Microstakes: is it OK to vary the size of your opening raise?

F4STFORW4RD · Nov 24, 2011

So peelie suggested open raising 4bb at 2nl, when he noticed that I was raising 3bb. This seemed like good advice, as it allows b/b/s to look less obvious. Here's an explanation that I "borrowed"

In both scenarios we are going to assume villain is a loose passive fish in the BB who will c/c down with A2o on AQT53 unflushed while we hold AKo and that we both have 100bb stacks.

If we start with 3x:
preflop: raise to 3x, fish calls, pot is 6bb
flop: bet pot (6bb,ignore sb), fish calls, pot is 18bb
turn: bet pot (18bb), fish calls, pot is 54bb
on the river now we have 73bb behind and can't really shove it in because it looks like such a gross overbet that the fish might fold, so we bet about 60bb and the fish snaps us off and we profit about 87bb-rake.

However, look at what magically happens if we open to 4x:
preflop: raise to 4x, fish calls, pot is 8bb
flop: bet pot (8bb), fish calls, pot is 24bb
turn: bet pot (24bb), fish calls, pot is 72bb
this time on the river we have 64bb behind and we can easily shove river and not have it look like an overbet and get snapped off no problem.

Anyway, I have subsequently been using 4bb as my standard open raise from all positions (thanks, Peelie). Then I was reading the CotW on Preflop Raise Sizing, and all of a sudden my whole world was turned upside down and I was thrown into total confusion!

The last thing that I have to say about preflop open raise sizing deals with stealing. When I am stealing OTB (on the button) I will minraise any two cards. Since we have the button we have ultimate position and we will be able to use that to our advantage to hopefully outplay our opponents postflop. Additionally, since it is only 2bb, you will find that some of your fishier opponents will call waaaaay wider than they should. I personally minraise everything including AA and 72o for disguise and because of the fact that it is very rare for me not to have a shortstacker or a reg in the blinds who will occasionally 3bet me light or shove on me light. However, if you have only fish, feel free to raise up that AA and if you have someone with 100% vpip, don’t worry about folding your 72o. Like I said above, ADJUST, leave if there are 2 shortstackers to your left unless you have position on a fish. The last, and most important, reason that we open to 2bb is this: If we open to 2BB, we risk 2 to win 1.5, so we need our steal to work 57% of the time. That’s it, do this and you should show instant profit.

The last position I have to address opening from is the small blind. Due to the fact that we are oop against the bb I suggest raising to 3bb to dissuade the big blind from calling too wide because it will be extremely difficult to play.

Do you vary the size of your open raise, depending on position and/or opponents?

Surely minraising ATC OTB will be very quickly adjusted to by most opponents, even at 2nl?

JOEBOB69 · Nov 25, 2011

F4STFORW4RD said:
Surely minraising ATC OTB will be very quickly adjusted to by most opponents, even at 2nl?

How will they adjust by calling to much an check folding 70% of the flops?

WVHillbilly · Nov 25, 2011

Minraising the BTN with ATC is fine but 3x or 4x with ATC on the BTN is better.
More money in the middle when they call OOP and then play fit/fold post flop.

F4STFORW4RD · Nov 25, 2011

JOEBOB69 said:
How will they adjust by calling to much an check folding 70% of the flops?

Won't they start 3betting light?

WVHillbilly · Nov 25, 2011

JOEBOB69 · Nov 25, 2011

F4STFORW4RD said:
Won't they start 3betting light?

at 2nl really?Show me some hands were you got 3bet light from the blinds while OTB that went to show down please.I mean i'm sure some will do it but not enough to even give a real thought about.BTW whats your steal % from the CO and the button.
Edit:WV beat me to it

F4STFORW4RD · Nov 25, 2011

8% steal. 0% CO, 0% OTB, 33% SB.

Show me some hands were you got 3bet light from the blinds while OTB that went to show down please.

Please remember that I'm the cash games newb here asking for advice, and you guys are the experienced players.

JOEBOB69 · Nov 25, 2011

F4STFORW4RD said:
8% steal. 0% CO, 0% OTB, 33% SB.this can not be right,i hope.Please remember that I'm the cash games newb here asking for advice, and you guys are the experienced players.got ya just tring to prove a point

Ok what is your total steal% steal% in the CO and steal% on the BTN

F4STFORW4RD · Nov 25, 2011

That's the stat for a table that I have played about 200 hands at. If you tell me how to extract it from HM I can obtain my overall steal rate (hopefully).

