I don't know how not to turn this into an e-peen contest, but I guess it is what it is. He asked me to make a thread to see what the respected members of the forum say... So here goes...

In the hand that was being discussed the hero raised to $16 with AQ OOP which got called by A5s. A couple of people said not to raise so much and I disagree with that. If we are getting called by worse hands in a weak game then by all means lets raise big and get some money into the pot. Raise AA the same amount.

Another member suggested it to be a bad idea and that his standard line would be to raise $11. I have some issues with that. First of all if you have a standard way of doing things then that tells me you are not playing the dynamics of the table, or you are auto-piloting. I have used the word before, but in more simplistic ways such as you are in a tourney and you have 4BB's left and you are UTG with AK... Shove - Standard. (w/e though, meh). What I am getting at is be careful with how you use the word. Honestly if you can avoid it then do so.

Whenever I play, the first thing I do is get a read on the whole table by watching the open raise sizes. It will tell you a ton. It will help you adjust to the game. At times you can even manipulate it and turn it into your favor.

Anyways... here is the thread... http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17.../#post31165188

The main question is if you are OOP with a premium type hand and people are calling raises light... Do you keep it small or do you charge more? (We've had this discussion many times in this forum and many times when LLSNL was apart of the Small Stakes community which is comprised mainly of OL. This is more so to start a discussion for the newer guys I guess.)

I would generally think to charge more. I have found that 5x + an extra bet for every limper works pretty effectively for me, but there have been times where certain tables dictated a need to charge more.

Charge more, especially if they are fit or fold. The key to huge winrates at llsnl is how much you can raise pf.

In this hand, not only did A5 call the UTG preflop raise, but there was another caller who mucked later without showing. So two callers to this "too big" preflop raise, one of them, at least, a very light call. I think it is clearly obvious, just from that info, that the dynamics of this table dictated a larger preflop raise than just 11 bucks.

Standard PFR sizes are nice comfy things to be able to fall back on, but in the long run I think it's much more profitable to choose your raise based on a variety of factors (target SPR comes to mind).

One huge factor to consider is how the table is playing, i.e. how high you can raise and still get calls from worse.

Not only that, AQ is a hand that can be vulnerable multiway OOP post flop so you should raise the highest amount that will be likely to get you heads up. At my 1/2 game, a $16 PFR can get called by 3-4 players easily depending on who is at the table. If you're going to raise on the small side (say a "standard" 3BB PFR with 100 BB eff. stacks) with AQ UTG or UTG+1, you might as well just be limping it.

Hate to agree with APD, but there it is.

Ahhhh. Here is the rub. The answer is not simply "will they call more with weaker hands preflop?" The answer lies in "how skilled are you postflop vs. those that are calling?" And "how willing are these players to gamble it up?" Relative position to specific opponents is also critical.

For this reason there is no universal answer here.

I am with the charge more argument. The more money you can get in preflop the less money the effective stack sizes will be and the less an advantage being in position will be.

You're spot on APD. Not raising the maximum is criminal. If they call with dominated ranges vs our open there is no reason not to bet big just for fear of they may out flop us.

There was a session a couple weeks ago where a drunk gangster was raising 80% of hands with a 800bb stack. He NEVER folded to a 3bet, ever.

I had QJ

1/2 - raise sizes can be all over the map
2/5 - i am a bit more consistent 20-30 opens
5/10 - 30-50 (50-90 if lots of limpers or if its limped and i want to pop out of the blinds to take the dead money)

10/20 - 60-100 opens

overall, the point is that I will vary raise sizes to accomplish what I want to accomplish. I am almost never exploited for it. The raise ranges tend to be a bit smaller at the higher stakes since most people there have at lease a vague clue. 1/2 is like a wild zoo so anything goes and raising from 3BB-20BB is normal.

I tend to raise small preflop , but that is because i like playing flops, even if its against multiple people. those that like to raise big preflop , are usually the ones who will fold if the board gets too dangerous, so i will call if im in position or deep.

For argument sake we are discussing 1/2 here. When you play 5/10+ raise sizes get to be a little more 3x-5x'ish.

1/2 i generally raise between $10-$15 pre.

It does not just depend how the game plays preflop, it also depends heavily on how the game plays post flop...

In todays 1-2 games players are supper loose pre flop but play much bettor post, (well some what better post) not going broke with top pair no kicker.

Calling preflop with A6s or something and then folding to a bet on the flop (or at least the turn) on an A high saying I had kicker problems is the new fishy sheik...

If your game has players who will pay off and are passive, with top pair bad kicker then SPR does not matter get as much money in pre.

