Getting back into poker after 15 months, I've got a tiny br on Black Chip and am playing 2NL 6-max. Table VPiP's are usually 40% or higher, often 50%. Tons of limping and plenty of players willing to stick some chips in. So, soft games.

But I wasn't beating them. Tons of multiway pots, getting 3bet a lot for these stakes. After breaking even for 8k hands, I decided to adjust my open-raises, increasing them 1BB in all positions. Before, I was opening:

EP - 4BB
MP - 3BB
CO - 3BB
BTN - 2BB
SB - 3BB

I changed to:

EP - 5BB
MP - 4BB
CO - 4BB
BTN - 3BB
SB - 4BB

Of course, I immediately went on a heater, so I'm not sure of the impact, yet. Trying not be results oriented. Here's my thought process:

  1. I'm playing tight, 21/17 over last 8k hands. I'm getting to a lot flops with TPGK and overpair hands, but those hands work best heads up.
  2. My cbets on the flop and turn weren't ever getting anyone to fold. I was getting rivered a lot by hands I felt should have folded to 2-barrels. If I open-raise more, my cbets look stronger, too.
  3. I was getting 3bet a ton. Small open-raises do encourage action, but playing tight I was mainly folding to 3bets without a Top 5% hand. I thought a larger open-raise might discourage the 3bet monkeys.
  4. If they aren't folding enough, that's a good problem, right? If I bet more, I'll still get action and have larger pots. Positionally I'm 10/10 EP, 12/11 MP, 22/20 CO and 33/28 BTN, I feel like I typically have a pretty strong rage, or position, or both.
  5. If I get to a point where my cbets are working, I can begin cbetting more successfully when the flop smacks my range, but misses my actual cards. At the moment, I hate cbetting AK-air because no one's folding to a cbet, and not many are folding to a 2-barrel either.


Am I off target here? Does this seem reasonable? Are there factors I haven't considered, and should? Any thoughts would be appreciated.