Preflop bet sizes (6-max)

I've been thinking recently to change my bet sizing based on my position at the table.

UTG= 5bb Range=11.8%
UTG+1= 4bb Range=17.9%
CO= 3bb Range= 28%
BTN= 2bb Range= 48%

SB/BB= 6bb/3bet Range= 7.6% This one is a little bit trickier since its also a stealing opportunity but any hand I have in there is essentially being 3bet to a raise when I play from either of those positions. Though I've been getting beaten up recently when I try to steal from the SB too wide...

The reason is to reflect the relative strength of the range I'm playing in each of these positions. I want the strongest portion of my range (which happens to be out of position) to give the worst implied odds to my opponents and make me the most since its the range I'm the least likely to want to go past the flop with.

On the button the min raise is to reflect I'm stealing super wide which makes it easy to get away from if I get 3bet and it maximizes my risk reward when people fold too much. This means I would be doing 2bb whether I'm raising with Kxs or AA.

Thoughts, opinions, reasons why this is stupid?
Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks.

I tend to have the opposite impression. Anyway, I just keep it constant and press "bet pot" unless the table is very loose so I'll bump it up a little. Anyway, besides taking a lot of effort to type in all those numbers depending on your position - at a lot of tables you're never going to steal the blinds. I actually thought of it the opposite way - people tend not to take blind steals seriously so IMO you should definitely keep it a little on the higher end and if they call or re-raise you're in position. On the other hand, I see smaller UTG raises as a way to manage risk since you don't know what else is out there. If anything, I would make UTG raises a little smaller but I just press "bet pot."

So you are betting the smallest amount with the strongest part of your range and betting the largest with the weakest part of your range?

Here is the thing on blind stealing- If I min bet to steal most tight players are giving it up anyway. If they are loose they will call 3bb anyway as well.
So I am profiting off of the tight guys who fold a lot with a minimum risk when they raise and profiting off the loose guys who miss most flops and fold to a cbet.

UTG I have a tight, strong, range of hands I'm playing and I'm looking to get a big pot on flop when I get 1 or 2 callers. It is killing their implied odds (whether they know it or not) and I dont care If people call or 3bet after me because my range is strong, so having people to act after me is less of a big deal.
The big UTG bet also helps make it easy(er) for me to commit when my hand does what I want (TP or over pair).
If the Pot is 1.25 on the flop and I have 3.75 behind with KK on any non A board I can feel pretty well committed and do my best to get their stack in. Which is hard if I do a 3bb bet UTG.

The in between stuff is kind of the same but more shades of gray between the Button and UTG range.

I'm also out of position - which I view as around as important as the cards that I hold.

There are some bets that I would call for 2bb and not 3. I'm also a limit player, and I know I'm getting more than 4:1 on a call there - not to mention its a raise from the button. It just strikes me as a very weak steal attempt.

You don't care if people 3bet you if you're raising AQ from 1st position? I find this pretty discomforting even with a strong hand like that. Villain has now shown strength and has position, and you've already built a pretty big pot with the 5bb raise + re-raise. My problem is that it builds a pretty big pot OOP, and even when you have a strong hand you still have to outplay the guy and you're only hitting a pair 1/3 times. Just putting a standard c-bet into a pot like that when you've missed has built a pretty big pot for those stakes.

The purpose for the larger bet is that my whole range UTG is stronger.

Obviously if I'm opening 5bb with 66 I fold to a 3bet, same with AQ unless I want to 4bet someone I guess.

The point isnt the hand its the range of hands that I have there, I dont care what their action is because its super easy to respond to.

a big pot OOP with less $ behind reduces the advantage of position. If I shove on someone when I'm UTG position is meaningless. If I limp UTG position is very valuable. So a 5bb raise UTG reduces the advantage of position because we have a larger pot and I'm harder to bluff when I have a strong hand and my stack to pot ratio is low.

And it is a weak steal attempt- but when I get played back at its easy to let go (remember we have position now hoorah!) and when you call with 4:1 and miss I pick up more than your blind. So while its profitable for you to call its profitable for me when you call as well.

