo!
/thread
Well, I do have some things to say about it as it turns out. But, before we begin I have a few terms to define (
if you know terms scroll down to, CONTENT STARTS HERE:
SPR: stack-to pot-ratio; a pretty self explanatory concept that is very critical, a lower spr makes pots easier and more straightforward to play.
3bet: the 3rd bet. the blinds are the first, someone opens is the 2nd, someone who then makes another raise is said to be 3betting.
4bet: see above, the 2nd better then reraises the pot, thus putting in a 4th bet
cold 4bet: after a 3bettor has put in their 3rd bet
another different person puts in the cold 4th bet
open: put this in front of a word if they are the first person in the pot e.g. open raise or open limp
iso: raising for the purpose of playing hu, usually we try to isolate limpers because they are weak
steal: a raise made in lp (late position) for the purpose of taking down the blinds.
squeeze: a raise made when there are several people in the pot, usually a raise and a few calls, with the intent to "squeeze out" the people in the pot and take it down.
CONTENT STARTS HERE
So one of the most contentious issues in poker has been the sizing of preflop open raises. That is, how big do we make our bets when we are first into the pot? I am here to present my view on this issue. The two most commonly sized opening that I saw from regs as I moved up through the limits was 4x and 3x the big blind from all positions. Let's compare the advantages of these two sizings:
Value extraction from loose passive occurs by putting in large (potsized) bets street by street by of course using the classical b/b/s. Our first comparison of 3x and 4x sizing will be looking at the geometric growth of the pot if we vary our open raise size by only one (1) big blind. In both scenarios we are going to assume villian is a loose passive fish in the BB who will c/c down with A2o on AQT53 unflushed while we hold AKo and that we both have 100bb stacks.
if we start with 3x:
preflop: raise to 3x, fish calls, pot is 6bb
flop: bet pot (6bb,ignore sb), fish calls, pot is 18bb
turn: bet pot (18bb), fish calls, pot is 54bb
on the river now we have 73bb behind and can't really shove it in because it looks like such a gross overbet that the might might fold, so we bet about 60bb and the fish snaps us off and we profit about 87bb-rake.
however, look at what magically happens if we open to 4x:
preflop: raise to 4x, fish calls, pot is 8bb
flop: bet pot (8bb), fish calls, pot is 24bb
turn: bet pot (24bb), fish calls, pot is 72bb
this time on the river we have 64bb behind and we can easily shove river and not have it look like an overbet and get snapped off no problem.
so at first glance, it seems like 4bb is the way to go and I believe that if your game is
loose passive and filled with fish with a lack of 3betting that this is true. thus, for general play at the micros, 25nl and below imo, opening to 4x bb is correct. however, as you move up in the limits, players begin to 3bet you lighter causing you to fold some of your raised hands preflop and raises don't only start to mean the nuts. thus, 3x becomes a better option (at least imo). this way we can still play large pots against the fish (which are a bit less plentiful) due to the geometric increasing nature of the pot without having to make large cbets at regs which fail more often and without killing too much of our bottomline because of how much we have to fold. however, as everything in poker is dynamic, sometime you must ADJUST, if someone is 3betting you light at 25nl, open smaller, or a much better option is to LEAVE THE TABLE.
Note: some very successful regs at my current limit (100nl) open to 4x but I would say at least 95% if not 95%+ open to 3x.
The last thing that I have to say about preflop open raise sizing deals with stealing. When I am stealing OTB (on the button) I will minraise any two cards. Since we have the button we have ultimate position and we will be able to use that to our advantage to hopefully outplay our opponents postflop. Additionally, since it is only 2bb, you will find that some of your fishier opponents will call waaaaay wider than they should. I personally minraise everything including AA and 72o for disguise and because of the fact that it is very rare for me not to have a shortstacker or a reg in the blinds who will occasionally 3bet me light or shove on me light. However, if you have only fish, feel free to raise up that AA and if you have someone with 100% vpip, don’t worry about folding your 72o. Like I said above, ADJUST, leave if there are 2 shortstackers to your left unless you have position on a fish. The last, and most important, reason that we open to 2bb is this: If we open to 2BB, we risk 2 to win 1.5, so we need our steal to work 57% of the time. That’s it, do this and you should show instant profit.
