Preflop betting..

As of right now, if i am the first to enter a pot, if it is a hand ill play , i never call, i usually do 3x BB. If i am in a latter position and i have callers in front of me and i have a hand to play, i normally will just call and not raise.

My main purpose of doing this is to try to give away as little as i can about what im holding, so if im delt 88 and im first to enter ill do the same 3x BB raise as i would with KK or AA.

I stick by this pretty well, but I feel like i should be raising more with the bigger hands and raising the callers in front of me when im not first to enter.

But i also dont want to give away the strength of my hand.....any suggestions?

I can tell you that, just calling in late position is a huge mistake.

You have the idea right about raising, but poker is all about position and when you're in late position with callers behind you (or infront? which is right?) Then you really want to raise your playable hands to isolate them and have the positional advantage in a heads up pot, calling is just going to get you in lots of trouble, makes building a pot harder, gives you no initiative in the hand, and doesnt set you up to take pots away aggressively post flop, also invites other people to play and you're not gonna be winning this game if you're playing with 4 other people every hand.

Dont have to raise more with your bigger hands, stick to the 3 or 4bb's, but what you can do is with any good hand you want to play doesnt have to be a monster could be say KJs, if you're in position and a big fish limps to your right then raise to maybe 6 bb's if you know he will call and you dont think players to your right will 3 bet you, this again isolates the fish and helps build a bigger pot quickly against the bad player, and doesnt tell anything to others about your hand strength. be aware you shouldnt be doing this all the time, just when you think you can get away with it sticking to the standard 3 or 4 bb raise is also fine for the most part.

The earlier someone raises, the more respect you have to give that raise. IF you have a lot of information on that player. you can adjust your play accordingly, but unless you're holding a medium pair and up (this is assuming we are talking cash game), flatting is not a good idea. When faced with any decision, you have to have a plan for the whole hand...are we going to try to take this without a showdown? If we are flatting and we don't mine a set, are we getting away from the hand? How big is the villain's stack? How big is yours? If people are limping, do they tend to fold to a 3-bet, or do they tend to CC your raise? Here is where a HUD comes in handy. If you both hit air, does he cbet often? Try not to get into patterns - adjust to your player's tendencies.

OP, search around and read up on position, and isolating limpers. This will be a good start.

Elivo said:

As of right now, if i am the first to enter a pot, if it is a hand ill play , i never call, i usually do 3x BB. If i am in a latter position and i have callers in front of me and i have a hand to play, i normally will just call and not raise.

My main purpose of doing this is to try to give away as little as i can about what im holding, so if im delt 88 and im first to enter ill do the same 3x BB raise as i would with KK or AA.

I stick by this pretty well, but I feel like i should be raising more with the bigger hands and raising the callers in front of me when im not first to enter.

But i also dont want to give away the strength of my hand.....any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Before giving a full response, is the OP talking about cash game play or SNG/tourney play? Obviously, dealing with limpers is quite different in both of these scenarios, so before I give my SNG point of view, I just want to know if that is what the OP wants

Cash games is what I was referring to, but I also play
sng so please feel free to leave your thoughts on both.

Yeah I'll be doing some reading up for sure, but i did feel like i should
be raising more from late position, to try to weed out
the earlier callers.

So I used the advice I got from this on about 5 sng
games yesterday, raising with callers in front from late position
especially, happy to say I ended up itm in every
game I played yesterday, granted they were only 2$
don games but it's still a move in the right direction.

I noticed that when I raised from late, I managed to
get most of the callers to fold. Much easier going into the
flop with only 1 or2 other players.

You can, actually, raise more with your stronger hands and raise a bit less with your weaker hands. Yeah, but you give away information about your hand, right? Not if you vary your raise sizing by position.

You usually play a stronger range UTG, right? And play a lot of speculative hands from the CO and BTN.
Well, what you can do is raise to 3.5-4x from EP and to 2.5x from LP. MP you raise your standard 3x, given there isn't any action before you.

I like to bet about 2.5X the BB when i first to enter in early position, no matter what followers will be scared to call. But if they raise, if my hand is strong enough i will raise min to keep the strength hidden to my opponents. I raise the same amount with 22 as i do with AA, i do this because some players are sneaky and pick up on the fact that i bet low with low cards and high with high cards and will most likely fold. I like to keep all my bets consistant.

