In poker, as in many things it in life, it is easy to take a concept and to apply it incorrectly. This can mean many things. This can mean playing too many hands on the button because positional advantage is huge. It can mean playing too many hands because you think you can “make up for it” postflop. It can mean playing too aggressively in certain situations. A poker concept that has spun violently out of control is playing in such a way that a good opponent cannot exploit you.
Where this concept is mostly applied is towards bet sizing. Many believe that if you vary your bet sizing with the strength of your hand that you opponents will be able to figure out what your hand is and take advantage of the accuracy of the range that they can assign to you. This is a fine argument if it is taken for just that.
Let’s start with looking at preflop as it is a bit easier to think about since there are less variables. As an extreme example, if your strategy is to raise 5x with AA-QQ , 4x with AK-AT, and 3x with JTs-54s/JJ-22 then you are obviously telling quite a bit about your raise sizes. So, if you don’t want to tell too much about your range then you need to have a fixed raise amount. Seems reasonable enough of a conclusion to draw.
The problem is I just made a lot of assumptions in there. The most obvious one is that your opponent must be paying attention. In the online world it is common for a lot of the ‘good’ players to play up to 12 tables. It is going to take a player who is playing 12 tables a while to catch on to your tendencies. Secondly, even if they notice it they have to be able to take advantage of it. A lot of players will notice you making a mistake but aren’t willing to pull the trigger, aren’t sure WHEN to pull the trigger, or know HOW to pull the trigger. The other assumption that was made was that you would be varying your raise by ONLY your hand. A good player will be varying their raises by the situation. Now, if an opponent has all that going for him then he can take advantage of you – absolutely.
This is assuming a very basic and basically bad preflop strategy. Did you notice the thing that I left out in this preflop strategy.
I bet you didn’t…
Stack sizes.
Stack sizes change everything. Some of the hands I mentioned are not very playable at certain sizes. Stack sizes completely change what strategies can work. If the stacks are short and your opponent is very loose then open-raising 76s on the button makes little sense. You gain very little fold equity, you don’t have an equity edge, and you are risking too much for the reward you will get when you hit a hand that you can value bet with. Since there will often be very different stack sizes at the table your raise sizes should naturally vary quite a bit independently of the hand that you have.
For example
You are sitting on the button with 76s with 100BB effective stacks. One tight player limps in and it is folded to you. Both of the blinds are tight. You expect the player to call a “standard” raise and then fold a lot of the flops unless he hits it hard.
You want to raise the largest amount that he will call your preflop raise with. You want him to call the raise and then fold the flop or the turn. A raise to 3x makes sense here.
Now take the same hand but instead of one tight limper you have three loose limpers and the blinds are similarly loose. This time a raise is not as good. Since they are loose you don’t have much fold equity so you should rely on making a big hand and collecting. You don’t want to raise because it cuts down on your own implied odds.
Now take the same hand again but lets start with 200BB stacks and one loose limper and tight blinds. Now a raise makes sense again as you have much more room to work and this can isolate you with the limper. A raise to 5x(or even 6x or 7x – it depends) might be fine if that is what it takes to get you set up good for postflop play.
As you can see there are tons of variables that you should consider that will affect your raise size. If you are playing a strategy to exploit your bad opponents then you will want to move your raise sizes around maximize your exploitation. This exploitation will change from hand to hand, but will not be based solely on the two cards in your hand.*
Once you get to postflop you should be able to move your raise sizes around similarly. One of the variables you should consider when picking your bet size is the texture of the flop. On a flop that may offer your opponent many outs you will have to bet more to cut down on their implied odds. However, if you are adjusting your play to opponents your bets will move within a certain range. Against opponents who call lighter you bet value bet for larger amounts. Against opponents who fold too much you won’t need to bet as much.
If you are playing good exploitive poker you will need to vary your bet sizes. There are so many variables that your bet sizes should have a wide range. This will appear almost random. If you are playing in a game where the players are good enough that they can read into your bet sizes some simple randomization should help out quite a bit. If randomization doesn’t seem to be enough then it is time to go to a standard bet size. However, at that point you should be asking yourself if this game is even worth it.
Most people overestimate the perceptiveness of their opponents and thus give up a very considerable edge that they could be enjoying. Try to use ever little bit of your poker power to eek out some extra profit on hands. Most of your profit should come from exploiting bad players so it is important to tailor your strategies towards that end.
*It is worth noting that sometimes there isn’t much you can besides pick a “standard” raise size because your opponents will react unfavorably to different raise sizes. They may tighten up against a larger raise or they may get less straightforward with a smaller raise.
