Fair enough.

This sums up most of my thinking too.

And one unrelated thing. The idea that if you 3x "you might as well limp" is pretty stupid. The pot being 3x bigger is the most humongous deal. I wish people would stop using that expression.

In my experience if they're willing to go broke in a pot, they're willing to go broke in a pot regardless of how big it is.
Now ofc this changes when you get someone that knows what they're when it comes to odds, but just like not having to balance your range at 99% of llsnl games, 99% of the players have no idea about odds and don't care about the difference of $10 in pre or $25 in pre.

I think the 99% claims are a bit sensationalized. I think most players think bout the game to some extent, but how they think about it is another story.

Well obviously they are thinking about the game to some extent ^_^
My point being was that opening 3x really makes no difference to the average llsnl'er (which is where we make the vast majority of our money). They are just as willing to go broke on a K37 board with KQ in a $10 pot as they are if it were raised to $6 pre $30 in pot.

I'm not saying it's wrong, but what is the point of bloating the pot by just raising to 3x?


On topic; I don't see why it would ever be bad to raise more pre when they are calling with worse. Pre-flop is definitely the fish's strongest street imo, but that doesn't mean they don't still make mistakes. If they are willing to call 15-20 pre with stupid hands like KJ QJ etc why not bet your premiums stronger. There might be a player at the table that notices it, but who cares, that's not who our sights are on.

Firstly, even with the ability to overbet the pot, getting 100bb from opponents is definitely easier if there is 30 in the pot rather than 10. Suggesting otherwise seems ridiculous if you look at pot size if we take a pot/pot/pot line.

Also because there are lots of occasions where people are not stacking off but there pre flop ranges are sooooooo weak that we are bloating a pot pre that we are going to win at a later point more often than our villains. Bloated pot = bigger wins.

So are we talking about 3x when we have weaker holdings or when we have premiums? Or both?

I had not heard anybody say this before. I didn't realize this school of thought existed.

The case for raising 3x is pretty simple. The main reason "you may as well limp" is wrong, is because in limping, you do not gain the initiative; in raising to 3x, you do, just as if you had raised 8x. In addition, you are making a fairly minimal investment in a wide range of hands that benefit from being played with a high stack to pot ratio. Meanwhile, the 3x bet sizing does serve to create a situation in which it is easier to build a big pot on those occasions where you flop big.

That's the outline of the case for it. 3x is premised on wanting, for whatever reason, to keep the pot small at the outset--usually because our range is wide and weak and we are usually bluffing, but it also makes sense when you are deep holding a reverse implied odds hand, such as a premium.

I want to play big pots with these weak players ESP when they have a wrose hand. Position is nice, but its not like where playing against online wizards. I also disagree that 3xing it means you have inaitiative. yeah you said, but only to six bucks, which most likely the whole table called.

Just for the sake of the discussion, let's assume we're playing at a table where balancing IS necessary. Let's say also as an example that your range is composed of 50% premiums and 50% medium-strength hands from EP.

I don't understand why the above percentage would be inadequate. As far as villains are concerned, they only need to see that medium-strength hand once for it to be "in your range" in their eyes. So if you end up at showdown just once in a session with one of these hands, that should be plenty of protection from keen observers, no?

To each their own I suppose.
Personally in the games I play there is no situation where I would raise to $6 pre. I'm either raising to 15+ with premiums or overlimping-calling with small pp's and sc's in LP. For the fact that that $6 makes no difference than $2 to the players in my player pool. The thing for me is that I raise to 6 get 5 callers and the flop is 932r I have 99 I bet $20 into 30, I will get the same amount of callers if I bet $20 into a pot of $10 where it was limped 5 ways. If stacks are getting in, they are getting in. An extra $20 pre isn't going to help me. But again this may be just specific to my game (I feel like it's pretty soft) as they never pay attention to pot size.

I would actually go to my game and test the smaller 3x raise size out and report back to you all... But I already know what will happen and it will be a waste of time - "Oh he has a small pp and he's just trying to juice the pot up.. I'm calling here with my 74s because I'm going to stack him." And as V1 calls so does V2,3,4,5,6,7.

My game is not the same game as Mpethy's and his game is not the same game as Fold4Once and his game is not the same as... etc etc etc...

I honestly feel that if Mpethy were to take a visit to my room his raise sizes would increase and his ranges would be tighter... by how much I don't know (and maybe I could be wrong about this, but I don't think I am). And sure enough if I were sitting at the tables that Mpethy was describing my raise sizes would decrease and my ranges would become wider.

