Standard PF betting.

I have always flexed my bets pre flop based on the strength of hand I'm holding, and have read more than once where this was reinforced (even Tyson Tanakas take on this site).

However, I've been reading through some of the posts in the forums and it seems there is a pretty common recommendation to utilize a standard pre flop bet when raising (5xBB for example) and follow up with a standard pot sized bet post flop if you're still interested in playing the hand. Mostly this seems geared to mask the strength of your hands by eliminating your betting pattern as a tell.

I was curious if there was something I was missing, or if I was reading some of these wrong. I understand the idea of masking your hand, but there also seems to be some logic in how much one is going to risk pre flop based on the likelyhood of getting a strong hand post flop...

Thanks all,

Shaun

If you vary your opening bets with the quality of your hands people will catch on to that. If they can limit you to a small number of hands according to your opening bet, they wont make mistakes against you. Thus you will get killed, being the one who will always make the mistakes.

roll a dice multiply the results by 2, raise that many times the BB, thats what I do

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Originally Posted by Triptanes

roll a dice multiply the results by 2, raise that many times the BB, thats what I do

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rofl nice way of doing that. hmm 6x bb well yea early in a mtt sure..


the standard is 3 to 4x the BB


but many people will say it depends on the stakes and the point of a MTT and such.

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Originally Posted by Corey

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Triptanes

roll a dice multiply the results by 2, raise that many times the BB, thats what I do

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rofl nice way of doing that. hmm 6x bb well yea early in a mtt sure..


the standard is 3 to 4x the BB


but many people will say it depends on the stakes and the point of a MTT and such.

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I was talking about a ring game.

You have been my medium for an epiphany! Perhaps do this in an MTT early? Eh, maybe.

I think it depends on what table you´re playing. At penny tables most people will probably not keep track of your raising history. About the dice, I think it´s better to be consciously unforseeable. If it folds to you, and you sit on the rockets, you probably don´t want to throw out a 12x BB just because your dice tells you to.

I think your play must depend on how skillful your opponents are.

At penny tables, people will just see a raise of a certain size and not remember what you had last time you raised that much, so you´re probably best out with a bet that is adapted to your hand´s strange, your position and the table conditions.

At a bit higher levels, a standard bet is probably good as you can be sure people can´t tell too much from your raising.

At the levels where people are really good, I think you must again deviate from the standard and try harder to decept your opponents in order to be successful.

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That is a misconception to ALWAYS keep preflop raise consistent so opponents don't put you on a hand. I vary preflop raise. As with everything else in poker, it depends on why and how much.

Sometimes I raise 1010 5xs BB and AA 3xs BB, and sometimes just the opposite, sometimes limp. I defy anyone to put me on a hand after playing for an hour or more.

For online play where your face opponents for shorter periods of time the consistent pre-flop raise is probably best. You want to raise the same w/ AQ that you do with AA and KK, as well as you lower pairs.

Dan Harrington's new book advocates varying your pre-flop raise within a range of 2-6xs BB. It is important to note that he is referring to top level play with the same opponents on a regular basis in big tournaments as opposed to short online sessions.

Rippy,

I know you advocate a standard pre-flop raise, but do you always stick to that? To make up a contrived example, lets say you are the big blind and the entire table (or most) limp to you and you are holding KK. Are you going to raise a standard amount of say 3x BB or might you consider raising more?

Just wondering if you ever deviate from the standard raise due to position or the composition of players on the table?

of course you would consider raising more ... I thought we were talking about opening bets?

I always base my bet on how much I estimate it will cost to isolate all but one player. If I am on the button and have 7 limpers in the pot, I would raise 5 or 6 X the blind. If every person at the table has folded and I am on the button, I might raise 2 or 3 times the blind, since I am only trying to eliminate that one player. I feel that because my bets sizes are reacting to other players as opposed to the cards in my hand it masks my hand well. Also, because my bets are always of varying sizes, As a side effect, I feel like some players will waste effort trying to pair my bet sizes with my hole cards. But thats just how I do it.

A standard preflop bet should be used most of the time, and of course it varies on table conditions. What you're trying to do is raise enough to fold a chunk of the table, and get you heads up or three-handed with a decent sized pot that you can win, and to gather some information about what hands you're playing against.

For instance, if you constantly raise 6xbb and are re-raised to 12xbb with AJ or KQs or something, it's probably a good time to let the hand go, but if you raise 3xbb and get reraised to 6xbb, your opponent may simply have TT or another smaller pocked pair, or have the dominating hand in this situation, so it's much harder to call it.

Conversely, you will play against stronger callers if you raise large with AJ preflop, and to reraises you will be folding 6xbb instead of 3x.

As a conclusion, I don't think raising preflop should be based on your hand, it should be based on eliminating hands weaker than yours (but with outs) preflop, commiting players to a pot which you intend to make money on, and gathering info on opponent's hands.