Thanks for joining us. A lot of this discussion mirrors our long running thread on 1/2 opening sizes. I'd be interested in your thoughts on it if you'd care to check out that thread.

Cliffs are that a lot of very good players advocate the small opens to protect one's range, while a lot of regs argue for huge fat value raises when people will call with weak ranges.

Most of the small raise advocates don't play 1/2 (anymore), but one of them (mpethybridge) was a live 1/2 pro (I know, kinda lol, but his BR got crushed by Black Friday as it was almost all on Full Tilt). They are all players whom I respect greatly, so I'm sure I'm missing something, but I just see so much value in the larger raises and so much variance in the mega-multiway pots that small raises engender at 1/2 that I can't see it being worth it. Of course, I don't play 1/2 anymore either, but based on the posts ITF, the games don't seem to have changed that much from when I played it regularly.

I have already laid out my thoughts in my previous post and do not have the time or desire to get in a debate on this forum.

Realize though that most players who play small stakes are making many consistent mistakes. If they played well, they would build a bankroll and move up. If everyone in your games uses gigantic preflop raise sizes while everyone (especially the winners) at the higher stakes uses smaller preflop raise sizes, you should tend to assume the higher stakes players know something the smaller stakes players do not. Modeling your game after people struggling to beat $1/$2 (especially those who spend their time trying to justify why their actions are correct on an internet forum) is probably not a wise decision.

What do they know? I guess the main thing they know is, people will notice if they change their sizes and they won't often give action to someone who raises to 12x.

If the game conditions were different, I'm sure good players would adjust.

In small games, the "language" of raise sizing varies a lot, as does the best strategy.

I guess your argument is that you should use small games solely as practice for bigger games. And you should therefore not adjust to game conditions, but pretend you are in a bigger game.

That's fine. But its obviously not the optimal strategy for maximizing your wins at 1/2. Many people have other jobs, or no realistic way to get a 5/10 br. Etc.

No need to be nasty.

And what should one do on an internet forum, other than express their opinion?

What did you just do, if not spend time trying to justify your opinion on an internet forum?

The guy is applying tourney strategy to cash games. Every one is sitting on 40BBs in a tourney so nobody risks any chips PF.

In higher stakes cash games nobody raises 10x because there is less limper $. The thing is 3x opens are basically treated like limps so there are a crap ton of 3-bets. If you look at the 3-bet sizing you will see that it is strikingly close to 10x the BB.

In 1-2 a 10x or 12x raise over limpers is really similar to a 3-bet pot, except the morons at 1-2 are defending their limps with a capped range of RIO hands.

Not raising huge over limpers will cost you so much $. It would be like advising a student not to 3-bet a LAG late position open holding AKss since we don't want to play a "bloated pot" in case we whiff the flop.

Thanks for commenting Jonathan. I no longer find it weird but at first I did because of the abnormal turn bet sizing. $12 into a $35 pot on a wet board doesn't really come off as having a made hand strong enough to bet $45 on the river with. It just looks like a weird confusing line, and typically at the $1/$2 it means that $45 is a bluff off a missed draw, with the $12 turn bet suggesting a blocker bet so they won't have to check, lose initiative, and have to call a bet where they get priced out of their draw.

But all of that kind of takes a backseat when I realized what a tight passive player represents. No passive player is going to bluff a river like that, and if AJ is just a bluff catcher then its a fold.

I read Sklansky's chapter on preflop raises (pg. 101-ff) and I have to take back what I said earlier about him being a small preflop raise guy. He's a "sizing depends on multiple factors" kinda guy. In the end that's kinda how I play. If it gets to me late position with 3 limpers and I have AK, I'll raise to $15. If I get AQs UTG, I open to $6 with 50bbs, $8 with 100+bbs, 4s in late position folded around, I'm raising to $6. I get AK late position with 1 limper I raise to $10, etc.

You say you played 200 hours of 1/2 as research. Im sure you know that 200 hours isnt much at all. You also didnt tell us what your results were during that 200 hours. How do we know that YOU didnt struggle to beat it?

I can tell you that I didnt struggle to beat 1/2. I destroyed it and not 1 single time did I raise less than $12. If there was a limper my smallest raise was $15.

Lots of people playing those stakes will call $15+ with KT and A8s type hands and plenty of other garbage hands. Im sure not going to deprive them of doing what they do best which is make bad calls.

Here I’ll clean this all up for you so you don’t completely dismiss what he’s talking about...

In 2/5+ games, there is more play/deeper stacks, you want to have more opens to combat cappedness, and as such 3b+ frequencies pre and bluffing frequencies post both skyrocket. Under these conditions, your range benefits from 3x opens so that you have better maneuverability both pre and/or post. Imagine opening the same range to 5x now and how that impacts your ability to play that range well.

In 1-2 it’s quite the opposite, while it’s likely part of a sound strategy to open to $6, you can make more with your opening ranges by choosing exploitative/exploitable 4x-6x sizing because game conditions allow you to do so and make more money. Stacks are generally shallower, you can likely play fewer hands as opens and be 3b+ far less/never, get called far far more often and wider, and rarely encounter bluffing ranges post. So you are doing better making pots bigger early.