I think I've played just about every type of .05/.10, .10/.25, .25/.50, .50/1, 1/2, and 2/5 table you can think of. I've played in 1/2 and 2/5 games where mississippi straddles of $50-$500 were not uncommon (and the straddle would get called in 4 spots!!) and I've also seen the nut barring noon old man social security games.

In the end.... The only correct answer is..... It depends on table dynamics. Both situations are warranted. One is more proper and more in line with the hiearchy of poker knowledge/thinking/reasoning or w/e, but it doesn't mean it is the absolute 100% only way to play every table. Some days we balance and some days we sit around waiting for the nuts and get paid.

not really knowing the exact particulars and just staying on the surface with answers here that I would say that we should keep in mind these considerations...

Charge as much pre as the market will bear with worse.

Be as far out of line with bet sizing as long as nobody cares or notices, although most games this isnt of great importance.

Keep the villain stack size in mind as if we do not have a made pair, then the exact point of commitment in villains mind will be critical and we do not want to cross it unless we want to get called down.

I think it prudent to extract the most preflop though since that is where a lot of blind gamble is derived from (the villain), In doing so though, a player must be adept at underbetting in order not to cross that threshold of commitment.

I won't disagree, because I don't know what the dynamics are in the game you are playing.

But the case for smaller raise sizes amounts to our post flop skill. So my initial reaction to the games you are describing is that I would decrease my raise size and open waaaay up on my range.

If I could get away with raising to $16 with AQ+ and JJ+ while raising the next 30% of hands to $6, of course, I would do it. But just like you said in a part I snipped out, if I do that they will essentially be right when they look at $6 and say, "oh, he's just juicing it with a small pocket pair..." So I'll accept smaller profits with the premiums in exchange for making a small profit with the 15 or 20% of my range that I will be playing in that game that I wouldn't play in a game that more correctly exploited LAg play. So in the game you describe, basically my strategy would be to raise roughly the top third of hands (position dependent, obv) and I'd be raising to $6, 7 and $8, and when I did $8 I'd usually have a hand that flops top pair, and when I did $6 I'd usually have a high implied odds hand, and when I did $7 I would usually have a hand that can be either of those (QJs, A9s, 99, TT).

I wasn't disagreeing, I meant what I said: I'm not sure 10-15% would be sufficient camouflage.

But you pegged the issue, and the remainder is just an exercise in combination counting now.

Using your numbers, if our range is 50% premiums and 50% medium strength hands then that means:

AQ: 16 combos
AK: 16 combos
JJ-AA 24 combos

Total 56 combos

_____________

66-TT: 30 combos
AJs, KQs, KJs, JTs, T9s, 87s: 24 combos

close enough to 50/50

Let's say that is our EP range that we will open with from UTG and UTG+1--above the line we will raise to $16 90% of the time, and below the line we will open to $8 90%, and the other 10% of the time we will reverse and open the premium for $8 and the medium to $16.

We have 104 combos, 8.3% of all starting hands, in our EP range.

If we play an 8 hour session at 30 hands per hour, we will play a total of 240 hands in the session, 48 of them from UTG and UTG +1. We will fold (or limp) 91.7% of those hands, which is 44 of the 48. So in an 8 hour session, we can expect to raise 4 times from UTG and UTG+1. 2 of those hands will be premiums, 2 will be medium strength. That means, in order to balance within a session, the minimum balancing frequency is 50%.

This was the analysis I hadn't done when I said I wasn't sure that 10-15% was enough camouflage. It isn't. At a 10% balancing frequency, we'd only make a balancing raise every several days, which is useless at live low stakes.

Thanks mpethy for the thorough analysis. Gives me something to think about.

Amazing analysis, like your saying words I have to reread twice, I just noted your whole post thanks man. That's really some "deep shiyt".

FWIW I basically play $2/5 for a living now, and occasionally I play a bit of $1/2 when waiting for the $2/5 to open up.

I ruthlessly exploit people who vary their pre-flop raises depending on hand strength, so I play in a way that makes it difficult for others to do the same to me. Granted, I basically never play against someone who I actually consider "good," but most casual players nowadays have a bare minimum understanding of poker concepts that they didn't have 5-7 years ago. By utilising a more GTO approach to pre-flop play I make things simpler for myself.

For those of you who don't know him, it's my pleasure to vouch for sabr42. He has been a topnotch poster and player in small stakes full ring for a number of years. I learned a lot from his posts in ssfr. We're very fortunate to have him posting in this forum.

Assume 100BB max buyin and loose multiway games.

It seems in a lot of threads there is conflicting views on preflop raise sizing in described above games.

