You're assuming we don't hit. You're also assuming we don't hit turn. You're also assuming they either hit flop hard enough to call and/or are into floating and stealing. A lot has to go right for them to take chunks from us. I've tried the small ball strategy and I get it. Don't put a ton in until you hit vs. bad players. I've just found that it's wasting money for the majority of times when they don't hit anything at all and in her whatever they put in to see if they did. Also, a bigger raise makes it much easier to get all of it when I want to. And that's the bread and butter of the games were describing. I want that pot to be $30-50 on the flop when I have aces. That's easier to do if I've been raising other value hands to those amounts previously.

your talking aces, the post is talking ace king. big difference in strategies from oop.

plus with some limping you also get to see how the action unravels and many times can make more with a limp reraise the size of your choice.

not saying it is always correct but many times it is.

I guess we just disagree. I view AK as a value hand preflop. I mean I've been playing relatively high variance style with a big preflop raise for a while and I think my flop play is able to keep me out of trouble with it. That may not be the case for everyone. I'm of the opinion that to make the most sometimes you have to start building pots before you flop well.

Getting into a debate with RayZee is enough for me. I don't care who wins.


Maybe we're both not wrong.

I think Ray's argument has a lot of merit in todays game. If we raise big from early position and hit an A or K on the flop, our opponents aren't paying us off, so they get to play perfectly against us. If we raise smaller, we can get a lot more calls from hands like Ax, that we may be able to get two streets of value post-flop from weak opponents. Plus, we lose a lot less for all the times we c/f the flop.

Playing in big pots OOP with a hand that needs to hit a flop isn't really a great strategy for beating NL holdem.

They're still calling with Ax in my games. It's not until you get into 8-10bb territory that they start to tighten up and sometimes not even then. So, your two streets against Ax are a lot meatier. Plus, when they check fold, you win more. Plus, you're more likely to get HU which means you don't have to play a multiway flop OOP with a hand that has to hit. You just have to have one guy NOT hit.