Fine with the flat call pre, vs tight passive we essentially turning our hand into a bluff when we 3b so lets flat and keep all his worse hands in.

Flop and turn fine. River is a fold.

Usually I ask myself this question in these kind of spots: 'When my opponent bets the river what hands in his range do I beat?' Cant think of very many vs this specific villian.

Pretty hard to exploit someone when 1/3 of their range is QQ-AA (15/48 combos) and we aren’t deepstacked.

Regarding the hand in general, I don’t get what is difficult...river is a trivial fold against a tight passive player. If we flatted AK this becomes a more interesting spot.

Opening less than 4-5x in the average live 1/2 or 1/3 game should lead to imprisonment for the crime of lighting money on fire. We have such a range and skill advantage there is no reason to not build a bigger pot. I would be surprised if opening to 7x is a bigger leak than opening to 3x on a weekday let alone a Friday or Saturday night.

Do not read into "tone" in a written conversation unless it is clear. I am only here posting because I want to help people who want to succeed and am not attempting to be rude at all.

At least in my opinion, is not wise to model your most of your decisions after drug addicts, alcoholics, degenerate gamblers, or struggling $1/$2 players.

I won at $40/hr over the 200 hour sample. Clearly I was running hot as I doubt that is sustainable.

You can play quite poorly and still beat players who play even worse than you.

Just because something makes a profit does not mean it is optimal.

Good luck. Have fun!

whoa, what are you a psychologist?

Looking at this hand from a purely GTO perspective I am calling that river and not worrying about it when I'm beat but i would rather min raise the turn. On the other hand this is an online game which plays completely different than live because people have incentive to fold more often pre flop. They can increase their hourly rate by adding tables and the poker sites reward them with rakeback points whether they play a hand or not, giving them further incentive to open fold worse than AJs pre flop

if this player is really playing this tight then why the hell did we call pre flop in the first place? should be a fold pre if this is our read. Stacks are not deep enough for implied odds on flushes.

This is an online game and not worth discussing. There is nothing to learn here except online low stakes regs always have it, the size of the buy-ins ties your hands, shortstackers and rakeback pros can literally steal equity from the game. Am I right?

Best advice is sit out pre

As far as live poker is concerned, I think you will have more success playing loose/aggressive vs tight/passive in the long run

another thing about this hand is pre

this can be a good 3bet spot even vs the tightest player because a tight player is never 4betting with a worse hand

the danger in 3betting with AJs is that a good aggressive player can force you to fold by 4betting a worse hand

it's a massive loss in equity whenever we give up the best hand for 6bbs, so I would tend to flat more often vs a player with a light 4bet range. If the opponent has a very tight 4bet range and 4bets worse than AJs zero%, then 3betting is actually more profitable than flatting. These players tend to just flat with hands like TT or even QQ, they will check flops to you more often, so you actually can get to showdown cheaper than above. If it's an easy laydown to a 4bet, then you should 3bet more often

just an example of why being hyper aggressive vs passive works

Most of the 1/2 players I have played with open raise to $6-$10. leaning towards the $6-$7 range. And most 1/2 players are bad.

Im not sure where your "dont listen to struggling degenerate 1/2 players" is coming from in relation to small raises. The bad players raise small and call big raises. The good players raise bigger and rarely call raises at all.

At 2/5 the raise sizes shrink a bit. At 5/10 the raise sizes shrink to more like what you are talking about, 3x-4x. Its all about raising the largest amount that the bad players will call with bad and/or dominated hands.

Haha.

I'm sure that you could crush small nl because you are so good at so many other aspects of the game in general. But to flip your argument around, you could be great at poker and win a lot in spite of making a pretty significant mistake in an unfamiliar game.

As an off again on again reader of the forum I think guys like mike and a few others have great insight into beating erratic players who make decisions based on the reasoning of recreational gamblers and whom you might never play with again. And playing with little to no worry about being exploited.

But their goal, at least for now, is to maximize wins at 2/5 and lower. You want (I think) to use those stakes as target practice and don't want to adjust to the conditions. But you can't have it both ways!

I think most people want the former. Also, building a BR at 1/2 is really hard and takes a long time unless you run good for months. So a case could be made that even if you want to move up, you'd better win as much as you can now or you'll just never get there. Then you can adjust to the new environment.

And changing your opens is a pretty easy adjustment. In fact in 1/2 you should already be doing this constantly. There are games where I think 4x is often appropriate and games where over 10x is.

One reason I'd make 8x the lowest amount (and never do 5x) is rake.

Another is that you can get away with murder by underbetting the pot, but I think you want to bet at least $10 because it's a psychological cut off.

So betting $10 into $24 will be treated the same as betting $10 into $36. But the latter slows you to do all kinds of sill stuff.

At the same time, almost nobody folds top pair or a decent draw on the flop even if you bet close to pot. So when you want to build a huge pot, you can do so easily.