Position is an element of implied odds- the weaker your position the worse your implied odds and the opposite is also true. Also larger bets benefit tighter players.

Given both of these it would seem better to tailor our bets to 1: our range and 2: our position- making our decisions easier

Larger pots and smaller stacks reduce the advantage of position, why not use it to our advantage?

The best reason to bet small in the hijack seats is to reduce the want for the blinds to 3 bet as there isn't as much to gain for the bother of playing oop if called.

best way to be profitable in cash games make people pay big for their draws and small pairs.

that is an excellent point... I don't quite see how that applies to preflop bet sizes, but the point is an excellent one. If you can make people pay too much then you should make money.

This is a good idea in general I think, it's better to get the money in preflop UTG because it's harder to extract value OOP. however, if you're doing this I think your UTG range has to be ubertight cuz raise-folding 5bbs with pairs is probably spewy, i assume you're stacking most of your range.

I generally 4x + 1x per limper for UTG-CO, BTN if folded around ill 3x (find 2.5x to small that people will call more often than fold)

Im off the view that bet sizing should be consistent to disguise hand strength, rather than mixing it up for different positions/hands.

I was thinking about this a little bit to actually (and those numbers should be +1bb per limper each as well- meaning if you do 3bb or 4bb, you will never have a big raise UTG... think about THAT for a minute)

The reason we want to disguise our hand strength is that a good thinking player will notice that we bet more with stronger hands... right?

Wont that same thinking player notice we dont play many hands UTG? If he does we aren't disguising our hand strength very well because of the tightness of our UTG range- they will naturally be stronger hands (correct me if I'm wrong).

So since that disguise is blown why not raise ALL our UTG range more? its the same range of hands and the same thinking player will know we are stronger there (not if its 22 or AA, just that the range is stronger).

Does changing our bet sizes by position not hide our strength? I will raise AA a different amount depending on where I am so a 5bb raise doesn't mean AA's it just means I'm UTG. likewise a 2bb steal could be with AK and recieve a big 4bet when I get played back at.

I'm not saying everyone should do it, I just think it accomplishes what other people are doing with a stagnant bet but gives us an action to position ratio that is easier to work with.

My range there is actually still I guess somewhat wide
A2s-A5s, ATs-AKs, AQo+, 22+, KJs+ which ends up being around 11% or so.

Its pretty tight but I dont want to be raising with ONLY monsters there or I never steal the blinds (a big portion of the money 5bb bets make from UTG)

Mostly I just want hands that a definite strength postflop. (nutflush draws, straightdraws, TP, etc) In reality I primarily will exploit peoples tendency to fold to Cbets with a piece of my range that does that the best and nets me more BB's.

If I start getting played back at a lot this range can very easily tighten up, but at 5nl and 10nl I dont get much of that so while people could exploit it I dont know that most people will.

FTP has an academy challenge with something similar to this and is taught by Chris Ferguson, but I did it a long time ago, so I don't remember the specifics on it.

I have heard 3ways of varying you pfr sizes. The way you are talking about is 1, like I would do 4bb utg, 3.5 from mp, and 3 from the button.

Or you can mix up your pfr sizes, but you can't ALWAYS raise 1 hand a certain amount and another type of hand a different amount because god players will catch on to this. When you mix it up I thought you would mix it up, meaning you would sometimes raise a certain amount with one hand, but also a different amount with the same hand. This way that certain raise could mean any number of things, like you could raise X hands 3bb's 50% of the time and 4bb's the other 50%, or 1 hand you raise x bb's 60% of the time and x bb's 30% of the time and 10% of the time you limp. I think that a begginer at poker should not try mixing it up like that though, it is for more advanced player's I think.(I think at the micro's there is no need to do this second strategy tho, as most players only worry about whats in there hand, and won't even know that your mixing it up.)

The easiest thing to do, and 3rd way, is to just raise the same from all positions, like the 4xBB's from all positions and add 1bb for each limper. The reason for the 1bb for each limper is that if you get 4 limpers and you only raise to 4bb's than you are giving odds for the limpers to call.

[^^I am no expert though, feel free to correct me ]

I have been doing the 4bb + 1bb lately, but used to do the first way I stated @ 5nl.