The last position I have to address opening from is the small blind. Due to the fact that we are oop against the bb I suggest raising to 3bb to dissuade the big blind from calling too wide because it will be extremely difficult to play. Don’t be ashamed to open fold and give the big blind a walk. Before this turns into a dissertation on stealing let me refer you to Happy Pixel’s excellent, excellent article on blind stealing written way back in CotW #4:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...ealing-419666/
And of course, Pokey’s article on blind stealing, if you haven’t read everything Pokey has ever written I highly suggest you do:
http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...Number=5348855
Ok, so that about covers open raising, so now let’s move on to limpers and iso’ing. So as it turns out this too has been covered during the CotW series very well by KurtSF here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...impers-431379/
Kurt pretty much owned limpers hard in his post so the only thing I truly have to add is this; look at the stack size of your limpers before you decide how much to isolate. If they have a smaller stack (say 35bb) then maybe you should iso to 3bb instead of 4 or 5 bb. The reason for this is that you will have no problems getting stack sizes in if you hit well due to only needing 2 streets to do so and for those times that you do lose where they call your cbet and pot the turn or shove over your cbet or donk out, you will lose less (not to mention you can cbet smaller, say ˝ pot). As for what ranges to iso, this depends very much on your opponents’ tendencies/stack size as well as your comfort in playing things like TPNK or MPGK. In general thought, isoing any two broadway cards and a bunch of suited connectors/one gapers is the way to go against the bigger stacks, and the broadway cards against the smaller stacks.
3betting, 4betting, cold 4 betting, and squeezing:
Ok, so now we aren’t the ones opening the pot. Someone, or a few someone’s, have shown that they like their hands a lot and have invested some monies. So you have picked up your hand and decided that they are weak or your hand is great so you have decided to do one of the above possibilities. A few general rules to keep in mind before you 3bet, 4bet, cold 4bet, or squeeze either light or for value:
1. You want to keep your value raises and your bluff raises the same size against thinking regs or else you become too easy to read. Against fish who aren’t paying attention feel free to adjust your raises.
2. You want to bluff the smallest amount that will work the highest % of the time and raise the largest amount that will get called when for value.
3. You don’t want to be playing these large pots multiway and thus should probably squeeze larger than your standard 3bet size (say there is one raiser and two callers I might squeeze to 15 or 18 rather than 9 or 10). Where a standard 3bet might be 2.5x or 3x ip or 3.5-4x oop.
4. You want to be 3betting bigger oop because it is going to be much harder to play postflop otherwise. You can shove your big hands in much simpler fashion if you just bet bigger
5. If you put in 1/3 or more of your stack preflop you have to stack ATC (note: I lost the link to this math and would greatly appreciate it if anyone found it), thus I generally make all my 4bets 25% of my stack no matter what.
6. You generally want to polarize your range when you do any of the above.
A Note About Shortstackers: If a shortstacker has 20bb and raises to 3 and then I 3bet to 12 and get a fish and reg calling behind me and it then folds to the shortstacker who shoves, I can only call and not raise. The rule is this; if there is an all-in raise that is smaller than the last previous raise (in this case an 8bb raise coming after a 9bb raise), then no more raises are permitted. Beware of this fact! I learned this the hard way when I held AA and got set mined by JJ. In the above example, it would be much better to raise to 10 or 11bb because we know the shortstacker is going to shove and we also know that we don’t want to see a possible multiway flop and would like to reraise to set up a lower spr and a nice side pot or just shove preflop.
For more about crushing our sworn enemies you can see CMAR’s incredible post:
http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...umber=12157664
Preflop raise sizing ties DIRECTLY into betsizing which is what I think is the biggest leak of all micro players. A mandatory read is Split’s article on best sizing that is one of the best articles dealing with poker that I have come across ever.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...-value-325157/
Last edited by Vanguard; 09-02-2009 at 12:38 AM.