I think everyone who advocates using a larger open size from early position and a smaller size from later position is wrong.

I think it's a sort of circular logic or maybe not circular but just kind of "smoke and mirrors" and that the adjustments should be made in our ranges and to adjust your ranges by position and then also to adjust sizing is sort of redundant.

A pretty long time ago people would talk about opening 3x from EP and 3.5 in mid-late, and 4xbb from the button because;
They wanted to get action from EP when they had the strongest range
They figured that opening from early position would already look strong enough to discourage action and they would not get enough calls from the BB if they went 3x from UTG w/ an obviously strong range
They didn't want to bloat pots when they were going to have to play out of position

these players would also say that opening for 4xbb from the button made sense because it would give them the most fold equity when they needed it most with their steals and it would create a situation where the players in the blinds would be forced to play big pots out of position, make big 3 bets against a button raise without limiting the buttons ability to 4 bet and still fold vs jam, or to simply fold against what is going to pretty obviously be a wide range.

Another, now more popular, school of thought advocates exactly the opposite;

Raise bigger in EP when;
your range is strongest so you get max value with best hands
your going to want to discourage action because you are OOP
you want to limit the flops you take, especially multi way
and many of your opponents will be in position so they can afford to call with too many hands because of the positional advantage they'll have post flop

and, conversely, when these player are in late position,
they want to give themselves a better price when they are going to be opening a wide range
they want to lose less when they face a 3 bet and have to fold
they want to encourage action when they will be in position
etc

TO ME..

This all sounds like complete horse S$i!
Seriously, I'll go into why it seems like garbage if I take the heat I somewhat expect to take but I don't want to waste too much time on it if everyone else has already figured this out as well and I'm just "preaching to the choir"

I actually believe that a lot of good players are still using this strategy (raise bigger early and smaller in late position) and it's similarly goofy cousin "3 bet really big when you're OOP but small in position" for all the same half baked rationales that apply to open raising.

I think it's all pretty clearly flawed.

I have every confidence that someone much better at poker than I am will figure this out at some point and make it popular and then people will just go back to 3x'ing from all positions in general (or 2.5xing or whatever) but will only really adjust open sizings for exploitive reasons based on the players they're up against and/or based on stack sizes (which obviously DOES make sense)

But, as for this moment..
What's the consensus at present?


Anyone disagree with me/agree with one of the other schools of thought?

Any good justifications that I'm unaware of?

Do you actually subscribe to the school of thought for the "rationale" I listed?

I'd like to either have someone convince me that I'm wrong, find out that everyone's known my idea is correct for a while now and I'm just not "in the know", or help shed some light on this flawed idea for some of the TPT nation.

so,..
what up?

yeah 110%

But they didn't know what position was....

110% what?
Agree with me or confirming that there is some consensus to the contrary?

I started a conversation like this about four or five years back on pokertube (I used to do content for them and frequented the forums) and my ideas about not needing to vary raise sizes by position was met with a bit of skepticism, I wasn't waived off as a crazy person and I wasn't laughed off the site but at that point there still def was a consensus among top players that it was "standard" to adjust open sizes by position and to use larger 3 bets OOP and smaller in Position.

I play mostly heads up and SnG's online so I'm not sure how players at higher stakes online are playing these days and the cash games I play are just live and mostly $2-$5/$1-$3 no days so I don't really know how a lot of the games play but I am interested to know;

Are people still adjusting open sizings based on position?
3 betting larger OOP?
And is there a clear consensus or are we starting to get away from it?

And if you're part of the "Open to 3x from UTG, smaller in late, and maybe smallest from the button" school of thought (or the reverse, though I don't know if anyone still does that) I'd love to hear the arguments as to why that seems like the thing to do.

Or "yeah, everyone pretty much knows it was silly" or "I open for a min raise still from the button but only for exploitative reasons because players.."

yeah, basically, what are people doing in the higher (say nl500 + ) games doing online these days and do you agree

I don't know about higher stakes, but at 50NL and below it's still common to open smaller on the button and to 3-bet larger out of the blinds. The imbalance in ranges (tight early, very loose OTB) and sizes (big early, small late) exploits the general tendencies of weaker player pools.
Personally, I minraise in every position and just press POT for my 3-bets, but I'm probably a robot.

yeah, i see it when I do play six max nl25 nl50 and even fast fold NL10 but I know they are usually going to be a bit behind the trends.

I don't use the minraise at these stakes but at least it seems you're on board with the "same size from all positions. I like 3x from everywhere but I may actually go like 2.5x if it was a bit easier to do at the stakes/site i play. I do the same as you, Arty, with my 3 bets.