Most seem to advocate raising enough to try and get it headsup, three or at most fourway ($15-25) and if it dosent work go from there. This usually creates small SPR's even headsup and relatively simple decisions postflop but bloated pots. This has been my style.

Some advise to raise smaller to $10 or $12 even with unsuited bigs and large pocket pairs knowing that it very possibly will be 5 or 6 ways to the flop.

I realize that putting 10% of effective in pre can lead to you having to commit early in the hand when you still have no idea where you are at. However, aren't you faced with the same challenges if you are not able to reduce the field?

I can understand it if most of the field is deep or if the game is only seeing 2-3 to the flop. I also like smaller raises with suited bigs. But in most of these live small stakes games I don't see how playing hands that most likely will make a TPTK or overpair type hand can be played well against the donkey train.

I would love to hear from the folks who have been advising smaller preflop raises on their post flop plans and general stategy's.

I don't play online, so correct me if I'm wrong, but online the standard raises are supposed to be somewhere around 3-4BB, right? This, of course, is based on sound principles, so it doesn't really change from table to table. The reason I point this out is you won't get wide fluctuations from table to table because most people online have at least a basic understanding of what a good opening size should be.

What the "standard" open live games vary WIDELY, even from table to table within the same casino. This past week at Wynn, I've been at 1/3 tables where the standard was 12-15 (4-5BB), and also where it was 20-25 (7-8BB).

The reason I mention this is that, in my opinion, at these stakes, whatever the "established" open at THAT TABLE is, the players pretty much stick to that area like lemmings. I'll see the same players be at a table where the "established" open is only 3BB, and then the next day the same guys are at a table where it's 9BB, and they, like little Lemmings, follow along.

Unfortunately, I've found that this means that I have to base my open around what the table considers "normal". Once I figure out the established open, then the question becomes, in this spot, do I want to go a little under or a little over? And sadly, this ALSO depends on table dynamics, because I've noticed that a sizeable chunk of live players respond to a bigger pre-flop raise than the "established one" by convincing themselves the player making the bet is bluffing because why else would he raise so much (so the correct think to do is flat with a marginal hand like KJo, of course) and there's also a sizeable chunk of players who arrive at the entirely opposite conclusion. Finally, there's a chunk of players who, once they've limped, aren't going to fold to pretty much any non-ridiciulous open, so even if you open to $20 at 1/2, some players are going to call. Get a table with this last category of playersd and no matter what you bet, you're likely getting called in 5 spots.

So long story short, I really think "it depends". Figure out what the "established" open is, and IMO, it's usually pretty clear what it is at that table that day, and also figure out how the players react to less than normal and more than normal opens (if they react differently at all). Once those facts are established, then bet appropriately based on whether you really want to make sure it gets to heads-up, or whether you're willing to risk (or you want) a 5-way pot.

Also, remember that most low-stakes live players don't think about bets in terms of BB or in terms of relative to the pot, but rather in terms of absolute dollars. The reason this matters for pre-flop raising is that if you decide to go larger/smaller than the established open, how much more/less has to be based on $, not on BB. If the established open is $14 at the 1/2 table that day, and most of the players are folding to bets bigger than that, if you've got AK and want to get it heads up by betting a size that the table will perceive as larger than normal, betting $18 probably won't do that - has to be more like $22.

Now a side question that's still relevant to the topic - if the established open at the table is an amount you don't like, and you want to see if you can change it by just consistenly being the guy who opens pre-flop and controls the action so that your number becomes the new standard - whether it's worth increasing the aggro to 11 neccessary to overcome the inertia of whatever number is already in their heads by repeating betting a different size until your size becomes accepted.

I open big becuase at 1/2 they don't respect my raises. I'm thinking abou moving up just because of this :P.

But I do open big because it sucks having to go multi-way, you basically have to make your hand, and even then you have to deal with way too much crap. Then again, I suck at multi-way, if you're good at dealing with 5-6 people in a pot, then its probably to your advantage to let them since you'll get better odds, so you win less, but win more when you do.

The rule of thumb is to raise 4xBB+1BB per limper, but this is trumped by your understanding of table dynamics. Know why you are betting. Know what you want your bet to accomplish. And size accordingly based on reads of villains PF tendencies. If you can't do this, do to lack of reads/attentiveness, revert to rule of thumb.

Your starting hand should have no effect on your raise size.

I've found in the 1/2 games I play in that a pot sized raise gets a lot of respect from LP, especially when there are a lot of limpers involved or 3/4 callers. I've been utilizing the live pot button with some pretty good respect. Helps create some randomness in the pre-flop raises (it's rare at a 1/2 table that someone knows what the term "potting it" means and can pick up on it) and generally makes for a reasonable, respected raise size.