He's only exploiting players if he expects to get called with his bet sizing. If his goal is to make everyone fold which is often the case, then he's exploiting himself.


Playing HU might be easier, but not necessarily more profitable. Which would you rather do with AA, raise $10 and get 4 callers, or raise $20 and get 1 caller?


It doesnt matter if he's trying to raise the stakes, by opening 10BB every hand he effectively has raised the stakes. You're now facing preflop raise sizing and flop pot sizes you would find at a 2/5 game instead of 1/2, which puts your $200 stack at less than 50BB's comparatively. If you had AJs and were sitting on $80 in your 1/2 game and someone opened for $10 what would you do?



Some people will, but others will adjust and just flat call with AKo and such. You will typically tighten their ranges and put yourself in awkward spots. If fish are loose, take advantage of their looseness by just playing better hands, not squeezing them out of every pot. If you know someone is limping Q5o then you need to be able to raise QTo without spewing money. If overbetting is your only solution to fish then you can no longer play these hands. You just have to nut peddle for hours and hope to god that they either dont notice or dont care when you finally wake up. Orrrrr, you can maintain a balanced raise size and exploit their easily dominated hands from all the Ace rag garbage and any two suited they play. I recommend 4-5xBB opening raise size regardless of how loose the table is, so that you can continue to play more hands vs these people.

I raise much wider with the range you just gave (from late position; in the blinds I tighten up quite a bit with raises). If that's the adjustment you make against me then it wouldn't discourage me at all.

First of all, I usually won't raise and will be folding my garbage hands, so you'll just play in a lot more multiway pots with big hands that should have been raised PF.

Second, the adjustment to wait for a monster and then stick in a big raise is one that a lot of scared, nitty players make when they don't know how to handle an aggressive player. I'll just fold because I know you have a monster and then I'll go on to the next hand. The next time I raise again, chances will be very low that you limped in with another monster.

The hands you mentioned that these players are raising with are only 2.8% of all total hands. I'm sure you meant that these players raise more often than with just the hands you mentioned, but even if they raise something like 5% of hands that's really not aggressive when you're including late position hands.

This might work against me if I was the one raising because I'd likely put you on a big hand and fold (I do raise in late position with monsters too though, but usually won't have one) , but the villains you're talking about don't even seem aggressive enough for me to want to try something like this.

I really want everyone to fold too (unless I have a really big hand), but it's not because I want to avoid playing the hand postflop. It's just great to pick up free money when you raise with something like J9s or A5s and it usually won't hit much of anything. I've raised and picked up dead money from villains who folded and showed me hands that had me dominated. If one or two people call, then fine. That's more money for me to steal when they play fit or fold after the flop.


Edit: The villains you're describing could be totally different from me though. If they are the type to raise JJ big because they are scared to play postflop with it, then I'd probably just fold to them in games like this.

After this logic making it 5$ and getting 8 callers would be huge

even tho you would basicly be setmining with aces in that scenario

Dont be an ass. Your goal is to make your opponents make mistakes. Calling your $5 open knowing you have AA is not a mistake. However the 3 players calling your $10 open are all making a mistake. So is the one guy calling your $20 open. Point is I'd rather have 3 players willing to continue making mistakes postflop vs me than just one guy who is probably going to check fold anyway when he misses. The wider their ranges the more likely they are to have hit something on the flop they will continue with.

Overbetting pre for value isnt horrible. You might get players to stack off with an overpair or TP, but you just wont get those dry flops vs someone who called with JJ often enough to justify it. I'd rather keep their ranges wide and play postflop.

villain is doing exactly what this forum would suggest he should do btw...

And finally, we are not raising big always, at every table. Only enough to find the sweet spot, or the amount that only 1 or 2 V's will call.

I would recommend trying to find a raise size that suits your table, right then. Poker is dynamic. There is no cookie cutter response for this.


If you open to $10 (on $1/$2), with a tight image, and get 5 callers, you should be raising more.


For every V you are up against, the likelihood of you winning the pot ultimately goes down.


Some tables, it doesn't matter how much you raise, it will be multiway. Those are high variance, but good to be at.



The sweet spot at my local casino seems to usually be around 8-10 bigs. However, some games 5x is too much. Then I raise 4x in those games.



As far as villains reading bet sizing tells.....

If your raise is pretty much the same size everytime, then your hand will still be disguised. So when opening, you should always consider your table image, or micro image as well.

3bet and C-bet!