often times a guy opens a low card from a position ahead of you and you find yourself behind him with an up low card but 1 weak down card, but because of the huge pot odds and your concealed weakness you find it right to play the pot with him.

now of course his hole card range is completely dependent on what type of player he is and what cards are behind him, so a correct balance strategy is dynamic to the situation. its of course much more correct to play a hand like K3-2 against a player whos hand range is much wider than a 3 card 9 or better.

now to punish a player from completing too light a hand range as a steal, you have to raise him so that his pot odds are diminished for playing a weak hand. this fundamentally takes away more steal attempts from him and gives you more in the future if he adjusts correctly. if he doesnt adjust correctly he is bleeding tremendous equity to you of course. but the problem is that if you only raise your stronger hands and only call with your weaker hands strictly to improve your pot odds, your hand becomes face up to a player who notices and this clearly means that you are playing a very exploitable form of razz. the other downside to playing a raise/fold strategy is that when you raise your weaker hands a good player will adjust by raising you with his strong hands and even though hes defining his hand range for you, you often end up finding yourself playing a hand that now became incorrect to play for pot odds because youre playing for 3 bets and not just 1.

so to balance your play in this regard, should you always be raising, always be calling, or be raising a certain % of the time with your strong hands and a certain % of the time with your weak hands? if its the latter, how do you assess what the correct % of the time is based on the dynamic of your hand, as not all hands are strong and weak? 237 is much stronger than 23T is much stronger than 45Q for instance. even though its correct to call a completion with a weak hand for pot odds, if your balance strategy is to always raise, should you not be playing the weaker hands that are now incorrect to play for a raise because your pot odds are diminished? or is it simply true that a correct balance strategy requires you to often make mathematically incorrect calls/raises on 3rd just to widen your hand range?

thanks guys.

The equity edge of a decent 3 card 8 hand over any other reasonable starting hand is usually quite small pre flop. There is little point raising against a decent opponent who only plays reasonable starting hands.

If someone starts stealing frequently, simply try and jam preflop whenever you have a hand you would normally play in your starting range. They will either stop stealing or sacrifice massive equity chasing with trash hands. If they keep stealing light, start jamming with your 9 card highs (unless the pots are routinely massively multi-way). The only time I consider playing with a K or Q in my hand is when I bring-in with something like AXK where a lot of As and Xs are dead and a player in LP makes a steal-like raise, I might play that heads-up (especially if they tend to fold on 5th with any pair showing etc.)

So in some respects you're talking about the metagame.

I play at small stakes and like do bet in a pattern you describe (raise with stronger hands, call with weaker ones).
Up to now I only had very few players (regs, who normally are playing at higher stakes), who adjusted their play to my patterns (as far as I noticed it).
To me there isn't an absolute necessity to implement a good dosed metagame at small stakes razz.

I raise/call based on who else has entered the pot, not the strength of my hand.

These are the usual situations:

If villains limp and I want to play, I'll complete the bring-in and call any raises.

If I'm first in I always complete any hand I want to play.

If someone completes behind me, and the table is not playing super loose I'll call. If people are calling with 9, T or J's frequently, I'll pop a re-raise hoping they come along for the ride at the higher price.

If I'm in the bring-in and I have a 9-high or better with *some* dead cards, I'll open-complete. Especially if people aren't raising much/at all.

On the bring-in I'm folding almost any hand I don't complete with, unless late position raises me with a card higher than my two hole cards, then I'll call and play aggressively if I hit well.

I think earlier in a session you should show the table that you will pretty randomly raise/call regardless of whether you are strong/weak.

Then, of course, you get to play more optimally.

It's a good question - I don't know the mathematical answer...

I'm already lost. You have some guy who is either limping or completing in front of you with some wheel card, is that right? And you, with your (5Q)2 are going to play because of HUGE pot odds? Where did all these bets come from?

Welcome back Tstone -- this sure is a blast from the past. But WSOP time approaches, so glad to see you asking some hard and important questions. While I'm not going to outline a whole steal defense strategy here, I will say vs. someone like, say Kenny Tran, you may find him 3-betting any steal attempt vs. a raise because he is going to play his board and his opponent, there is too much in the pot to fold, and he doesn't want to give up the betting lead in the hand.

See, this never comes up for me. The other guy got his money in first, and I have a bad one in the hole. Next hand. The pot odds aren't "huge." The reverse implied odds are pretty significant, though.

This strategy is almost certainly wrong in games with very aggressive opponents and high antes.

Your FE if you hit a nice looking board and he bricks is also pretty large, which balances this nicely. It's actually a reasonable hand if you have a couple of your cards dead already. Plus if he continues and you catch an 8 or better when he catches an over to your 'bad' card, say you had (2T)3 and it plays out like this:
Fourth Street
Hero (2T3)6
Villain (XX2)J

then you are now ahead, even if he has A32 or A62 you have an 0.544 or 0.558 equity advantage. Even if you catch an 8 on fourth instead you are still even money against A23J and ahead of A28J with 0.559 equity. With a 9 this drops to 0.463, but you might still bet out hoping to keep initiative and representing two wheel cards in the hole. If you keep betting hard he could easily be folding his 682 type hands to a bad catch on fifth because he thinks he is probably drawing at least one card, if not two, behind.

The problem with a balanced strategy in Razz, is that nobody ever folds. If people are not folding, you should never bluff. Never bluffing is not a balanced strategy.

People do fold, it is just usually at the wrong time.

QFT

This phenomenon is not limited to razz.