Q&A #100: Variable Preflop Raise Sizing In Microstakes Online Games

Don't miss one article! Subscribe to the Full Feed RSS or get NPA in your inbox.

When No Limit Hold ‘em: Theory and Practice first came out, there was a lot of hubbub about a very simple idea. We suggested that it makes sense to vary your preflop raise sizes based on the situation: your opponents, your hand, the stack sizes, and the kind of pot you want to play. In this case you might be best off making a raise 3x the size of the big blind, and in that case you might be better off at 5x or 6x. And in some cases, gasp, you might do well to min-raise.

The idea was as controversial to many as it was to me self-evident. After all, no one (at least almost no one) disputes that you should vary your bet and raise sizes on postflop betting rounds to achieve the effect you want. And the factors you should take into consideration when you vary your betting sizes are your hand strength, your opponents’ tendencies and hand ranges, the stack sizes, and more. So if that idea is uncontroversial after the flop, what’s so different before the flop?

Well, the one criticism that I have heard above others is that if you vary your raise sizes, you’ll betray information to savvy opponents who will then torture you with expert laydowns and 3-bets. That’s true, IF

1. You play with savvy players who are capable of reading bet sizes and torturing you, and
2. Your algorithm for choosing your bet size is so naïve and predictable that your opponents can use the information against you

In some games there are savvy players, and in others there aren’t. It definitely pays to know what type of game you’re in and get a sense for how deeply your opponents think. If you are constantly defending yourself against threats that, quite frankly, don’t exist in your game, then you aren’t playing that well.

But beyond that, it’s really not difficult to make a preflop raise sizing algorithm that’s complex and unpredictable enough that it’s very difficult for your opponents to decode in the 10 seconds they have to make their preflop decisions. You bake multiple factors into the decision, and then you throw in a little raw randomization. In other words, you do the exact same thing that you do after the flop to make sure your opponents don’t gather too much information from your bet sizes and exploit you.

So that’s the background on the controversy. Let’s get to today’s question from Logman at Stoxpoker.com.

 Print :: Trackback :: Respond ::