1/3 NLHE, $10 straddle UTG.
$260 effective stack size for players in hand-(hero has $260), except for the LP player with $130eff.
7-handed

Straddler: bad LAG
Straddles $10 pf.

Older gentleman, usually TP although may attack weakness occasionally, will limp call most hands.
Calls $10 from EP.

Older gentleman, LP, will often commit with any piece of a board, low requirements to stack off, will limp call most of his range.
Calls $10 from MP.

Hero: learning player, bad LAG, Raises to $30 pf, KQ (when asked why, he said his reason: "that was what people were standard raising to pre-flop"

Straddle: folds
TP, EP: Calls $30
LP, MP: Calls $30

3 to the flop.
TP and Hero have $230
LP has $100
Pot: $97
Flop is Q T 7

TP, EP: ch's
LP, MP: ch's
HERO, BTN: Bets $40

TP, EP: Raises to $100
LP, MP: Calls $100 all-in
HERO, BTN: Shoves All-in $230.

TP, EP: Folds

Questions:
How do we think about the hand from Hero's point of view, does he have 87bb or 26bb?

What factors should we be considering when raising pre-flop with KQo?

How is our Pre-flop Raise sizing?

Notes: Hero is learning to short stack, please offer help with current stack size. If addressing larger stack sizes please note when.

Thank you for your help!

PF raise size is too small. You have the straddler and 2 limpers in, $30 does nothing to put either limper to a decision. You are giving them better than 3-1 on a call. I'd make it more like $45-50 putting them to a tougher decision.

OTF with TPGK you are only betting 40% of the pot, giving any draws a good price to stay in. $50-60 is a better number.

As far as how many BBs you have, that's not really the point in a cash game. Try and think in terms of pot size instead of number of blinds.

I'd raise PF to $50. As played, I'd bet $60 on the flop.

You shouldn't act like you only have 26 BB when both you and an opponent both have much more than that.

The straddle makes it 26BB more or less. It isn't exactly the same because there is less dead money then 5/10 and 1 more blind to act but close enough. Just remember to adjust on a hand by hand basis depending on the straddle being in play or not and keep in mind your opponents will often not be adjusting to it. Depending on the percentage of hands straddled you should also adjust your preflop range to avoid marginal hands when the straddle is in play.

Preflop sizing isn't enough with limpers in front. Given short effective stack and multiple limpers, this should probably be a fold. You need to go at least $40 and probably more with loose limpers. That is too much of your stack for KQo.

Flop bet is too small. Your multiway and the board allows for a lot of straight draws. Go $60/$70. Post flop SPR is the important thing no matter what the blinds are. With an SPR barely over 2 and top pair your committed. Bet flop/shove turn.

Pre is not too bad, but should be a little more given # of callers. I think you have to figure out what raise sizing is typical when the straddle is 3x bb then when there are multiple callers in front add some. So if typical is $30, $35 might be better here.

Flop bet is too small with one caveat. If shorty wasnt in the hand I would make it $60-$70 here. With shorty in the hand you should have sized your bet to half his stack to squeeze V1 if shorty shoves. As played, V1 took care of that for you. Nothing to do but overshove and hold on.

With the huge $10 straddle on, we are only playing with a 26bb stack (so extremely shortstacked), although not all the other players at the table will think of their "medium" $260 stack that way (i.e. if we happen to get it in versus someone, they probably have a strong hand to get in $260 rather than a wide range to get in a mere 26bbs).

Anyhoo, with $30 of dead money in the pot, I'm probably willing to get my stack in here, although KQo is admittedly probably the nut low of my range for doing this. My plan would be to raise an amount where I leave myself a PSB shove for any flop (unless it's a flop that I'm cool with slowplaying). So I'd raise to $80, which will create a HU PSB shove for the flop. The "big" $80 raise should often take down the $30 preflop by folding out Ax hands / small pairs, and any sticky hands of this type that see a flop will often be raised out when I shove the flop (plus I have a backup plan of actuallying hitting one of my overcards if called).

ETA: Preflop also depends on what position we are in. If we were in EP, I'm guessing there's nothing wrong with just folding preflop with this hand (which is, again, at the bottom of my range for wanting to get stacks in). But in LP with no one showing any real interest in the pot, I'm willing to go with it.

ETA#2: I think other responses are more concerned with some sorta recipe for making an "appropriate" raise size when really we should be thinking what we are attempting to accomplish. With just K high, I'm pretty much trying to exercise my FE both preflop and on the flop where I'm cool with taking down the pot at any point (since there is a good chance we're up against a better A high / small pair). The best way to do that, imo, is to setup a PSB for the flop, which will be seen as both a reasonable bet but also a huge one, where we can get these better hands to fold. Raising to like $50 or whatever ain't great, in that it will setup a $120 HU pot with $210 left, so then what? We cbet $80 hoping for the best and then leave ourselves in a $280 pot with just $130 left on the turn? With stacks this relatively small, we have to set things up to get it all in by the flop, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I was obviously too tired when I posted here. I was wondering how the OP came up with 26 BB. Duh, there was a straddle.

