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Call, raise or shove
Boxster
Member Posts: 4,461
Morning £3.30 BH and tables are very 'bingo'
| Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EGGY | Small blind | 75.00 | 75.00 | 5315.00 | |
| jockrock | Big blind | 150.00 | 225.00 | 5725.00 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| ALANJ450 | Call | 150.00 | 375.00 | 8405.00 | |
| alvarez03 | Call | 150.00 | 525.00 | 8692.50 | |
| Boxster | Raise | 450.00 | 975.00 | 8795.00 | |
| EGGY | Call | 375.00 | 1350.00 | 4940.00 | |
| jockrock | Fold | ||||
| ALANJ450 | Call | 300.00 | 1650.00 | 8105.00 | |
| alvarez03 | Call | 300.00 | 1950.00 | 8392.50 | |
| Flop | |||||
| |||||
| EGGY | Check | ||||
| ALANJ450 | Bet | 975.00 | 2925.00 | 7130.00 | |
| alvarez03 | Call | 975.00 | 3900.00 | 7417.50 | |
| Boxster | |||||
Comments
Exactly what I was gonna say.
Also if you want to raise with any kind of frequency then surely you dont want to be raising 4/5x with all your opens?
raising this much is so transparent even to bums.
TBF though, there's a possibility I'm confused here lol... I get confused with Sky's HHs sometimes because I think when it says raise 450, it's not showing what they've raised TO, it's the amount they raised on top of the original bet (I think!). If that's the case, so it went 150, 150 and he raised another 450 (to 600) then I'd say it's fine.
There is still plenty of play left in this tourney why restrict that by bloating pots. The only time this would be acceptable is if he would be opening a super tight range and wouldnt want to open light ever and hoping this is not adjusted to by the table by them folding to his opens with 90%.
The only reason to not raise to 4x or 5x here would be that you think they're never, ever going to fold for even that sizing. The options then would seem to be to either limp behind- disguising your strength - or to raise even bigger. A bigger raise would of course be higher variance but you have to say that facing two limpers our AK is very likely to be best and any raise would be a value bet.
I would certainly raise more in this spot, at least to 600.
By making a bigger raise we're narrowing their post-flop range and generally we'll only be facing one player on that flop, rather than two or three. Most of the time the flop plays out simply as "check-c-bet-fold" and when we hit our Ace or King we know we're likely to be best. Of course, we should be happy if we take the pot down pre-flop as well.
The issue I have is with your suggestion of not bloating the pot by making a big pre-flop raise: The point I think I'm making is that with a 3x raise, we almost guarantee that we will bloat the pot and see a flop multi-way, without giving ourselves a chance to take it down pre-flop and with little idea of our opponents' holdings. If we make a bigger raise we may take it down pre-flop and we bloat the pot only a little more as we're unlikely to be called by multiple players.
I think the difference in thinking is purely down to (as you say) whether players will limp-call nearly as often for 5x as they will for 3x. In my experience that's not been the case. Of course it does happen and it can be annoying, but I think in the long-run you get far fewer callers when making the 5x raise.
I think playing straightforward ABC poker is usually best against passive players. So when facing limpers, the old chestnut of "3x + 1x for every limper" is still the way to go, regardless of how big we think our skill edge is.
If we take this specific hand as an example: When making it only 300 more our opponent is actually getting pretty decent implied odds to set-mine against us even if nobody else calls our raise. If we make it 600 more, they're not getting good odds. They'd be making a mistake by calling for 600 but would be making a mistake by not calling for 300. We want our opponents to be making mistakes and if we think they're going to call either way, then a bigger raise is better.
So, if this situation was played out many times, I think the bigger raise is alot better. This particular board would likely see us coolered either way but that's not going to happen very often as it requires us to hit an Ace or King and our opponent to hit a set. Even then there'll be some boards that allow us to get away without going broke with just one-pair, as we won't need to raise the flop against just one opponent... though admittedly we probably would go broke most of the time.
Poker strategy is all about long-term decision making, not short-term results: How does our strategy fair against weaker Aces, weaker Kings, etc... The bad result of this hand isn't important if our decisions were good.
I know you know this, IDONKCALLU.
There are plenty of ppl who will advocate a tight opening range and large raises and cbets etc etc and im sure its a winning strategy on here BUT i would say not optimum.
As you come up against tougher fields this will be less and less profitable.
I don't think this has a place in optimum mtt strategy tbh.
I don't advocate a general strategy of being tight and making large bets regardless of your opponents. I'm just saying that a tight, ABC strategy is the best way to overcome players limp-calling. It's no good trying to be clever and making ellaborate bluffs against players who only see the strength of their own hand. Just exploit them with strong hands and simple plays that they are not good enough to exploit.
No good player should ever be able to define themselves as either "tight" or "loose". We need to adapt to our circumstances.
Bold 2: What would you define a 'strong hand'
Bold 3: never defined anything as simply tight / loose, just referred to tight or loose opening ranges in this spot.
I wouldn't want to limp behind very often but I'd rather do that than raise 3x, bloat the pot and still play multi-way. The only thing we gain from that is the betting lead but the main benefit of having the betting lead is that our c-bets make sense. That's not much use multi-way as, when you miss the flop, how happy are you going to be about c-betting into three players with random holdings?
2) Obviously hand strength depends on position. On the button I might raise any two cards that work together, just to isolate the weaker players knowing that this simple raise, combined with my c-betting opportunities will be hugely profitable. In the Small Blind I need a truly premium hand to raise: TT+ and AK...
3) I was just saying as a more general point that players shouldn't try to define themselves in that way and you seemed to be suggesting that I was advocating a particular style as being one-size fits all for any MTT.