TyToFly said:

I like to bet about 2.5X the BB when i first to enter in early position, no matter what followers will be scared to call. But if they raise, if my hand is strong enough i will raise min to keep the strength hidden to my opponents. I raise the same amount with 22 as i do with AA, i do this because some players are sneaky and pick up on the fact that i bet low with low cards and high with high cards and will most likely fold. I like to keep all my bets consistant.

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Worst... advice... eva!

Seriously though, the earlier your position, the more you should bet, because you have more people left to act behind you. And min-3bet? What the hell? Are you playing with 10bb stacks?

I've read that before about betting bigger based on position
I'll 3 bet if I have something I feel confident can take the pot.

Elivo said:

As of right now, if i am the first to enter a pot, if it is a hand ill play , i never call, i usually do 3x BB. If i am in a latter position and i have callers in front of me and i have a hand to play, i normally will just call and not raise.

My main purpose of doing this is to try to give away as little as i can about what im holding, so if im delt 88 and im first to enter ill do the same 3x BB raise as i would with KK or AA.

I stick by this pretty well, but I feel like i should be raising more with the bigger hands and raising the callers in front of me when im not first to enter.

But i also dont want to give away the strength of my hand.....any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Maybe I am misinterpreting this, but your saying that if you have a hand like AQ and you have limpers in front of you, you will just call and not raise because you want to disguise the strength of your hand? I play a lot of SNGs, but whether you play SNGs or cash, this does not make a whole lot of sense.

Do you really want to go into a multiway pot with a hand like AQ? Besides the times when you hit a big flop (2 pair, straight, flush if suited), you may find yourself in some trouble when you just hit top pair. Hands like this are typically more profitable when you isolate or even just take it down preflop with a raise.

It is certainly ok to limp behind with hands in which you want to a multiway pot because of the implied odds and you do not want to inflate the pot with a marginal hand (small to mid pockets, suited connectors, suited aces). But, even with these hands you have to be careful since your goal is to flop a big hand like a set, straight, or big draw. If you do not hit one of these hands and instead flop top pair with a bad kicker, again, you will find yourself in some trouble.

In terms of your bet-sizing preflop, there are several schools of thought. One being that you raise a smaller amount in early position and a larger amount in late position. The other is to just bet the same amount preflop regardless of hand and/or position. I think this may be the main point of your post. As a SNG player, I prefer the latter. For the first 2-3 levels of a SNG, I will 3x from all positions. From there on out, I 2.5x (with the occasional min raise when the blinds get really healthy). Typically a 2.5x bet will have the same effect as a 3x, so why not risk less to win the same amount and also keep the pot more manageable if called. Also, in terms of you disguising your hand, if you keep your bet sizing uniform with all hands from any position, your opponents cannot put you on a hand purely on your bet sizing.

I hope this helps. GL

It's all very well saying 3-bet to seize initiative; but you still have to be realistic.
raising it up 3xbb is a really good way to dominate early on. If someone re-raises; i tend to call, especially if i have position.

Elivo said:

So I used the advice I got from this on about 5 sng
games yesterday, raising with callers in front from late position
especially, happy to say I ended up itm in every
game I played yesterday, granted they were only 2$
don games but it's still a move in the right direction.

I noticed that when I raised from late, I managed to
get most of the callers to fold. Much easier going into the
flop with only 1 or2 other players.

Click to expand...

Always mix up your bet sizing when playing cash games.
Most people tend to forget how important it is.
Always 3xing peeps truley is not the best way to conseal your hand.

How is betting/raising the same amount not a good way to hide your hand? If i raise 3xbb with 88 and then raise more with KK-AA anyone paying attention will notice that esp if the hand goes to showdown and the cards are shown.
I can see where mixing up bet sizes would also hide it if your doing it the right way, but going with a set raise or set raise by position seems like a much simpler and just as effective way to hide a hand.

Elivo said:

So I used the advice I got from this on about 5 sng
games yesterday, raising with callers in front from late position
especially, happy to say I ended up itm in every
game I played yesterday, granted they were only 2$
don games but it's still a move in the right direction.

I noticed that when I raised from late, I managed to
get most of the callers to fold. Much easier going into the
flop with only 1 or2 other players.