OP just forget what I wrote earlier when I said you had much more than 26 BB. You don't, and you are pretty much playing with 26 BB.

26bb. Postflop you should probably shift your view to SPR (what size the effective stacks are in relation to the pot)

Our image, our position, the straddler's 3 bet range, the limp/reraise tendencies in straddled pots of V1 and V2 and our plan for if/when the shorty shoves preflop over your raise.

Poor. With a $260 stack, I have no problem picking up $34 in dead money with KQo. I do have a problem with a 4 way pot for $120 and me having $230 behind. My standard opening raise on a $10 straddle would be $30 and I would then add $10 per limper. This would get tweaked up or down depending on how loose the straddler and players behind me are.

As I mentioned earlier, postflop you should be less concerned with how many BBs you've put in the pot and more concerned with how the effective stacks compare to the pot size. When we get to the flop the pot is $100 and we have an SPR of 2.3 for V1 and 1.0 for V2. Once we get a ratio down around 2, it's unlikely we're folding top pair 2nd kicker. I'd like to see a larger flop bet, however. $60 is reasonable, though you should plan ahead and bet half of V2's stack so you can shove over V1's call if V2 shoves the flop. That's a somewhat minor point since we're never folding anyway. Hope this helps.

you suggest 5 dollars for 2 limpers (2.50 per limper)? thats a ridiculously small amount.

it should be 10 dollars PER limper.

also 30 is too small even without any limers, typical sizing should be 5x straddle, so 50.

plus 20 for each limper, 70-80. And as goobledygeek mentioned this leaves us easy PSB cbet shoves on all flops.

Let's not get carried away with the straddle effect here. We're still playing 1-3 NL. A $70 raise over two $10 limpers will serve only to isolate us against better hands and get no value from hands worse than ours. $50 is more than sufficient.

You have to realize psychology of the other players here. This is a 1/3 game, not a 5/10 game. So you have to blend normal tactics (bb/limper) with the mentality of the players playing the game. If you make this $50 or more pre you are truly only getting calls from better. If the game is a mandatory $10 straddle and is essentially a 1/3/10 game anyway, then you would be correct.

As I say, $50 just leaves us in a weird spot on the flop where we will often see a turn. We should never be seeing a turn just 26bbs deep, imo.

And yes, raising to $70 will often leave us up against better hands if anyone calls (are there really that many worse hands than KQ that will call a raise to begin with, which is why it is my nut low raising hand here). But we can often fold those better hands with our flop PSB shove if we whiff. Ace high or a small pocket pair is going to have a hard time continuing both preflop and flop.

GimoG

My concern with a $70 raise is that we're setting up a great PSB shove into a hand that has us crushed. Then again, the opponents we're seeing at 1/3 aren't exactly going to be able to see that we're setting this up and take advantage of us by smooth calling big hands preflop.

I still prefer sizing our raise pre so we can get action from worse and SPR be damned. There, I said it.

OP, first try to top off your stack to max BI if you can. Second, when the straddle is on, it effectively cuts the stack sizes in half, to which you should be adjusting your opening range.

As far as your pre flop sizing, I would generally consider a 3-3.5x open then add X for each limper. So your raise size should in the neighborhood of 50-65. I don't believe we have to go more than that. I agree with GG that you should be thinking about the flop with the
understanding that your stack size is awkward.


As played, your flop bet is undersized, but in reality not by too much. I think you can size to about 50-55.

He has neither 87bb nor 26bb, he has $260. This is a very important distinction in live poker. In live poker players are not thinking about big blinds and percentages of a pot, they are thinking about absolute dollar amounts. This is because people generally play at stakes that excite them or where they feel they belong rather than stakes they are beyond a shadow of a doubt rolled for.

That said, where big blinds and percentages of pot do come in are spots where villains can easily figure out that it's OK to just get their stack in.


When raising preflop you should have a goal and your sizing should help with that goal. For example you may want to be sure you are called by a particular player. Or you may want to be sure a particular player folds. In a straddled pot that has been called by a few players, just taking the pot down is profitable. So you want to size it in a way where you have a chance of just winning it outright, or at least narrowing it down to one caller that you can then profitably bluff on a lot of boards (Or just getting it in preflop against the shortstack -- you may not be ahead but it should be profitable with the dead money in the middle.) You will see a lot of people suggest 3x+callers in these spots because that sizing accomplishes that. I would raise to $55 here. All $30 accomplishes is making the pot larger because nobody else is going to fold, and then with the remaining stacks you aren't going to be able to do anything except get it in when you hit and fold when you don't. KQo doesn't have great equity against 4 limp-callers. It may not be -EV but it's nowhere near as profitable as having a chance to win the dead money outright and, if not, having a chance to take the pot postflop.