I’m of the opinion that your bet sizing should only be determined by your position and number of players in the pot and not by hand strength... reason being that I don’t want my bet size to be a tell. So if I have a TT and I decided to raise a pot, then it will be the same as if I am doing it with AA so that villain can’t really use my bet size to narrow my range.
But I do let position change how I raise. My standard raise is 3X. So it’s 3BB to go is I’m RFI. If I’m 3betting, then it’s 3X the preflop raise.
Then I add 1x for each player in (whether it’s a limp or a raiser). And then I add 1x more if I am in the blinds preflop.
So if I’m in LP and there are 2 limpers ahead of me, I’d raise to 5BB. If I’m in the blinds with 2 limpers ahead of me, I’d go 6BB. If there was a limp and a raise in LP, I’d probably go 4-5X preflop raise in an attempt to make limper fold and isolate and add another 1X if I’m trying to do it from the blinds and hope I can get the pot right there because I really don’t like playing OOP postflop. My goal is to make speculative hands fold preflop (such as low connectors, even low pocket pairs) to make my post flop decision making easier as these bet sizes will hopefully help me narrow opponents ranges as I observe how they respond to my moves.
Post flop, then will be factors such as position, pot size, reads on opponents and effective stack size. I’m learning to plan ahead from the preflop raise so I have an idea of how I handle different scenarios and I’m still working that out in my game. But I do believe having a general game plan once you see the flop is important. Often times, the bet size is based on % of pot. I don’t know if I want to change bet size based on hand strength unless I’m willing to use this in my bluffs later on. But i also don’t think there is much use in overthinking it in lower limits.
My 2c anyway.