Interesting as always
I used to have a standard raise-size, but lately I’ve been changing it a bit. It makes it cheaper to steal against opponents that you think won’t even call a small raise and also I think it makes villains try to hunt for patterns and think for instance that a smaller than usual raise would indicate aces or similar.
I sometimes like to break the “4BB + 1BB per limper” concept when raising. This is especially good from position with drawing hands like TJs or pocket pairs. If there are three limpers and I’m on the button I should raise to 7BB if I follow the 4+1 suggestion, but if I only raise to three I will be much more likely to get calls from several of the limpers and build a large pot. In addition they still see me as the preflop aggressor which means that its likely that the hand will be checked to me and I can either take a stab at the pot or take the free card.
I’m not too fond of varying my bet sizes according to the flop. I know it makes sense to bet less when the pot has no likely draws, but I feel that my opponents don’t understand this and may be afraid that a smaller than usual bet by me means that I have the nuts – which is exactly what I don’t want them to think when they are drawing very thin. This leads to another thought about bet sizing, betting according to villains hand strenght. IMO this is much better than doing it according to your own strength as its harder to pick up on this as its read dependent. With this I mean betting an amount that you know villain will call (or preferably raise) when he is strong, but not as strong as you. Or betting larger than villain can call when he has a better hand than you do, this can for instance mean that you have two loose (i.e. bad) short stacks with 20-30BB that limp and you open push from the BB, they are unlikely to call since they would have raised with any hand that could call. This is also good for meta game as anyone in the table that doesn’t realize what you are doing will think that you are a maniac.
I would also be very interesting in hearing about bet sizing to take your opponents out of their comfort zone. I doubt those concepts apply much to my limits, but I found it to be an interesting though and haven’t found about it in any books. Perhaps my example of open pushing against the short stacks is a variation of this, as I doubt they want to gamble even with their short stack.
Jacob,
This is another nice post. It’s something I have been thinking about lately so your timing is excellent. It will all before useful down the road, but some of it I think will work better in the micros than others. Like Bot said, on the flop I’m a bit more leery of mixing it up, although I definitely do take the texture of the board into account when choosing when and how much to cbet.
In my next few sessions I plan to play around with varying the sizes of my pf raises. Thanks for the post, and I’ll let you know how it goes!
Awesome, some controversy!
botontilt,
Regarding your JTs hand it is good to see that you are thinking outside of the “4BB + 1BB per limper” box. I think if you keep your goal in mind then the size of your raise will become apparent. The problem with raising to 3BB after having 3 limpers is this is merely a pot-sweetening raise. If you raise to 3BB after 3 limpers I would expect most of them to come along for the ride. If you are playing 100BB deep you a pot-sweetener will tend to actually make the pot a bit too large for your hand. If you goal is to get it heads-up and then steal then you will probably need to raise a little bit more. Actually, I generally like limping behind here and hoping to flop a big hand with position. If the stacks were 200BB deep then I would like your idea a lot more.
Yeah, it works great as a pot sweetener – but I think I can fairly well take down the pot if I only get two callers on a dry ace-high flop with a c-bet. It also feels great if you flop a great draw in a multi way pot, take the free card and villains come out betting on the turn after their failed check-raise attempt.
Bot,
If your opponents are giving up so readily on the flop you may want to raise a little more just so that you have a bigger pot to win when they subsequently fold the flop.
Guys,
In regards to varying your bet sizes post flop, it all comes down to adjusting to your opponents. IF your opponents think that small bets mean big hands then betting small with a bluff or semibluff is great and betting big with a value bet is perfect. In effect, these opponents are playing the exact opposite as they should be. I wouldn’t make this my default though. Most opponents fold more readily to a large bet than a small bet. Remember, if you are value-betting you want to bet the most they will call.
Now, varying your bet size with the context of the flop is very important, imo. However, there are things that will override it.
For example:
With effective stacks of 40BB I have AKo on the button with one loose calling station limper in. I raise to 4BB and everyone folds to the limper who calls. The flop comes A72r. Now on a flop like this I would tend to pull by bet sizes back a little bit since there are very few calls and to entice a call. However, since this guy will make loose calls regardless I can go ahead and bet the pot and expect to get called by worse hands often.
The texture of the board often affects what hands an opponent will call with but you should always take other factors into consideration. I am sorry if it came across that I am saying that it is THE MOST IMPORTANT factor. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.