The thing about the 4+1 is that when it folds to me in a stealing position, and I do a SA for 4bb's and get 3bet from the BB or SB I have to fold.(But that might just be me and bad table selection who knows) So sometimes it makes me want to do like 4bb's from EP/MP and 3bb's from LP.

Does anyone here do the 4+1 here @ 10nl ? And do you just steal with 4bb's every time? I just always hate spending 4bb's to win 1.5bb's and it be unsuccessful.

I think stealing with 4bb is tough, Think about how often that has to be successful to show a profit- not that you CANT show profit its just harder.

tbh 2bb gets a stunning amount of folds- and I dont know of 3bb or 4bb gets enough more to justify the risk.

4bb+1/3bb+1 I think is fairly standard though. I don't think either of those is going to cause you too many problems.

It is interesting though that 1bb can drastically effect how much money is in the pot by the river, and how quickly stack get in.

Standard response to a 3bet when you steal is fold, if it happens a lot either shove with something moderately shove worthy or better yet swap tables. For the most part I dont think people play back at you as much as it feels like.

The only thing I see wrong with 2BB to steal is that the BB then only needs to put in 1BB to play, which is less pressure and might be asking for a call, but I've never really tried it so I dunno. OH, I just noticed u said (6max) in the title and I mainly play FR lol sorry I dunno how I missed that in the title..., I played 6 max 10nl Rush tonight and was doing 3.5bb from ep/mp and 3bb from co/button tonight, and I am up 1 buy-in, but didn't play long.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the 2BB-2.5BB from the button to steal.

A huge amount of time when I get premium hands it seems to be on the BTN, and its folded around to me. I open for 4BB and it always gets folded. Now with a smaller raise it may entice the tighter blinds to call and make a mistake or the loser ones to still 3B/call.

Going to give this a go over the weekend and see if Its more profitable.

I also find that a consistent 4BB raise from UTG also allows you to open your range a bit. When I havent played a hand for a while I'll open it up to 4BB with most suited connector or suited gap hands and a surprisingly large number of the time I take the pot down uncontested. Obviously those times your 3B your folding and the times you see a flop you have a chance to hit it hard or fold.

Now I haven't calculated how positive this is over the long run, but It feels profitable so far (i.e. something like 3/5 times I attempt, Im successful which means risk 4BB for 3.5BB. Win10.5BB/lose8BB=Profit of 2.5BB)

you don't have to keep your raise sizes consistent in rush poker or in MTTs imo.

4 bet blind 3 bettors more with bluffs and they will soon bend over for you.

1: I really like the 2bb button raise. It's one of those things that unless you've got a super spewy calling station in the blinds (and you don't because you should have nits on your left and stations on your right) then there's just no reason to raise any other amount.
Keep in mind though that if there are limpers than you should actually tighten your range if you've been min-raising, this is because you can't min-raise him because you don't have fold equity (so if you're raising, it should be bigger, for value). The nearest explanation I can give is that I think of my button range after someone has already entered the pot about the same as I think of my CO raising range.
Your sizing has to change, so your range has to as well.

2: If you're getting in trouble stealing from SB, either you're stealing vs BB or picking bad spots vs BTN/CO. SB vs BB, imo, you only get creative if you can get away with it (he's extremely nitty) otherwise the pot is his, he has position, don't mess with him. BTN/CO, look for a big difference between PFR/Attempt to steal, beware of super fish because they might just call your 3bet with their K3o which is bad when you've got 56s OOP. Other than that, 3betting light vs wide stealers in the micros is like taking candy from a baby, they can't adjust quickly even if they know how to because if you're an unknown you're much more likely to have just caught a good run of cards than be playing back.

Really disagree with this (if you're saying that 11% isn't tight enough). Your range is strong, the guy who's nitty UTG who always folds and when he occasionally plays a hand he plays it hyper aggressively from there is not someone anyone wants to 3bet light. You're going to make way more money winning the hand preflop or winning on the flop with a cbet than you're going to lose. Is this going to be more than you'd make if you raised smaller? The wins from steals will be less (you're paying a lot more for your attempts), the wins from cbets will be more. Since you're rarely bluffing though, you've got to be way more concerned with value and this big pre-flop raise gives you a great excuse to build a healthy SPR for your premium hands.

