On reraising preflop:

This is a huge subject, you could literally write a book (at least a pamphlet) if you knew all there is to know about reraising preflop. IMO this skill is what gives the best players a good portion of their edge at 600NL - 2kNL. It's something I'm only coming to grips with myself and trying to get really good at. Anyway, bunch of random thoughts here.

It's not something I would advise trying to force at 100NLish stakes. A strategy which includes a lot of reraising needs a player type that can actually make some folds here and there because a lot of the time you are forced to put your stack on the line with very little in the way of real hands.

Because of this, you should also see an increace in variance when you employ a strategy like this. It basically inflates the sise of the pot dramatically in relation to your stack and even the fishies that read Sklansky know that ++pots and --stacks = mucho variance.

Another reason that reraising becomes more valuable as you move up to higher stakes is that image manipulation becomes a much bigger issue. When you play at hyper aggressive tables where there is lots of preflop raising you ogten find yourself in situations where you hold a good hand (like AA) and there is a raise in front of you. You are forced to reraise here a good percentage of the time. If you only reraise a tight range the good players will notice this and you will not get payed off. This sort of thing won't be such a problem at lower stakes because less players are paying attention and less people are raising preflop with a high frequency.

Your image can also become a very importand weapon against those players who do happen to be paying attention. For example here's a hand where I reraised a TAG so much and my image became so bad that he was forced to begin to employ a shabby 4 betting strategy which allowed me to own him here:

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ Hero (5 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: FlopTurnRiver)

saw flop|saw showdown

Hero ($553.80)
UTG ($390.20)
MP ($402.57)
Button ($386)
SB ($92)

Preflop: Hero is BB with J, J. SB posts a blind of $2.
2 folds, Villan raises to $16, SB calls, Hero raises $56, Villian raises $174, SB folds, Hero is All in $554, Villan calls.


Flop: ($6) 5, 9, T (5 players)

Turn: ($6) 9 (5 players)

River: ($6) T (5 players)

Final Pot: $950

Results below:
Hero has Js Jh (two pair, jacks and tens).
Button has As Qc (two pair, tens and nines).
Outcome: Hero wins $950.


I agree with HJ's up there for the most part. The only thing I would disagree with is:

I dont think it matters a whole lot where you do it from, unless you start actually seeing showdowns. I generally never see a showdown when I do this, they either fold preflop, fold the flop or I give up at some stage.
I think position is a very important factor in reraisings situations. Obviously it is better to be in position when you reraise. It is just far easier to apply pressure from this position and force your opponent to a tough decision for his stack. The problem with this is that generally players raising ranges increace dramatically the later a position they are in. So if you are in the cutoff and a player raises in MP then his raising range from that position will stand to be comprised of much better hands then if you were the BB and he raised from the button. But a lot of the time your position will make up for this especially as stacks tend towards the deeper end of the spectrum.

Generally you should reraise a player more...

the looser his raising standards,
the more coldcallers between you and the initial raiser,
the more likely he is to fold to your raise preflop,
the deeper the effective stacks,
the tighter he is postflop,
the less you think he knows about bluffing lines in reraised pots,
when you are in position.

There's probably a buch of other simple reasons that should be here but they just aren't coming to me right now.

Finally, what hands should we reraise with? I don't like to reraise with TPGK kinda hands like ATo even against fairly wide raising ranges. I feel that we just leave ourselves open to too many marginal decisions later in the hand where we have to decide if our top pair is good. Hands like suited connectors ands Axs are good choices because of what I was referring to at the start. If we are going to be making large bets without much of a hand in an attempt to make another player fold, I would like to be doing it with hands that will a portion of the time have outs should things go wrong. Also obviously TT+ and AK are standard reraising hands. AQ is a marginal raise or fold "it depends" type of beast.


And ehh.... yeah looks like I'm done.