Its much more common to fine bad players (at least in my games) who are very loose pre, and somewhat loose post, but not totally...here SPR becomes king....if you think its going to go multi way, those 4 to 6 spr are killer with tptk type hands, try to avoid them, aim for less then 3 or greater then 7 to make life easy for you.

If you can't, consider limp raising, or even just folding AQ utg (I've never gone to that extreme but is theoretically correct in a game loose pre and aggressive post).

keep in mind if a player is calling a bet for less then 5% of his stack (and has position) he is not making a big mistake, and if you make mistakes by staking off post flop too him with your top pair hand his small mistake may become profitable.

If they are putting in more then 10% of there stacks pre flop with crap, they are making a huge mistake and no amount of skill or position will allow them to overcome this...

Thats why if you come to a table with huge stacks, thats seems to be player super loose pre flop, its time to play 60 bb stacks ... Make your big per flop raises (with your tight range), and crush the game...(at least untill you win the first big pot)

And defiantly at 1-2, don't go to a default raise size (or even the table default), you just giving away money...

With regard to pre-flop raise sizing I think many people put to much pressure on their own hand with large raises. What would you guys say, I am thinking that when you are first to enter the pot, between taking it down uncontested, taking it down with a c-bet, and actually having the best hand we probably win 55-60% of our pre-flop raised hands. That being said-this number (55-60%) dictates our raise size.

Lets say we have AKo we are first one to act, it goes without saying that we are raising. There are $5 in the pot sb, BB, and our 2 dollar call if we raise 3x for a total of 6 the pot is laying us 5-4. No problem. 45%. Now when we start raiseing beyond 5x+1 I think we run into a situation where we do not win enough for it to be profitable. At that point we simply have to win to much a percentage of the time to be profiable. When this happens I slow down with the raiseing and try to win with post flop skills.

Now some of you will say that I win 85% of the time by raising to 12x. I am sure you do but how much value are you losing? Your chasing out all but the strongest hands, we do want some callers. Callers our profit.


Just my humble opinion but it has worked and continues to work. I am sure there are many who will disagree but think about it a little bit before you call me an idiot.

Fundamental Theorem of Poker. If I knew you would call a shove with A5, I open AQ with a shove. Duh.

preflop sizing depending on table. I have raised to $30 outta the BB following limps before with AQo at 1/2, it just really depends.

No. Personally I think AQo is closer to a trouble hand than a premium hand. But just let me start a counter argument by posing the question as it was argued on the original thread: Given the fact that villains at a 1-2nl table (approximately 140BB deep in the thread that started this discussion) will call you with worse starting hands, is it optimal to raise excessively from UTG with AQ? (I recommended an $11 raise while APD supported raising to $16 PF, APD went on to say that he recommends raising as much as players will still call you with worse.)

APD, this is how I understood the discussion and I'm gonna let you chime in before I spend time arguing a point when we don't have a clear premise.

Honestly Quesuerte said it best, "Against poor villains hand strength is AT least as valuable. As I've said in other threads, I've never seen somebody get awarded a pot at showdown by flipping over the button. Obv I'd rather have both but I'd take playing big pots (or inflated as some people insist on calling them) against weak players with good cards every single hand even if I had to play OOP for all of them."

But yes raise as much as worse hand are going to call you with. If you know that A5s is going to call a $100 bet pre flop and you have AQo and are OOP... You raise to $100. Let me ask you this. Are you making the same $11 raise with AA from UTG? Generally a $10-$11 bet is getting called by 3-5 (maybe more) people. That equates to $44-$66 in the pot pre. We raise to 16 and get called by 2-3 we are playing the same pot but we thinned the herd. You are correct on Position Position Position but incorrect with how you would use it in this spot and honestly a lot of players make this mistake. Many people know the raise Yx and add a BB for every limper, but what they forget to do, when they are out of position, is to add that factor into the equation in relation to raise sizes. The extra money we make is going to make up for the position we are playing from. It used to be OL guys would "LOL live players" for making such ridiculous pre flop raise sizes.. Black friday came and then they found out why we do that. It turned into "LOL live players actually calling those raise sizes and the hands they are calling with."

I hate to break it to you, but the online guys are still laughing. The reason is because "make giant raises with premiums in EP" as a strategy is fundamentally flawed. It unavoidably suffers from one of the following defects:

1. It exposes your hand strength as a premium unless you also make giant raises with the medium strength hands in your EP raising range.

2. If you make giant raises with medium strength hands, you are giving back the theoretical additional profit you can make by raising big with premiums.

3. If you remove the medium strength hands from your EP raising range, you lose the profits you could have realized from those hands derived from playing them in correctly sized pots.

