Hey gilmour.. so if you're make it $35 everytime you decide to raise, correct me if I'm wrong but aren't you significantly cutting down your raising range, which would make you look a lot nittier and encourage people to call your raises with speculative hands to crack your "OMG first raise in 3 hrs, he has aces" or maybe just snapfold? I mean, doesn't your game become too straightforward?

It depends, the game is rarely that crazy that i have to go 35 dollars everytime i decide to raise. But if its late in the game, people are down and tilted- then yeah, i go as big as i need to go (to thin the field) almost everytime i raise. I dont want 5-6 callers when i raise it up with AQ, i want 1 or 2 so i can manouver a bit after the flop and C-bet bluff boards like this with instaprofit because it misses our opponents so much. And if i still raise a huge amount and still get 4-5 callers: the SPR is often so favourable that i can profitable stackoff with top pair or better.

You have a valid point when it comes to looking nitty and having a faceup range when raising. My experience is that its not that big of a problem though, because many players leaks when it comes to calling too much and too big is more +EV too us than the downsides of our range looks faceup.

That being said i also add in a small percentage of suited connectors/suited one gappers or small pocket pairs in my raising range so i dont get too easy to read. Like 6-7 suited or pocket 66 or pocket 77. Especially if the stacks are getting deeper i usually starting to mix up my raising range more, because i hate playing bloated raised pots with a faceup range. Its not a big fraction of my raising range (speculative hands like SC), but the combos are in the mix so my opponents cant be "safe" no matter what the board comes down.

Edit: if people starts snapfolding to my raises i obviously adjust to that. Then i either widening my raising range or raising a smaller amount- or in some cases both.

What you're missing is $20 is going to allow players to set mine with any pocket pair. You may flop top pair and still be crushed. A larger raise forces players to make a decision about the hand their holding. If it takes $35 to get them to fold 77 and below then that's what it takes. You can't predetermine how a flop will look. You have to make the plays that have the highest EV. Getting called by so many players with AQ won't end well for you most of the time.

To your specific hand, it sucks but you have to check/fold.

Quick hijack, what does SPR stand for? It's not listed in the abbreviations sticky.

[QUOTE=SycG;44926648]Quick hijack, what does SPR stand for? It's not listed in the abbreviations sticky.[/QUOTE


SPR=Stack pot ratio

Stack to Pot Ratio

It has become a little overused in this forum. It is not the be all and end all that some think it is.

Awesome, thanks. I've been trying to figure it out for a while. I'm guessing the higher the ratio the better it is to shove? Say OP flopped Q44 with 5 callers. His stack is 150, the pot is now 120 (his bet plus 5 calls). If he bets $40 and gets 2 callers the pot is now 240 compared to his stack of 110. Does he shove the turn based on SPR? I'd likely shove because I think it's rare someone has 44 and I want to get the money in. Occasionally you may see 45 but that's also rare.

Yeah, its an instrument to use in difficult decisions or as a pointer of when or not to stackoff.

As ChipKelly mentions though it is weighted a little bit too much from some posters on the forum. It should be one of many instruments/parameters you use when making decisions- not the one and only. I also use it frequently to plan out my hands- especially in 3 bet pots for example if i should/could autostackoff with an overpair or not.

And yes: the more money it is in the pot compared to whats left in your stack the better it is.

Not necessarily. That depends on what kind of hand you have.

SPR is mostly a preflop consideration. The higher the SPR, the stronger the hand you need to have to get all in profitably. IF SPR is 2 then I'm going broke with TP. IF SPR is 30, well then I'm probably going to be willing to fold at some point in the hand.

That's why we shovel as much money in the pot preflop with AA as we can and just limp/call with 22. AA is looking to win unimproved so we want the money in up front. 22 is looking to flop a set so we want the least amount of money in early and the most in after we hit. Low SPR is great if you have the hand for it. High SPR is not so great if you have the same hand.

Thanks for clarifying, i see that i was a little bit unspesific in my explenation.

Pretty much this, though I'm not probably as close to 100% HU as Chip is.

Probably a leak but HU in position I'll sometimes check back low uncoordinated boards which are likely to have missed both of us planning a delayed c-bet on virtually all turns.

We've just had a thread about this so I'm sure you'll get lots of different responses regarding preflop, but I'd either (a) raise larger to have a better chance at thinning the field or (b) overlimp/evaluate.

No pair is folding the flop to one bet. Are you prepared to stack off over multiple streets to make them fold, also keeping in mind that Kx ain't going to fold (especially when the board will probably solve any kicker problems)?

Gcheck/fold,nexthandG

I don't think anyone else addressed this, but even if better hands like AK/77/etc. just call the big preflop raise, we will often win the pot postflop when we both whiff. Is 77 going to continue on a JT3 board? Is AK going to continue on a T94 board? When we thin the field to HU, we will often win the pot with the worst hand by cbetting (something we won't be able to do in a multiway pot).

GcluelessNLnoobG

This is VERY hard to quantify. I used to play low limit games in Virginia where you could only raise like $20 preflop (limp $5 or Max raise open to $20) and then pot limit postflop. The game was 10 handed. Most players played 350 to 600 behind. It was at a country club and all the players were rich and would see the flop with ANYTHING that resembled a hand. lol.

I won more per hour in this game over a 2 year period than my hourly at grinding 5-10. I just think if you adjust to the conditions, that more players seeing the flop with garbage ends up in higher EV ---but IF---IF---you adjust properly postflop.

Since most players (not necessarily anyone in particular) play a certain style and stick to it, getting lesser callers preflop is a must.

I had THIS conversation back in the day with David Sklansky at the Stardust Hotel. He convinced me that having the whole table call "could" end up giving us the highest winrate but one had to play a very good huge multiway pot game postflop.

I doubt this is worth the discussion since anyone can adjust their pre bets and create the environment they prefer anyhow.

Note: I used to try and guage my answer to what level i think the OP is on. I got into some issues doing this and thus now i just say what I do myself and why. Thats just me, and im sure that you make it work as how you see it as well.

Like T Angelo said. There IS a lot of grey in poker. Which is why top players can disagree and each player make it work within each players gameplan.

I'm not really all that crazy about that board. I'd feel better about it if it was K-K-4 if I was going to bluff at it because it would reduce the chances that a king is out there. But with so many opponents we should tend to play more straighforward anyway.

I don't believe it. Are they really going to fold KJs, KQ, ATs, AJ, QJs, JTs, T9s, and anything that is worse? You really think they're folding AQ every time? Those hands look great to bad players.

I feel like I'm missing something that's super obvious. If you need opponents to fold at least 33% of the time, and if you're getting four folds about 54% of the time, then isn't a bet profitable? Why would a c-bet be bad then?

I'm also not sure where you're getting the number that they have to fold almost 90 percent of the time. From your example they all fold 54% of the time when they are all individually folding almost 90% of the time.

Wow, I strongly disagree. I think getting 5 callers after raising to $20 is a great result. Sure, we will play fit or fold postflop, but we will be doing it with a much stronger hand than our opponents, and we will hit after the flop a lot more. Also, we will have opponents dominated a lot and will win a lot of money against those players with the pot being so big. We could even possibly stack them. Nobody else raised pf so hands we do poorly against like AK, AA, KK and QQ aren't likely.

I don't mind raising to $35 and getting 2 callers either but I think the other situation is fine as well. With the pot being $100 before any betting on the flop we will win a lot more large pots.

Don't c bet