Re-raising...whats the point?
Alright this might sound a bit strange but I've been thinking about it alot.
What is the point of re-raising pre-flop in low limit stakes??
Firstly it pretty much tells everyone you have one of the 4 following hands:
AK, AA, KK, QQ.
Why would I ever want to make my hand that face up??
I feel like every time I do it everyone at the table knows exactly where I'm at and it just seems like if I made a call instead of a re-raise I disguise my hand much better and it gives me the flexibility to easily fold terrible flops. Not that folding is all that hard to do but sometimes I still get a bit married to my hands, getting way better at not doing that however.
This of course usually applies when you're in position, because oop with even KK you really don't want to see that Ace hit the flop oop so I don't mind the re-raise there, and it kind of looks like I steal or a re-steal if you happen upon a Big Blind special. At any rate what are some thoughts on the pre-flop re-raise and when/how/why/where should it be used and just some general thoughts on the subject.
What is the point of re-raising pre-flop in low limit stakes??
Firstly it pretty much tells everyone you have one of the 4 following hands:
AK, AA, KK, QQ.
Why would I ever want to make my hand that face up??
I feel like every time I do it everyone at the table knows exactly where I'm at and it just seems like if I made a call instead of a re-raise I disguise my hand much better and it gives me the flexibility to easily fold terrible flops. Not that folding is all that hard to do but sometimes I still get a bit married to my hands, getting way better at not doing that however.
This of course usually applies when you're in position, because oop with even KK you really don't want to see that Ace hit the flop oop so I don't mind the re-raise there, and it kind of looks like I steal or a re-steal if you happen upon a Big Blind special. At any rate what are some thoughts on the pre-flop re-raise and when/how/why/where should it be used and just some general thoughts on the subject.
Comments
I'll re-raise with suited connectors or one-gappers sometimes, just to mix things up. This works especially well when
- Table is loose and you have a squeaky-tight image
- There's a raise in front and a caller before you act
- You have position.
I know the whole "tight is right" thing is important, but considering most people's raising range (for an average tighty, A10+, 99+ maybe?) is MUCH smaller than their re-raising range (AK, JJ+), you are VERY unlikely to be dominated by Ax when you hold 78 or 67 or something like that. Plus, you have position, plus the tendency is to check to the PF raiser on most flops.. if you hit big on a ragged board, they never see it coming, if you miss but have a draw, you get a free card, and if you miss on a ragged board, you can try to pop again and they'll fold to your OBVIOUS AA / KK
Mark
Mark
- It bloats the pot pre-flop to make it easier to play for stacks.
- It bloats the pot pre-flop to allow you to play a controlled pot for more BB than you usually would.
- It allows you to take control of the hand
- It allows you to narrow his range considerably
Personally I find way too many people 3 bet from the blinds. You want to be 3 betting from the button the vast majority of the time.
Player in EP raises standard 3x bb...what's his range? Almost wide open, anything from 55 or 66+, AJo+ perhaps, maybe even suited connectors.
Action folds to you, and you aren't folding, so your choices are cold call and see a flop, or re raise and get the money in preflop if possible
Cold calling: shows weakness, and doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know about your opponent's hand. Yes, he could have a big pair, or he could have crap like low to med pockets, or suited connectors. At this level (micros), I've seen players raise with A2o+ in EVERY position. Lets say you cold call...flop comes down A86, two hearts, one club (doesn't really matter the suits really, but I want to demonstrate a drawy board). He's first to act and throws out a contibet of say 2/3 pot...what do you do??
The Ace is a bad card, as he could have any ace with any kicker, and even a bad kicker might give him two pair here. Even if his kicker is crap, you're beat already because you let him enter cheaply. With a flush and straight draw board, if he has any of the other hands mentioned, he now has odds and outs to continue against you. You can't raise him unless you think he's bluffing, but you don't have ANY credible evidence that he is. If you do raise, if he has an ace, or if he connected with a draw of ANY kind, he's calling you, or worse, re raising you. Either way, you still have no idea what he may or may not have, you're still blind. Turn comes down, and lets say its 9h...now EVERYTHING hit...flush, straight, and more kicker hits too. You have no choice but to fold.
Raise Preflop: you've shown your opponent you have a hand and willing to risk building a bigger pot, and more importantly, force him to make a choice...fold, call, or raise.
Fold, thank you very much, take down a nice pot preflop.
Call, you're ahead of everything except AA here, and chances are you dominate your opponent. You can also rule out most Arag hands, and suited connectors, and most small to medium pocket pairs here (maybe..at these levels, don't discount them too much). You're now forcing him to put his money in behind, and he's hoping to connect on the flop. Even if manages to hit an ace on the flop, he made the mistake preflop, not you.
Raise...now you KNOW a lot more about his hand. If he's re raising you, he's got most likely, a good pair most likely JJ+, or AKo, AKs, or maybe AQ. Yes, he MIGHT have AA too, but unlikely in most cases. Still, his re raise only guarantees one thing for you...all your money, and his, is going in the pot preflop...with YOU being the dominator MOST of the time.
