dakota-xx said:
My head is going to explode. I always thought min raising was the act of the devil and I never did it. Then I start studying and watching videos and reading articles and find out that it is pretty much how you should raise in early position so I change my game up some.
I also keep hearing never limp - if you can't raise fold. Especially if you are first to act. So I change that up.
Then I am reading HOH and he advises a hell of a lot of calling hands based on your position. (Of course he wants you to mix it up - but calling is fine by him with certain hands even if you are first to act).
And he advises raising at least 3xbb always.
So now I am all over the place and never know what to do.
At the risk of bringing
poker strategy discussion into this casual chat thread...
Like anything else, ask 10 people, get 10 different opinions.
There are so many ways to play poker that you just have to try different things and stick with what works for you. Then if you're like me, you'll start changing things up when you hit a downswing, which generally isn't the advisable thing to do.
As far as raising from EP, I'm curious which articles and videos you're referring to? I've never heard that min-raise recommendation -- in fact just the opposite. Pretty much everything I read says you shouldn't be playing anything from EP that isn't worth a solid raise, and then you should add an extra bb or so because of the positional disadvantage. So if you're UTG with a hand you would usually raise 3x with, make it 4x or 4.5x. It helps to build fold
equity by pricing out marginal limpers that come behind you. So suggesting min-raising OOP as a habit would seem to invite a lot callers, something you generally don't want OOP unless you're drawing to a cheap flop (and maybe that's a good time to do it, to neutralize steal attempts on a limped pot).
Regarding limping, I don't think I've ever seen it suggested to "never limp." The consensus I've gathered is that you should rarely, if ever,
open limp. If you're the first to enter a pot, you should be raising. But there are lots of factors that would make limping behind with position a good play. If you are stacked compared to the blinds, in late position with several limpers in front of you, and you don't have some uber-aggressive player to act behind you, you've got great
odds to see a cheap flop with a hand you would have normally folded. If the flop hits you, you're probably going to get paid off by somebody. Even when it doesn't hit you, if it doesn't hit anyone else and the flop is checked around to you, you can often steal the pot there with a bet. The opportunity doesn't come up for me that often, but I think if I analyzed the hands where I did it, it has been a profitable play. This of course assumes reasonable blind levels -- at high blinds I virtually NEVER limp, unless maybe when I'm ridiculously deepstacked and in the above scenario. High-blind-limping is almost always -EV, and it bugs me to no end to see a SS routinely limp for 20% of their stack. So overall, I've learned that limping should be a fairly
uncommon play, but not a forbidden play.
3x bb raising seems to be the most common convention I see. Which HoH are you referring to? I recently revisited Vol 1 after starting to play tourneys again, and I seem to remember him advocating a lot of min-raising even at low blinds, which surprised me based on other advice I've been given. But I hear that Vol 2 and Vol 3 have him changing up much of his advice from Vol 1, I presume based on the assumption of more advanced skills, so you may be referring to a later volume (I have Vol 2 on the way from Amazon). Personally, I vary my raise amounts based on numerous factors, like ring vs tourney, position, limpers in front of me, etc.