Anyone defending opening different sizes by position and/or using smaller 3 bets in and larger 3 bets out of position??

I think you're overestimating the amount of people that actually employ different default open sizes. Among regs its probably less than 20% that do with virtually 0% switching in the direction where later positions have larger sizes.

That said I don't really see anything wrong or fallacious with the reasoning in the OP, I just feel like its all trumped by simply the importance of raising for value. When I'm trying to exploit my opponents, which is something I would argue we should do every time we play poker, a 2x raise size from the button just doesn't build the pot up enough for my tastes.

From a GTO perspective, I think its very likely raise sizes will change based on position. Its possible that 2x is the correct sizing from every position, and its possible pot sizing is correct in every position for a game like PLO since those are the respective mins and maxes for raise sizes, but since the different positions in poker don't really matter to each other when figuring out an optimal solution, I find it extremely unlikely that a 3x sizing will just be coincidentally correct for every position.

I don't really have a strong opinion on which direction sizes will change though. I think there's a strong argument sizes actually do get bigger from later positions. In early positions, the strength of the opener's range is strong enough that weak hands are already priced out to just a minraise. A hand like J9o is a fold since flopping a jack or nine isn't that great when your opponents range is overpair-heavy. From a button raise however, you're just autocalling J9o to a minraise since flopping a pair is just automatically good against a wide preflop range. So in order for the button to price out the BB from just calling anything to flop pairs, he needs use a larger default sizing.

All of this is complicated by the question of whether there even is a default sizing in the first place. Its entirely possible the optimal solution mixes raise sizes or even limps in sometimes.

Well put,
I would also be very surprised if the optimal strategy did not use a mix of bet sizings from each position.

I also agree that it could well be that different sizings ought to be used from different positions but, because there doesn't seem to be a logical rationale for opening bigger or smaller from early or late positions I don't think it makes sense to just sort of guess and therefor we may as well use the same size from all positions.

Now, as for your thoughts about opening smaller from EP because your range is stronger or opening larger from the button because you want to price out the bb or give him a harder choice, that is exactly the kind of (not exactly circular but flawed) logic I was talking about. If you think, for instance that you won't get enough action from your UTG opens if you use a larger size then you should make the adjustment within your range not your bet sizing. Obv, if you aren't getting action from EP you should add more hands and open a wider range but not necessarily do anything with your sizing.
As for the button if you think you get called too often or your opponents can call too profitably then you should tighten your range not raise bigger (although I think 3x from the button with a pretty wide range is just fine, you do have position after all) and that's what I'm getting at.

UTG we should raise larger because we are OOP and have a strong range
LP we should raise larger because we have position and a wide range
= just a bunch of non-starter type circle talk IMO.

thoughts?

See when you're moving from position to position its already a given that your range is changing. The question is whether bet size moves along with the range. GTO calculations don't involve some double change where we change our range once based on the number of players we're up against and then just change again based on how we want to price out the blinds. All sizing and range combinations are considered and simply the best one EV wise is chosen.

Again, its entirely possible there's no sizing change and something like 2x is correct from every position, but to suppose otherwise isn't "flawed" logic. Also, the strength of poker hands aren't completely linear. Its possible there will be a situation that's slightly improved in a way where there's a choice between adding hands or changing bet size. Maybe AT is added to an AJ+ range. But in another situation, where the range is already AT+. Adding A9 isn't the same, since there's a bigger jump between A9 and AT. than AT and AJ. So its possible the bet size gets changed instead.

Its bit weird and probably wrong to hold both those views simultaneously but I still don't really think we can prove them wrong at this point. It maybe actually be the case that for some reason in middle position our bet size dips down a bit compared to early and late position. Its kind of like how a flush draw you must get it in when the pot is very small (you're committed) and its frequently correct to get it in as a semibluff when you have some fold equity, but there's an inbetween spot where you don't have the fold equity and you don't have the pot odds.

A good discussion on the idea of opening for smaller raises in early position and larger raises in late position can be found in Chris Ferguson's section in the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide.

I think it makes sense to open larger in EP because you want to play fewer pots OOP and the amount of money extra that you need to invest to ensure this is OK because you're opening a stronger range with it. We can see that the EV of 3b/4b oop goes up by increasing our sizing as well because we don't want to play those spots often and we have tighter ranges.


I'm confident you could prove this in PIOsolver with spots like SB vs BTN where you give SB same range and increase sizing from something like 9 vs 3 to 10-11 vs 3 and use the same range and see how the OOP's EV changes. It's a different spot, but it's a similar idea/concept.