4. If you remove the medium strength hands from your EP raising range, you have again exposed your hand as a premium.

In other words, if you are raising big with your premiums, you are doing something else wrong that offsets, or nearly offsets, or maybe even more than offsets the additional theoretical profit you make by raising bigger with the premiums.

Some of you will argue that the big raise does not expose your hand strength, that you can vary your bet size with hand strength because of how oblivious your opponents are. In the normal game conditions I play in, this is simply not true even at 1/2. That said, I cannot, obviously, speak to game conditions elsewhere. But it seems to me that the tourists I play against in Vegas are the same sort of players you guys are playing against in your hometown casinos. So you can say, "I can vary my raise sizes with my hand strength without the fish realizing what I am doing," and I will go on not believing it.

Mpethy you make some good points but I'm not sure what you're advocating one does with EP premiums? Are you in the "standard 3x-5x open" camp, or is there another solution?

What about using a 10-15% balancing play for both our medium strength hands and our premiums (limping, minraising, 3xBB w/premiums sometimes & big raises with medium strength hand sometimes)? Isn't that enough of a balance to allow us to make the more profitable play 90% of the time?

Mpethy- I think this is where a lot of this forum struggles. We say villains arent thinkers, then we give them credit for thinking. We say balance doesnt matter but then we try to balance. Maybe the game in Vegas has changed so much that where you play your thoughts hold true. Where I play it varies, but most Villains dont care that you've only raised with AA in the last 6 hours... They are still calling your pre flop raise. Even when I am in Vegas I play at tables like that. IMO your advice is more relevant in the higher stakes or at tougher 1/2 tables. If we are supposed to be folding J10 UTG because we are supposedly TAG then the balancing act doesnt matter, we "balance" IP. Our hand is face up anyways. I also believe that you can vary your bet sizes. In this example we are talking about $11 and $16 not $8 and $24 . That is such a negligible amount that the only thing a V will likely remember is that we have raised before, not how much we raised. Will there be some V's on the table that can recall opening raise sizes... sure, but probably only if you've raised only once in the last hour and showed something premium.

As far as the OL guys lol'ing. I have seen a lot of people on the forum have a change of heart. They may still think its funny that raise sizes are that big, but they understand the value in it.

To answer the question though - If you were sitting at a table and you had AQ in ep and you knew the table was weak and they would call big raises with dominated hands, what would your opening raise size be?

I might be stupid for doing this but I like to make things easy for myself. If I decide to raise its always 4x + 1BB for each limper no matter what I am holding. I don't have to worry about balancing my raise sizes based on hand strength.

I feel that if you make your default raise size too large it forces you to play tighter. Again, just my opinion on the topic.

What I am advocating is that it is pretty effing ridiculous to ask the question "what do I do with premiums in EP," without also talking about what we do with the remainder of our raising range. The two things are inextricably linked unless we are happy disclosing our hand strength.

As for balancing, I'm not sure a 10-15% frequency would be enough camouflage for our premiums. This would depend on the proportion of premiums to medium strength hands in your raising range. So again, we are down to talking about the exact composition of your range before we can even begin to intelligently discuss optimum bet size.

The reason I am not arguing for a standard raising strategy is because I vary my EP raising strategy depending on the exact table composition.

I have played exactly one session this year in which I was confident that "raise big with premiums" was the optimal strategy for the table. Most of the rest of the time I am

4 or 5 sessions ago I was playing a session at the MGM when a good thinking player to my left got into a hand with the worst player at my table. The guy was there just hanging out with a friend. The friend was literally teaching the terrible player what beats what in between hands. OK? This guy had never played poker before.

So the good thinking player and the beginner get into a hand against each other, the flop comes jack high, and by the river the beginner has some nutty but not nutted hand--middle set or something. The good player tank shoves the river, and the beginner tanks for maybe two minutes and then calls.

It was a standard cooler, with the good player having something like bottom set, and the beginner having middle. something like that. I don't recall the hand very well, because I was flabbergasted by what happened next. The good player thought he had been slow rolled, and said so. After having a slow roll explained to him, the beginner denied that it was a slow roll and said," no I was thinking about folding. You could have had three jacks. But in the end I decided you couldn't have three jacks because twenty minutes ago you raised to $7 with a pocket pair of jacks, and this time you only raised to $6."

Ok so that proves to me that there are players who can recall recent raise sizes... what it doesn't prove however is that they can interpret it correctly. In fact I think this example shows that you can vary your raise sizes and actually manipulate them if V's are actually thinking that a $ difference is the difference between top and bottom set.

BTW... I could imagine being here watching and listening to all this.. I lol'd