Click to expand...

you learned the isolate the limpers strategy. nicely done

TyToFly said:

I like to bet about 2.5X the BB when i first to enter in early position, no matter what followers will be scared to call. But if they raise, if my hand is strong enough i will raise min to keep the strength hidden to my opponents. I raise the same amount with 22 as i do with AA, i do this because some players are sneaky and pick up on the fact that i bet low with low cards and high with high cards and will most likely fold. I like to keep all my bets consistant.

Click to expand...

You can avoid the sneaky ones with a tracker. Minraising is as bad as limping. 2-3 hands like this and everyone will call to see the flop. Why? Because it is cheap.
At micros i recomend at least 4 BBs plus 1BB for every limper. When you have hand you want to isolate. Plus you will get a little respect not because of your hand (you can have aces and nobody cares at micros) but because you make it expensive too see a flop.
With a tracker you can keep track of the sneaky ones. I would fold Queens postflop if i raised a limper with a VPIP of 7 or 9 at the first sign of ressistance even if the flop is 10 7 2 rainbow. I will do this because i will be pretty sure he has Aces or Kings.
Also you judge your hand postflop. Preflop you just isolate players . Minraising is just inviting them to see the flop. Unless you are not the one that is set or flush mining you should isolate players with your big hands. I am not saying that you cannot speculate the table sometimes. But there are so many bad situations . Suppose you minraise with Aces from UTG. 4-5 players call . One hits a set on a board like 4 8 T and your stack is gone. You just need a bad day to deplete your bankroll playing like this even if you have aces every hand. And trust me. Nobody is happier than than the player that hits a set and his opponent has aces.Good players win at micros by stealing small pots and a lot of blinds and valueing their made hands postflop. So you have Aces UTG and you rase hard. Nobody plays. That's life. Aces hold over 85% of the time when you play a hand HU. But you actually win big money with them like 30-50% of the time when you are actually paid. Consider those times when you are not having action like saving money. But to win with them those times when you have action you have to isolate . If you are dealt aces and you enter multywaypots of 5 ppl you will have action everytime but you will win half of the time and loose half of the time on the long run. So your winrate with aces will be almost 0 . If you isolate and play them HU or 3 handed you will expect a verry big win rate on the long run when playing aces.

That is the part with the big hands.
Raising small with low pocket pairs out of position is also bad. Any time a reraise can come. I wanna see you paying 10 BBs with 22. Better fold small pocket pairs early position if you do not have experience because on the long run you will loose money.

willedtowin said:

Always mix up your bet sizing when playing cash games.
Most people tend to forget how important it is.
Always 3xing peeps truley is not the best way to conseal your hand.

Click to expand...

I think he means that 3x is not the size you always want.

While I agree that keeping a constant raise amount conceals hand strength (be it 2.5x 3x whatever) there is an argument that vs THINKING players, changing your raise sizing can be more concealing.

For instance: late-game 3x's tend to be monster hands since most everyone is raising less by this point. One could disguise a stealing hand by 3xing here when always other times it has been 3x. or vice versa. It all depends on what others are noticing at the table.

I personally prefer teh constant sizings... but if you want to think one level higher, mix em up.

What I tend to do, is early game when the blinds are low
I'll go with 3xbb raise. Latter game when the blinds are higher
(talking about sng) I may scale it back to 2.5 or 2xbb unless
I'm holding a strong hand, then I will raise big to either steel the blinds or
get a bigger pot.

Elivo said:

What I tend to do, is early game when the blinds are low
I'll go with 3xbb raise. Latter game when the blinds are higher
(talking about sng) I may scale it back to 2.5 or 2xbb unless
I'm holding a strong hand, then I will raise big to either steel the blinds or
get a bigger pot.

Click to expand...

don't do that. then you are telegraphing your hand strength to anyone that is paying attention.

In the earlier stages of a sng tourny , should i be playing stuff like suited connecters, and things that could flop strong if the flop can be seen cheap, such as only limpers going into the flop in the hopes of flopping a monster? Or is that basicly a leak that i should keep plugged?

I can only comment on sng's I will more often than not do a reraise to find out how strong someone may be. I agree with you 3x raise in earlier position but may raise a little more if it is a turbo style sng.