Sklansky's advice on varying your pre-flop raise size

I just bought NLHE Theory&Practice and I'd like to talk about the section where Sklansky says you should vary the size of your pre-flop raise size depending on who your opponent is. All of this is assuming that the relevant players all have deep stacks.

Basically, he says that if you're up against weak-tight players, you should make big pre-flop raises. These players fold to continuation bets most of the time, so you might as well build a bigger pot pre-flop so that you can steal it on the flop. And if you're up against a calling station, make a small pre-flop raise, and leave yourself more room to keep the pot small when you want to, but to make huge bets when you have a monster, and exploit his tendency to make really terrible calls.

This seems pretty basic but I'd never really thought about it this way before. I played a session this afternoon and tried it out and it seemed to work great. My standard raise at 100NL to isolate a limper is $5, and I've pretty much always raised the same amount no matter who the limper is (unless he's a shorty). But today I was playing 3 tables with a regular who (in my opinion anyway) is by far the worst regular at the 100NL 6-max game on PS. He calls pre-flop and folds the flop all the damn time. So whenever he limped and I had position and decent cards, I made it $6 or $7 instead of $5, and took down a bigger pot on the flop. I did this about five times and he never caught on.

Does anyone else do this often, and is there anything I'm missing or should be careful of before I start making this play regularly?

I read that as well, and it seemed to make sense.

So I started raising instead of limping behind any hands that I *knew* I would win if I hit. For example PP's, Axs. It didnt work out too well for me actually.

Now I just raise the standard 4xbb+1bb per limper. The only exception is if I am trying to steal the blinds. If someone is 50+ VPIP, and I am trying to steal his blinds I might just go 3xbb, so my C-bet is a little more low risk/2nd barrel if needed is thus smaller as well.

If someone is a calling station and I have a premium hand then I might raise bigger PF, knowing that he will call.

Thanks for posting this. I've been wanting to read some opinions about it but keep forgetting to post. I haven't put this strategy into play yet, but feel like I should start. With PAHUD it's relatively easy to identify players who are likely to call pre-flop raises and fold to a c-bet (high VPIP, high fold to c-bet %).

Originally Posted by zook

Thanks for posting this. I've been wanting to read some opinions about it but keep forgetting to post. I haven't put this strategy into play yet, but feel like I should start. With PAHUD it's relatively easy to identify players who are likely to call pre-flop raises and fold to a c-bet (high VPIP, high fold to c-bet %).

Do you think its worth it then to get PAHud for the fold to c-bet %? Or is there a way to get that in gametime+ somehow?

Originally Posted by TerryToma

Do you think its worth it then to get PAHud for the fold to c-bet %? Or is there a way to get that in gametime+ somehow?

Sorry, I've never used gametime+. From what I've read, PAHUD is worth the upgrade price, but I can't say firsthand.

Originally Posted by TerryToma

Originally Posted by zook

Thanks for posting this. I've been wanting to read some opinions about it but keep forgetting to post. I haven't put this strategy into play yet, but feel like I should start. With PAHUD it's relatively easy to identify players who are likely to call pre-flop raises and fold to a c-bet (high VPIP, high fold to c-bet %).

Do you think its worth it then to get PAHud for the fold to c-bet %? Or is there a way to get that in gametime+ somehow?

PAHUD is worth it simply for the customizability of the layouts, when you figure in the added stats its a must buy.

On the topic though, preflop I dont tend to vary my raise size based on these things I usually just change the hands that I decide to raise. I typically find myself at one of two tables [well multiples of both because of multitabling], a table that is loose and goes too far with hands postflop or a table that is loose and folds to any action postflop. Both are incredibly profitable if you know how to adjust to them and it should be pretty obvious how. On that tables that fold to often preflop I will raise more often and almost always cbet, on the other tables Ill limp more and then value bet my opponents to death. Im going to start adjusting my bet sizes on these tables as well after reading this [I read it earlier the first time I read through the book but never really applied it all that much other than what I mentioned before] but I think I will need to mkae some adjustments based on who is left to act because not every player follows that style.

Anyways, this was a fairly longwinded post, but the main point was that IMO you should be raising more or less often as well at the different tables.

Nice post mccatdog I should have thought of this on my own..

Wanted to just make a post showing my PAHUD layout and showing the things I look at to determine what category the players at my table fall into.

Now, I took this screenshot at a random table I fired up that I happened to have stats on a couple of players.


Anyways, these players that we would be adjusting our bets for [not shown in this image] would most likely have very similar preflop stats, what sets them apart are stats like their aggression on different streets, showdown stats and cbet stats. While not everybody would like a HUD this overwhelming [and it can be with a 8 tables with everybody having stats] these are often things that can become pretty intuitive just by watching the table, you just need to know what to watch for.

im kicking myself for never even thinking of this before. and once again, just another reason i need to get PT and PAHUd.