Disagree. If I raise UTG in a 1/2 value I'm generally raising to the $7 range no matter what hand I have. I don't care about everyone folding, because the $3 in blinds I'd steal are virtually worthless. I'm generally raising because my hand is in the top 5% so I'm likely to have more pot equity than anyone who calls or 3-bets.

Plus, it's a lot easier to get it all in against one pair in a big pot than a small pot.

Especially at a casino that rakes $5/hand, if you limp UTG, 2 players limp and the SB completes, the pot now has $5 in it and you only profit $3 if you bet to take it down. If you raise to $7 UTG the pot now has $30 in it if the same 5 players see a flop. If you started with $200 stacks, you can bet 2/3 the pot on each street with just one caller and get it all-in.

Flop ($30)
Hero bets $20, Villain calls

Turn ($70)
Hero bets $50, Villain calls

River ($170)
Hero bets $123, Villain ?

and i will disagree with you on the above in this sense, if a player is calling 7, they are calling 10, and usually calling 12 IME.

and furthermore, if you want to say raising to 12 over 7 will get less callers, then i may agree with you, and lets look at pot size with the 2 raise sizes

hero UTG raises to 7, gets 4 callers

pot 35

hero UTG raises to 12, gets 2 callers

pot 36

less players, same pot size

rereading your first post directed at me, my post was not about limping strong hands UTG. it was about making smallish raises IP with speculative hands. its literally pointless. it bloats the pot while no one has a made hand, esp when you have no FE pre or post flop

If villains are calling with a similar range of hands to what we are raising (in truth we should expect that they are calling with a wider range of hands than we are raising even if we are raising sooted aces/connectors) then it's pretty much impossible for this to be -EV given that we will have the edge in initiative, position (for the most part) and skill. The variance will be higher than limping though and just because it is +EV doesn't mean it is optimal.

Things like villains limping monsters could make this -EV but in a vacuum at a limp happy table where villains play their hands face up this is +EV.

The vast majority of switching it up happens organically. I play in a regular "home" game and usually get there before the game starts, but players leave and come throughout the night.

Start short handed - LAG: We are 5 handed with only the loose-passive regulars that I can read like a book. I am playing 40/30. Many players (esp the early birds) buy in short so small pre-flop raises make the most sense.

We switch to 10 handed - NIT: We are now 10 handed. No one is stuck or up much yet and the stacks are relatively small. No one is raising much pre-flop. I start limping a lot of hands to see cheap flops (playing like a NIT).

Action gets revved up - TAG: Several players have gotten stacked and re-bought and are now aggressively trying to win their money back. A player has left and a drunk maniac sat down and is straddling to $20 every third hand. I'm no longer trying to see cheap flops because I can't. I'm trying to isolate the worst players in big pots to make their money flow my way.

Dinner break - LAG: Dinner arrives and a few players sit out to eat while others eat at the table but only play premium hands. I switch back to LAG mode to soak up all the easy money.

Preservation mode - NIT: I just won a 3 buy-in pot when I flopped bottom set and got a ton of action, but I don't want to hit-n-run. I plan to leave in an hour, but don't want to lose my profits. I mostly play against the short stacks and only play the nuts against the other big stacks.

You are right that most villains are not thinking at a meaningful level otherwise they would be able to predict my gear shifts, but instead they tend to all have different perceptions of how I play (based on what time of the night they tend to be playing and paying attention).

Villains may also not notice that I changed gears because I might be completely card dead while I'm in LAG mode and I might get a bunch of big hands in a row when I'm in NIT mode.

When I used to mostly play online poker and play six short-handed fast tables at once I had to play ABC poker. When I play live poker, I have a lot more time to analyze the table and adjust my play to maximize my +EV.

That is a mistake unless you are deep or at a really tough table. Villains at this level do not adjust properly to raise sizes.

Last session I count out $12 to bet on the flop with TPTK before adding another $5 and betting $17. The fish to my left already counted out $12 to call, but folded for the $17. He told me after the hand he was super happy I added the extra $5 to my flop bet because it made him fold TPNK.

Everyone has their different style that works for them and everyone plays in different games. I've played in 1/2 games where the pre-flop raises are typically to $20 and numerous players call pre-flop. But in the typical game I play, a $20 opening pre-flop raise gets no action. And even after 4 limps a raise to $20 from the button will often result in all folds. If a couple players do call, the third or fourth often goes all-in to steal the now $70 pot.

With a bunch of pre-flop callers though, someone is getting a decent piece of the flop. C-bet will be decent sized due to size of pot, and lots of hands just got a chance to love the flop. Sounds -EV

Depends a lot on the rake structure. If the rake is 10% of the pot up to $5, for the most part you are right (if your opponents are much more likely to make mistakes in bigger pots, it could still be better to "sweeten" the pot to bait them).

If the rake is a flat $5 like it is in most California poker rooms, You don't want to play limped pots much. A four-way limped pot will have $3 in it. If you bet $5 on the flop and everyone folds, you've now bet $7 to win $1. It does make a lot of sense to raise to $6-8 (if the table rarely 3-bets) with pocket 2s so that you are more likely to get action if you hit a set. The deeper the stacks, the more +EV it is to sweeten the pot (assuming your deep-stacked opponents are indeed proportionately more likely to stack off the larger the pot is).

