Quote:
Originally Posted by FreeportMainePoker
Standard open is 3bb (200% pot)
Standard flop bet is 60-100% pot
Not sure if earlier posts clarified this for you, but your calculation is wrong here. By this logic, if someone bets $4 into a $6 pot, then raising to $6 total would be a pot-sized raise, when in fact that's not even a legal raise size. The best way to think of it is to think of a raise as calling their bet and placing another bet on top of it into the new pot size without the dealer dealing another card (or as they used to say in olden times, "seeing" your bet then raising). So you "see" the $4 bet, making it a $14 pot, then you raise another $14 for a $18 raise total.
Long way of confirming/explaining ArtyMcFly's response to you that a $3 raise is less than a pot-sized raise (the pot is 2.5bbs once you "see" the bet, and then you're adding 2bbs on top).
In any case, in modern-day online poker (where games are more theoretically oriented than live games), the biggest sizing differences are between flop sizes and river sizes. There are also big differences between RFI sizes and 3b sizes. Without giving a complete explanation of all the justifications for every size on every street, I'll illustrate some of the main factors at play here:
1) Range polarity. This is the most fundamental concept for understanding what type of ranges prefer to bet large versus what types of ranges prefer to bet small or face small bets. A range largely made up of draws and marginal showdown hands wants to see more cards and/or get to showdown as cheaply as possible. A range that includes both strong value hands and air wants to bet large with both poles: the value hands want to extract maximum value and the air benefits from large bet sizes because it gives the opponent worse pot odds, making for a higher bluffing threshold.
Note that some of these concepts are meaningless on the early streets (there's no such thing as "air" preflop, for example), and other concepts are meaningless on later streets (there's no such thing as a "draw" when there's no cards left to come.)
2) Range definition. A player's range before raising first in is any two cards, and he is opening that range into various players whose range is any two cards. When a player 3bs, for one, they are making that choice when the alternative was to flat, which tends to polarize their range for going with the more aggressive option. Also, they are making this decision into a player who has defined their range by raising, which could be anywhere from the top half of hands (the button in a 3+ handed game) to the top 10% of hands (early position of a full-ring game).
You may notice this means if you have an open limping strategy, opening larger becomes a more viable strategy because your RFI range consists of less of the hands that perform poorly facing a large 3b (eg: in middle position of a full-ring 100bb+ game, this might include offsuit broadway hands, loosely-connected low-rank hands, and low pocket pairs).
Similarly, OTF, while there's usually a player with a generalized range advantage and a generalized polarity advantage, both ranges still vary widely and often include anything from the nuts to air and a variety of hands in-between. By the time you get to the river, oftentimes one player has been the aggressor throughout the hand while the other player has been on the defensive, which (depending on the runout, bet sizes, etc) tends to make one player's range strongly polar while the other player's range is decidedly medium-strength.
At the risk of venturing a bit away from theory, the above is the reason that it's a reasonably consistent heuristic that the first postflop bet made by any player in any spot where ranges are reasonably varied (eg: SRP involving players from mid-to-late position) is generally going to be on the smaller side--ie: rarely exceeding half pot, and generally being smaller than that. There tends to be a larger array of "motivations" (again, sorry for the non-theoretical language) for the bet that might include protection, thin value, or even just "maintaining initiative" (taking a line that keeps hero's range uncapped and making the decision tree larger for villain so that hero's range is more polar on later streets and villain's range is more middling) in order to keep bluffing options open for later streets, etc. Whereas on the river (particularly OTR with the option to end the hand with a check), betting is generally for pure value or for a pure bluff and simply checking with any hands in-between has no drawbacks.
3) Equity realization. Preflop is by-and-large a slightly ahead/slightly behind scenario, and allowing a player to call gives them an opportunity to realize much of their equity because they get to see three cards before you can bet again. Consider how this matters in combination with range definition: when you 3b a HJ opening range from the blinds, much of their range is ahead of AKo in terms of hot-and-cold equity, and even against AA, those hands get to see 3 cards, any one of which can suck them out on your preflop nuts; it takes a much more preclusive price to mitigate this preflop than it does with a flop bet.
On the river, while it is an absolutely ahead/absolutely behind scenario, a player realizes their TOTAL equity with a call. On the flop, there are still two betting rounds left before showdown and a call only allows you to see one more card.
Last edited by RaiseAnnounced; 05-23-2018 at 11:17 AM.