The best thing you can do is take into consideration all variables and figure out what is most important.
Bot,
When I say raise more, I meant like 1 BB more. They will probably not react much differently to this small of a change although there certainly is a point when they will start changing. It is important to know what raise size this is.
I believe the “4BB + 1BB per limper” rule can often put a bit too much into the pot when you are raising hands like this with this many limpers. It makes the pot too large for you to do much maneuvering postflop where a smaller raise will. Often times the smaller raise will achieve the same effect.
Hi There,
Just like to congratulate you on a fine article and you have some very good ideas and put your points across very well.
The Dean
I make it my primary goal to keep tabs on my own play. With the advent of tracking software like PT and PO (I use PO), more and more opponents are keeping accurate stats on their opposition and couple this with the note taking facility on most sites then you have a serious problem.
I have played full time since 2002 and I chop and change sites now more than ever before. I also keep a very close watch over my won game because falling into patterns is ridiculously easy.
The Dean
Here’s something that will seem like a non-sequitur but it’s important to this kind of discussion and often gets overlooked with all the emphasis of preflop PT stats.
Players are often much-looser preflop than post-flop. Sometimes the reverse.
The reason why this is so important to consider is that in many hands preflop is merely the setup for postflop where the real money is made. Other times preflop is a setup to steal postflop.
So you often want to tailor your preflop play to how your opponents play POSTFLOP more than how they play preflop.
I’ll give you guys and extreme example.
You may remember when Party Poker had several skins, including Multi-Poker and Empire Poker. Party Poker jettisoned these skins in a dispute over rakeback. Party wanted to eliminate rakeback, several of the skins offered rakeback and when the skins proved intractable Party booted them from the main network and the skins were left in their own, much smaller network.
I was playing $50NL 6-max on Multi-Poker at the time. The players who remained with the skins were very, very bad. Almost all the smart players had immediately jumped ship to Party. In particular, they were very, very loose preflop but nitty postflop.
They would limp like crazy – Everybody wanted to see a flop. And they would call preflop raises like their mom was paying the cellphone bill. However, on the flop in raise pots they were only playing monsters.
So after catching on to this, my PFR from button and CO were upwards of 50% and I’d cbet virtually every flop and take it down almost always. Whenever someone played back at me, their hands were face up and I’d run like hell unless I’d flopped big too. This went on for a couple months and worked like clock-work.
Eventually, Party bought out the skins, shut them all down except Empire, consolidated everything back into one network and this little goldmine was gone. But while it lasted it was one of the most profitable periods of my poker career.
Other examples are players with extremely high or extremely low Fold to Cbet stats (IMHO the most overlooked and under-rated PT stats). Against someone with an extremely high Fold to Cbet, 80%+, you want to play as many raised pots as possible because he’s folding the flop unless he hits a set. OTOH, against someone with an extremely low Fold To Cbet (Anything below 60%) you can pretty much forget about stealing on the flop, particularly if you are OOP so don’t raise much with speculative hands or low PP’s unless you want to be floated and/or raised/checkraised on the flop.
To use a baseball analogy, preflop is your lead-off hitter. What you want from a good lead-off hitter is consistency with the bat and a little speed on the bases. Someone who gets on base a lot for your sluggers to bring home, and are speedy enough to break-up double plays or stretch out things like sacrifice flys or hits to the outfield and pick up extra bases.
It’s your cleanup hitter who puts up the big, sexy numbers but he’s much more valuable if there’s someone on base for him to bring home.
Similarly, you aren’t going to win very many big pots preflop, but, it sets up how big and how often you win pots on later streets. So if you’re varying your preflop raise sizes it’s important to consider the post-flop implications with respect to your opponents. Namely, do you want a bigger pot now because you’re going to win it on the flop most of the time. Or, do you expect you’re going to need to play multiple streets and bloating the pot will just make things difficult for you later.
CMAR,
Very nice, sir.
You gave some much more specific and practical advice that highlights the concepts I am talking about above. It’s groovy, it’s your style.
A little food for thought:
In your example with the players who abandoned the flop entirely too much you could exploit them even more by raising more than normal preflop and betting less than normal postflop. The exact amounts will be left open to some interpretation and experimentation.
I don’t know much about baseball, but I like the analogy.
Thank you very much for joining in the discussion. I hope this will be the first of many.
Very nice post CMAR! I agree also that the folds to CBET stat is important. I recently added it to my HUD and it has been helpful.
What is the meaning of positional advantage in poker?
Somebody please reply here.
Thank you for a great article , i had a great read !