JOEBOB69 · Nov 25, 2011

Reports<Select Report Name From List<Postion
Little green + sign<Steal<Steal pct
I would only use this year in the date range at the top of the report page.

F4STFORW4RD · Nov 25, 2011

On a table where I have played 40 hands it's 20%. 0% CO, 50% button, 0% SB. Seems to vary a lot from table to table. Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, these stats are taken from the pop-up that comes up when I click the ST % on my HUD.

WVHillbilly · Nov 25, 2011

Small samples like that are less than meaningless. Get your overall numbers from HEM.

JOEBOB69 · Nov 25, 2011

F4STFORW4RD said:
On a table where I have played 40 hands it's 20%. 0% CO, 50% button, 0% SB. Seems to vary a lot from table to table. Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, these stats are taken from the pop-up that comes up when I click the ST % on my HUD.

no i'm talking about your hem (home page?)

WVHillbilly said:
Small samples like that are less than meaningless. Get your overall numbers from HEM.

this

F4STFORW4RD · Nov 25, 2011

Sorry, not having much luck, doesn't show Steal pct once I have done Little green + sign<Steal (see screenie). If I choose Hero's Position: SB, CO, BTN it gives me the result in the other screenie.

F4STFORW4RD · Nov 25, 2011

OK when I filter it as purely 2nl and only results from this year it looks like this.

JOEBOB69 · Nov 25, 2011

I was talking about HEM1.I went in HEM2 and could not see how to filter it either.Maybe someone else could be a better help.

jbbb · Nov 25, 2011

Fold more in sb.
You should never complete in sb, always raise if you're going to play.
Don't call wide against BTN steals or any open. Playing OOP is really hard. Also people don't tend to steal enough in 2NL to make calling wide to bluff catch profitable. - IMO 20% is a wide range to play OOP.
You're agg % and AF is way too low. Call less, bet more and fold more against stations when you have air - you're not going to bluff them off their hand.
Conversely, bet big and every street when you have a made hand.
Open wider OTB and in CO if BTN is a nit.
3bet looks good. I think you can 3bet a pretty wide merged range in 2NL due to people calling wayyy to loosely.

jbbb · Nov 25, 2011

Probably should have asked if you play FR or 6max, but most of the stuff above still applies for FR ^^^

F4STFORW4RD · Nov 25, 2011

JOEBOB69 said:
I was talking about HEM1.I went in HEM2 and could not see how to filter it either.Maybe someone else could be a better help.

OK I loaded all my HM2 database into HM1 and ran the report, screenie attached.

jbbb said:
Fold more in sb.

You should never complete in sb, always raise if you're going to play.

Don't call wide against BTN steals or any open. Playing OOP is really hard. Also people don't tend to steal enough in 2NL to make calling wide to bluff catch profitable. - IMO 20% is a wide range to play OOP.

You're agg % and AF is way too low. Call less, bet more and fold more against stations when you have air - you're not going to bluff them off their hand.

Conversely, bet big and every street when you have a made hand.

Open wider OTB and in CO if BTN is a nit.

3bet looks good. I think you can 3bet a pretty wide merged range in 2NL due to people calling wayyy to loosely.

Thanks

jbbb said:
Probably should have asked if you play FR or 6max, but most of the stuff above still applies for FR ^^^

FR

I was quite surprised that the LeakBuster starting hand charts suggested that a tight FR player should be open raising 31.8% of SB hands and 35.7% of button hands. I expected to be raising far fewer SB hands.

JOEBOB69 · Nov 25, 2011

I play 6max so these numbers of mine are going to be off from yours.
CO-31%
BTN-37%
SB-41% (leak of mine )

Nathan Williams · Nov 27, 2011

Yes it is OK and I think it should be standard at these limits in fact. There are a lot of really bad players who frankly aren't paying much attention.

I like to think about it in economic terms. Think of your bet as a product and think of your opponents as customers. In the business world most of the time it would be a really bad idea to charge less than what the customer was willing to pay right? Same thing applies here in poker.

Find out what certain players are willing to call while still giving plenty of action. Make it that amount. Ignore what somebody in a book or on a forum tells you. And this applies to any street, not just preflop.

At higher limits you won't get away with this anywhere near as much. You will need to balance your range.

JOEBOB69 · Nov 27, 2011

BlackRain79 said:
Ignore what somebody in a book or on a forum tells you.

:hahaha:

Don't know if it's Irony....but lmao

Nathan Williams · Nov 27, 2011

JOEBOB69 said:
:hahaha:

Don't know if it's Irony....but lmao

Haha. It's fine to ignore me as well!

Microstakes: is it OK to vary the size of your opening raise?

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