You want to play fewer pots? And you have a stronger range?
Wait a second?
If you have a stronger range don't you want to play more flops??

If we see our EV increase moving to a bigger sizing then why don't we make our sizing even bigger? Why not 11bb?

You see what's going on here? This is a magic trick.

Go back to exactly what you said..
couldn't I just as easily play a tight range from late position and use a larger sizing? Hell, then i'd have position, and a tight range, and a big size.. GIN!

But you can obviously see there is something wrong with what I just said right?

Of course, the truth is that I WANT to play a wider range in late position. And even though I would make more money PER HAND if I used a tighter range and a larger sizing I would still make more money overall using a wider range and a normal sizing.

The same applies to all positions.

The fact of the matter is this is how bet sizing works;
The bigger I bet, the more hands fold, the less often I take a flop, the stronger the hands are that play against me.

So, I could say "I want to use a large sizing when my range is strongest because I get more value when I am called" OR "I want to use a smaller sizing when my range is strongest because it increases the number of times I actually do get called (and, by definition, means I will be flopping against weaker ranges)"

So, yeah, the larger sizing will create more value when you have a stronger range but it will limit the number of calls you get and decrease the frequency of actually getting to play flops with your strongest range. Good or bad? It seems equal/opposite or at least the answer is not contained within the argument we normally see (the one you gave) and more info is required or at least more info has to be offered to draw any real conclusions from it.

But what about the position part of the argument?

"I want to use a larger size when OOP because I want to limit the flops I play OOP" OR "I want to use a smaller size when i'm OOP because I want to play smaller pots OOP"

Yes, the larger you raise the less flops you will play but the bigger the pots will be that you do play. So, what is preferable? I'm not sure it's clear and I would say that intuitively it seems like it may well be equal and opposite.


The larger we bet the fewer hands call us, the stronger the ones that do call us will be, the less flops we will take, the bigger the pots will be when we do take a flop. That all seems very true but seems to contain no info at all regarding our preference with different strength ranges or from different positions.

Anyone see what I'm getting at? Or am I crazy?

Try to account rake. It is possible that optimal opensize changes and with higher/less capped rake we should open less hands with higher size.
Agree it applies for all positions. But can imagine that esp on micros the overall used size/range may be bit wrong due the rake.

Opening sizes from each position should be relative to the strategy you're using. I.e, in a 3x strat you can open A9o from the CO and in 2.5x strat you can open A8o from the CO.
Our ranges shouldn't just change with position they should also change in relative to our opening sizes and other things like stack size obviously.

Sure, I understand what you're saying. There's more factors involved and there are some which push for the incentive of lower sizing, but the others are pushing in the other direction and this is going to be a function of position as to how much they are pushing in either direction. With being in early position we really don't want to play pots OOP, and we have a strong range, which I've said makes us want to choose a lartger sizing. You stating, "Well why not just do 11bb opens?" isn't taking to account other factors. You reach a point where, if we make the same sizing with our whole range, we reach an equilibrium EV point and that's going to be a higher sizing in EP than BTN. I'm pretty confident, but it's a difficult thing to prove. We have variables pushing in two different directions and I believe that the incentives for making a larger sizing with higher % chance of being OOP to essentially get called less is a good thing and is going to outweigh the want to play higher # of hands. Also I believe the range construction from an opening size of 2x vs. 3x isn't going to be that much of a difference UTG because the top ~15% of hands is just too strong. On another note I also strongly believe that minopening vs. strong players is a very big mistake for the same reason. We're simply allowing people the odds to get a fraction of the blinds/pot too often. So, unless explicitly exploiting opponents I also think 2bb opens are mistake as well.

I think strategically opening 2-2.5bb UTG makes sense in regards to playing OOP. We should be playing more defensive OOP, x/c'ing more and trying to pot control. Which keeping the pot small preflop correlates well with those assumptions and strategy.

I'd open for 1.1x if it was legal to steal with that size. Minraising always feels like I'm risking too much.

That's just because you're exploiting the population.

There aren't many NLH (no ante) hands with more than 4 players in them in the latest NVG High Stakes thread, but minraising (or 2.2x) looks pretty common in the games featuring Katya, Linus and RedBaron.

I've been saying this for a while, but if poker is still being played in 2020, I think literally everyone will be minraising UTG. 3x-ing or larger is for exploitative/fishy games imo. (I've probably cost myself a lot of BB by using minraises in the micros, when it's probably better to size according to hand strength when playing weak opponents). The SB might be the only position where 3x (or bigger) makes sense in theory.

well he knows more than be (OTB) so perhaps I'm wrong

Shouldn't limping also be an option?