That your range changes based on position is obvious, you're not giving away more information by raising more when your range is strong and less when it's weak.
Changing your sizing based on your range is good.
Changing it based on your hand is bad.

You win 1.5bb when you steal the blinds. You're betting 5bb. It's going to be difficult to show a profit here just from stealing, with an 11% range you still probably make money even on pure bluffs after stealing the blinds and cbetting are taken into consideration.
Not that this is entirely relevant, I just think it's important to be aware of the risk/reward on routine bets.

Random info: When you get 3bet after raising to 2bb, call really wide. SCers/Axs/22+ or more, the pot is still small and you've got position and a discount. They have to raise more than 4x for you to take it as seriously as most other 3bets.
Also there's a post over on the old 2+2 boards that is imo as good as the bible of blind stealing, which I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to, so mods look away please: http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...Number=5348855
FWIW, this guy uses an example of 4bb, but he later made a video of him playing where he explained he'd switched to 2bb steals, which if you do some searching is worth a watch.

BB can't call wide. If it tempts him to call, good. Then we make the adjustment to exploit him further by tightening our range slightly and raising as big as he'll still call. If he knows well enough to give up though, we have to settle for just getting the enormous benefits of stealing his blinds every time.

I used to 4x from UTG and UTG+1 and then 3x from CO, BTN, and SB, but I just 3x everywhere now. I prefer playing with deeper stacks as I feel I am better postflop than most people playing the same game as me. Obviously if there is a megafish in the blinds or something, I will sometimes raise to 4x or even more if I dont think he will fold.

you do 3bb and play deep. That's good. Lemme ask you sumthin.

If you're playing deep are the other people playing deep?

How many pot size bets will it take you to get your stack in post flop with a 3bb bet?

What does being deep have to do with varying your bet size, and why would it be more beneficial to not vary your bet size when you are deep (since its harder to get stacks in I would think this would be MUCH more beneficial when you're deep)?

Im not necessarily deep stacked with the other players, I am just saying that the pot:stack ratio is smaller giving me more wiggle room postflop to do a lot of different things. It allows me to take lines to see cheaper showdowns with marginal type hands, but it still allows me to get lots of money into the pot when I hit a big hand.

Assuming both players are 100bb deep, you are not usually going to get a full stack when you just raise to 3x pre, but it is still possible. If I flop a good hand vs a fish I will usually just pot/pot/jam. The river jam ends up usually being pretty close to a PSB.

I think you are just not understanding that when I said "I prefer playing with deeper stacks" that just means that the pot:stack ratio will be smaller, not that myself, and villain, have bigger stacks.

What you're saying here sounds a little contradictory.

If you play a "deeper stack" the SPR (stack to pot ratio) should be larger not smaller. If your SPR=1 your stack is the same size as the pot. If SPR=10 you have 10x the pot in you're stack.

The best way to get a smaller SPR is to bet more preflop.

You really want to tailor your SPR so that it fits your hand- set mining you want a larger SPR, TPTK smaller- makes it easier for you to get in a stack with a hand that you would otherwise not feel comfortable doing.

If you have an SPR of 2 on the flop when you hold AK and the flop is K J 3 you can pretty comfortably get it in, however you may not feel very comfortable with a "marginal hand" like AJ in the same spot since its likely he will have a K if he calls.

Deep stacks are also usually thought to be around 200bb, rather than whatever arbitrary system you use to determine depth.

It kind of comes from the number of pot sized bets it takes to get all in post flop 1 PSB is short, 2-3 is medium 4+ is deep.

Yea, sorry, I am awful with math stuff. I meant that there will be more in stacks/less in pot preflop so that I have more room to do things postflop.

utg/sb, 3.5x, hj/co 3x, button 2-3x depending on opponents.

It's a good idea and something you should play with. Atm I just play 4bb from all positions except the button if there are tight players in the blinds, then I knock it down to 3bb. I do agree with the concept though.

