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Originally Posted by Waggho
No it´s not a useless raise. It´s a potbuilding raise. If you think you have the best hand, then a raise is correct. You could argue that he should raise more, but a $1 raise here is certainly not useless. And you don´t need magical hands as you only need your hand to hold up in more than one time in six in a six-way pot.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say it annoys me to death and slows down the hand... how's that? Also it bumps up the likelihood of a pissing match - someone raising another couple dollars just because they're annoyed. Suddenly these two guys end up all-in with pocket 8s and KJ. Which they're welcome to do, but they're forcing me off some decent hands that I want to play.
You're right that all you need is for your hand to hold up a certain % of the time for this to be a profitable move. However - if poker is already a game of exploiting slim statistical advantages, this technique makes those advantages even slimmer. Instead of getting into a two or three way pot where you are a favorite to win, you are getting into bigger pots with more people where you might be lucky to be a 25% favorite. In addition, those premium hands become harder to play because of the sheer diversity of opponents in the pot. Let's say you are heads-up with someone holding AK, and the flop is Kc Qc 9h... pretty good flop. You'd bet that hard and expect to win most of the time. In a six way pot, you could be up against a straight or two pair. You've probably got straight and flush draws out there. Any bet you put out short of pushing all-in, you will get called by a couple people - who will have pretty good pot odds - and if the next card is a 10? a J? a club? Your AK might still be best but you may never know. You actually lose some of your statistical edge because you've set yourself up for a hand that is dangerous and hard to navigate correctly.
To me the purpose of raising is to drive out lesser hands, increase your statistical edge on each hand you choose to play, and therefore profit more easily on a hand-by-hand basis. If you elect to just juice the pot and constantly play even your premium hands against four or five opponents, you're going to have to be a better player to turn anywhere close to the same profit in the short or long run.
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