Quote:
Originally Posted by ElrondW
Well, some people use 3+1 and some people use 4+1. I am thinking of switching to 4, but have been playing with three. Does 3 or 4 x BB pre really make much of a difference if you are consistent?
I don't think it makes much of a difference per say, but if u look at it along the lines of: in
uNL the objective is to value-own our opponents who will be calling w/ weak and/or dominated hands a lot. So we get more value already from the start point, and as u probably know, its a snowball effect, the pot will get bigger and bigger street by street.
Also, a 3x raise is more likely to be called w/ basically ATC, and once one person calls, it only increases the likelihood that others also come along (as seen in OP). We don't want to be in 3 and 4way pots (this x1000 when oop) trying to wade thru a bunch of loose passive stations that could have ATC and could out draw us on flops.
I'm not sure if I'm even correct, or if I explained it how I wanted to, but hopefully it makes some sense.
FWIW, I open 4x everywhere besides the button, where I do 3x. I guess think of 4x'ing it as your "value" opens, u want 1-2 ppl putting in 4bb's (as opposed to 3) w/ a range that we're likely ahead of and can potentially dominate.
When we raise on the button, its usually with mediocre holdings hoping to take the blinds down, or win otf w/ a cbet (which will be less considering we only raised 3x, not 4). Hence, its like a "cheap bluff" open. (I guess it could also work for when u have big hands as well, like AA/KK. With only 2 potential callers remaining, u want to give them any extra reason to call.) I find that 4x open/3x otb works pretty well.
More specifically to this hand OP, raising this small makes it so much easier for the other 2 villains to call, and now we are OOP to 2 players which sucks. Not saying that they called only b/c of our small raise, but I'm sure it would be a little more intimidating when faced w/ a 5-6x raise rather than 3x.
Wow sorry for the tl;dr, got started and then just kept typing lol. Hopefully it makes sense.
Last edited by kp1022; 07-30-2010 at 03:02 PM.