Quote:
Originally Posted by brick
Hi Mason,
Love your writing and reread Poker Essay's #2 this summer while camping in Colorado (Great book, BTW).
I just did some excel analysis and admit I was wrong that raising 22 is more profitable than calling assuming 9 ways pre-flop with a 10% chance of winning the whole pot. The scaling effect of the pot size postflop is valuable and the pre-flop action is breakeven.
With 8 limpers my analysis shows a profit of .2 small bets extra from raising.
With only 7 limpers my analysis shows breakeven.
With 6 limpers a loss.
With a 15% chance of winning the pot, raising QQ makes over .5 a small bet in extra profit from raising. So I know from reading your essay's that it can be right to raise post flop to try to win the big pot more often, but it's pretty gray to me that you will be able to influence the pot just perfectly to skip that immediate value.
brick
Hi Brick:
First, the bolding is mine. But the bolded paragraph is the question. Does keeping the pot smaller by either not raising or not reraising allow you to play your hand strategically differently so that the probability of winning the pot has gone up enough to offset the initial amount of expectation, which in your example you say is half a small bet, that you give up in your preflop play.
Also, in your Excel analysis are you adjusting in any way for how some of yur opponents play might change based on the size of the pot? or is this not a consideration?
Again, I'm not going to post the "Playing in Loose Games" section in HPFAP. But all of this stuff is addressed there, and it includes much more than not raising or reraising with a hand like a pair of queens.
By the way, against weak opponents, we would recommend that you raise a small pair with less than seven limpers. But if they play really terrible, then we say not to do it.
Best wishes,
Mason
PS: By the way, it seems strange that you're busy reading
Poker Essays Volume II and yet you don't seem to be familiar with the material in
Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players.