Only thing I would say (dunno if it's been said) but 6bb in the SB seems awful. 4bb or 3bb, I'm not sure, your range should be fairly tight so just 4bb it.

I don't think it's the most optimal way to play. Yes after someone has entered the pot, we need to tighten our range on the button, but why are we doing this? If someone has limped before us it's pretty easy. We have 3 reasons to raise on the button. He limp folds too much, or he limp calls too much. This one can be split in to two again; folds to lots of c-bets and doesn't.

Obviously for the first one our bluffing range should widen to opening up pretty much any two, it's immediately profitable. The second part 1 we do pretty much the same, these guys are goldmines and are just giving us money, isolate and c-bet most flops. For part 2 We start adding lots more value hands, anything that will play well post flop and and broadways. We get rid of all our trash. We don't want to be 3-betting 94o when he's going to call every time. We want to make TPGK and value town him.

The reason for our range is MUCH more important than following a chart, whether it's one made by yourself or someone else.

Probably a good idea on the SB, that seemed pretty questionable at the time- 6bb is a lot, I was really thinking more that I want to 3bet from the blinds more than I want to do anything else- again its a pretty tight range.

4bb is probably more than enough since when I'm not 3beting I've either got a lot of limpers or only 1 opponent (the BB).

If you're raising 2bb as standard from the button your range should be 100%.

If someone limps before you, you have to forget about this hyperloose range and go back to something closer to 40% (that number is a really grossly innacurate estimate).

I agree with raising limpers wider than normal from anywhere that you're making a 3bb or greater raise as standard.

I'd read some ideas elsewhere about preflop bet sizing based on position, but the author's take was the complete opposite of yours.

He advocated raising less from EP's and increasing bet size as you got closer to the button. Primary reasoning behind this is the amount of information you know. Many more potential monster hands out there against your UTG raise than your BTN raise so you wanted to reduce risk and commitment.

Now, the arguments behind this reverse bet sizing style seem pretty solid too. Wondering what you all think of the above?

Will say I'm tempted to give it a shot just to see...though I usually play FR, so first I'd have to really get a feel for 6-man.

Id look at 2.5BB for your button range.

Id open wider on the button.. aim for 60%+ (depending on blinds)

CO looks good.. could be a little wider ~ 35%

The real problem is your SB/BB

Against an opener I like mainly 3betting and only calling the strongest hands.

However in an unopened pot Id be looking at a SB opening range of 25-35%

I would open the SB to the standard 3x

Right now I dont see why you are being so tight from the SB in an unopened pot. UTG is tight because there are 5 players left to act, but SB has only 1 so the % of folds will be higher. I think the way you are looking at it is that SB is UTG when everyone folds to SB but it isnt!

Other than the blinds it all looks good, just open a bit more from the button. The key here is to pick tables taht allow you to open wider rather than ranges that work against generic opponents. If the blinds arent rolling over and dying to your button raises, then you need to find a table where they do.

If BB isnt folding enough that you can open a lot then again move tables, I said 25-35% but I show an 80% steal success with a range of 65%!

If you look in HEM at your positional stats, how are you doing from the blinds?

Noone makes money from the blinds but you have to work on not losing as much. Its entirely possible (with your stats) that the money lost in the blinds is roughly the same as 75%+ of all the money you make from all other positions added together.

So by finding tables where you can open wider and get more folds (i.e. lose less from the blinds) by making no other change to your game your winrate should increase in the order of 2-3BB/100

I wouldnt do this at microstakes.

Its good advice pitched at the wrong level.

The smaller steal size does allow you to play back and use your position with a much wider range. However the question is really, is your opponent playing back at you because of your wide button range and low steal amount, or is it just that he has a hand that is way ahead of you?

I would suggest that at micro-stakes, people arent playing back because of the favourable situation, they are playing back because of the 2 cards they hold. IN which case, your post flop play is hampered to fit or fold.

I truly think if you are comfortable with this approach then it is probably a good one that will work for you. I also believe the more time you put in the more you will be sure of what type of betting size you should use and that the biggest factor is your opponents on any given table.