Quote:
Originally Posted by javi
You're getting 50% more money in the pot. Why do you think people raise big at LLSNL? Because people will call. I once ran a little experiment whereby my objective was to ensure all the money got in by the turn. To do this I'd open 20BB's, cbet pot or maybe 1.2x pot and then just jam turn. For the most part opponent ranges didnt adjust. If they had 77 or A4s they were in preflop. Many live players dont even consider preflop to be relevant, to them nothing matters until you see a flop. If you have a high degree of certainty your opponent will call a 20BB PFR and you look down at AA you'd be a fool not to raise 20BB's. You can raise 3x all you want, you're just leaving money on the table, and making the hands slightly more difficult to play multiway.
2 sides to this debate.
- You're OOP and want to keep the pot small - raise small
- You're OOP and want to reduce your opponents positional advantage and wider calling ranges - raise big
Personally I feel raising larger penalizes your opponent greater and therefore that is the the most +EV play. Since our EP range should be tighter we arent as concerned with the pot being big because we'll have a big hand.
All of this.
I play in a few different rooms locally. I don't see winning players opening to $10, unless the table is just super-nitty. And in that case, most good players will switch tables. If the table is just a little nitty, maybe we lower our open to $12, just until people loosen up.
Straddle a few hands, show one bluff, people will call a $15 open soon enough.
I see online players, mostly kids, coming in and opening to $9, and it's laughable. People are running over from other tables to call a $9 raise.
I must have a liar's face. I could open one or occasionally two hands per orbit, and people still don't believe I have anything. I've been in games where I had to raise my open to $20 or more just to keep the number of callers under 3.
The player pool at 1/3 is just so loose pre-flop, and so bad post-flop (making them harder to range), that the only way to beat the game is to find the open size that limits the pot to just 2 or 3 players, tops.
I used to vary my raise size based on position. I went back and forth about going bigger or smaller OOP vs IP.
I mostly stopped, because it just seems like most low-stakes players are pretty inelastic with their calling ranges. They call based on the strength of their hand, not position, or stack size, or how many players have already entered the pot.
I'll sometimes raise larger from late position, when I see the EP players don't like to limp-fold or will over-defend their blinds, but otherwise, I just use the same raise size whenever I'm opening, or the same basic formula whenever I'm 3B-ing.