Don't be stupid with C-betting.

Example #1:

Hero sweetens the pot $8 from the button with 66. 4 callers

Flop ($40): J98
4 players check. Hero?

Obviously you don't c-bet because with 4 villains and a draw heavy flop that hits most mid-range hands and is absolutely terrible for your hand you have no pot equity.

Example #2:
Hero sweetens the pot $8 from the button with 66. 2 callers

Flop ($24): 922
2 players quickly check. Hero?

Hero should bet around $12 here as a c-bet

C-betting should be done carefully. I used to keep a spreadsheet of what % chance I thought my bluffs / semi-bluffs had of working and tracked whether they worked or not and I found that I should c-bet dry flops a lot and check behind wet flops a lot. (genius realization - I know).

Good luck c betting any hand that doesn't want a call into 4+ players.

What is going on here?


Gonna try this out finally.

This thread has turned Rapini.

If you sweeten the pot then you're reducing the stack to pot ratio with a speculative hand. This is generally a bad idea.

If you're raising because it gives you a chance to steal postflop then you should raise more because then you are more likely to knock players out preflop.

There are very few occasions where pot sweenter bets are more +ev than raising full amount and reducing field.

If you think you have post flop edge. Then use it. Raise full and play post flop with smaller field.

Raising small to build pots puts you in so many bad spots.
-Harder to hand read (V ' s have wider ranges)
-less steal equity (hard to make pairs)
-higher RIO
-leads to awkward SPR's, (although that is overated in my opinion)

Take easy road. Open with full raise. Get good idea of opponents calling ranges. Play post flop with lead, and position.

If you don't have strong opponents like Paperboy who will limp raise you, sweetner bets can be a good idea with nut potential hands like suited aces. Yes you want to be in position. Yes you want to have opponents you can exploit.

As far as sizing, just stay within the 10 times and 20 times rule. For example, if it's profitable to call an opening bet with a pocket pair for 10% of the effective stack, then it's certainly profitable to sweeten the pot with a raise that's 5% of the effective stack.

I've been experimenting with small raises pre-flop from the blinds rather than IP. Say there's 7 limpers and I'm in the big blinds with pocket 6s in a $1/2 game. Lately, I've just been raising to $7 total.

Everyone ALWAYS calls an extra $5. No one is folding. My theory is that I'm raising for value. 66 is simply a better hand than the crap that 7 people limp with. With 7 limpers, people are limping with hands like Q2s, J8o, etc....complete crap.

66 is a better hand and I want to get money in the pot with a better hand. It's a value raise that doesn't mess with SPR too much.

If I don't flop a set or hit some other good flop like an OESD, it's a c/f; but I want Q2 and J8 putting as much money in pre as they can.

It's different than if someone raised to $7 and I called to setmine because people won't cold call as often with their Q2s, but they will limp-call with that crap in some games.

The above post is what people are missing with this, and this $7 raise at 1-2 has been discussed ad nauseum in the past. The reason why making it $7 into 7 limpers is not good is because 5 players will call you. So they call with q2s and the likes and you get people putting money in with the worst hand.

Great!

Now how do you expect to win the hand? The majority of the time post flop you will be bluffing with 66. Is it easier to bluff 6 people or 2? Aside from rake in flat drop games, I think it would be more beneficial to limp these hands over raise them small. The reason being that you will not often be bluffing into 6 other players post flop. Why bloat the pot up preflop when you can limp and when you do flop a set still get three streets from q2s on a q high flop. Limping and playing fit or fold >raising large to thin the field/value (which might or might not be good depending on table dynamics) >>>>> raising small and playing fit or fold with a hand like 66 (which if you're cbetting multi way as a bluff often you are spewing money)

If you're not going to bluff often, which you shouldn't in a multiway pot like 4 plus players with a hand like 66 that postflop usually has very little equity to anything they end up getting called by, then raising to 7 and missing the flop 7 out of 8 times is going to cost you a lot more money than needed.

it's probably still profitable, just not as profitable as limping behind.

Say we raise to $7 and then check/fold each of the 7 times we miss, we lose $49. The one time we hit, the pot is $7*5=35 (assume 5 callers). If we get one person to call a half pot cbet, then we've drawn even to the $49 in losses.

It's not quite so simple, because we lose sometimes even when we flop our set, but it's a good starting point for the math.

However, I'm still thinking it's better to limp behind. We minimize losses, and we can probably easily get to the same profit point by making bigger bets and getting calls from people who can't fold top pair.

I played this weekend thinking of this thread. Only had one relevant hand:

1/2 NL - $200 effective stacks

5 limpers, Hero limps on the Button with 33. SB completes and BB checks.

Flop T32

SB has T2 and we easily got it all-in on the turn (though I ended up losing).

The point is? It's not really necessary to build pots with speculative pre-flop holdings in many games as the stacks are short enough / the players loose enough to get it all-in when you hit a monster.

And interestingly enough, it's the easiest to control pot-size from the button so if anything it's when you're in the blinds and hit a monster that have the hardest time extracting value (players are also wary of the blinds and always think the button is bluffing).