Thats just the simple ABC of reasoning for re raising. The advanced version is to steal from known weaker opponents, but this requires experience and skill in recognizing who and when you can steal from.
That sounds good, but doesn't 3 betting from the blinds make sense?
Most openers from the CO or BTN raising range is wider therefore my 3 betting range should be wider in the blinds because they are less likely to hold a legitimate hand. I guess thats just the way I've always thought of it.
If I 3 bet with these and get called, I'm always out to lunch with what to do on bad boards for my hand, like A K x with Queens and Im out of position and villain cold called my re-raise. I always feel like I HAVE to c-bet every time here because I need to be representing either AK or trip A's or K's. Checking just feels like shooting up a HUGE white flag and its so easy to see through.
And the advanced version--is this because weaker players think you're only doing this with legitimate good cards and therefore you should be able to steal the pot away from them a profitable percentage of the time?
You need a better hand to re-raise with in the blinds than you would say in the dealer position, since you lose the positional advantage...
I think in general my range for 3-bet in the blinds is AQ+ / QQ+
On the button?... lots
Mark
The advanced lesson is useful more for those that overplay their hands all the time. If a player continues to raise first in, then the 3bet can be a useful weapon against him, just to slow him down a bit. I don't recommend doing it very often though unless you KNOW he'll fold most of the time, and this you will need your notes and reads to be able to to play against them.
Do you have any kind of software to capture this information? Pokertracker or Elephant or something similiar? If not, its a good idea to invest in it. Elephant is free IF you know where to get it (PM me)
Mark...thanks for the insight...useful to know at next RC!
Myself personally I like to attack any limping when I am in position and I will throw out a raise whenever there is 3-4 people who have limped in after the blinds, especially low limit.
Now my opening range for these types of "steals" are usually suited connectors or any A-rag suited. It is also important to have a plan on what you want to do after the flop and basically how you are going to play it.
Ideally when you raise for the most part you are representing a "strong hand." Now you are worried about always having to C-bet, well think a little deeper into your pre/post flop play and try to figure out what your opponents are thinking and why they did what they did.
Here is a good example:
Blinds - 25/50 effective stacks say 1800 for argument sake...
2 people limp plus sb+bb so currently there is 175 in the pot. If I have say 87 or J10, or soemthing playable where I would like to see a flop in position I will usually raise it up. In this case I will raise it up to about 325...what this does is it puts everyone to the test.
1. If they call they have what I consider a semi decent hand - say small pair/a10-Aj (usually AK/AQ or any big pair will play back at you)
2. If they re-raise that means you can easily muck your hand and you escape any certain preflop disasters by limping and hitting (IE you limp with 87 and the flop comes 872 and someone is sitting with 22...most likely 22 is not calling a huge re-raise preflop OOP)
Now lets say you have had 1 person call your raise (one of the original limpers) and the flop comes:
Ad 6c 2s
The original limp caller checks it to you....there is now 775 in the middle. Should you automatically C-bet in this situation yes and no.
1. My thought here is, why would AK/AQ C-bet on such a dry board, wouldn't you want to see if you can get your opponent to bluff at it on the turn. When you think about it, how strong could the original limpers hand be if he limp calls you out of position, unless he was setting a trap because of earlier activity. Most times this flop has not even come close to hitting your opponent and they will fold.
2. Now on the other hand if you have a tricky player they may read your C-bet on this board as exactly that and then check raise you with any two all in to actually see if you have an ace or any hand there.
So sometimes you can get away with having 55 on that board and checking the flop as a sign of strength then betting the turn when you think a "scare card" (although it is not scary cause you know you are ahead but you want to make out like you are a donk....) and the original limper will fold saying to himself "ha that guy was trying to trap me, but I knew he had an ace....sucker..." Meanwhile you are saying "man that guy plays poorly, calls a huge raise oop and then checks the flop and turn to me....HAHAHA"
So always keep situational raises and bets in mind when playing and you will find that more times than not you will put yourself in a favourable position to win the pot based on what you think your opponents are thinking.
I made a guy lay down AQ in a live game the other night when i had KK after raising preflop then check calling all the way down on a A10455 board and value betting the river. Just because I knew he had just called my bet, bet the flop weak (why wouldn't he allow me to stab it on the turn), bet the same on the turn..then when the river paired I value bet to make out like I had a monster and I was trapping all along.....
Just a quick example of playing the player and getting inside there head and how you can manipulate outcomes....
The problem with 3 betting too much out of the blinds is that you are constantly playing OOP.
Think about the standard line in these spots.
Button opens to 3.5BB
You in the BB hold JJ and make it 13BB to go. Button calls.
Flop Q K or A in it.
You bet 10 - 13 BB and he calls.
Now until you have some real history on your villain you are done with the hand. You have dished off in the neighborhood of 25BB and you are going away. This is bad business.
I folded presuming he had AK.
So yes the re-raise helped in that I pretty much knew his hand, but at the same time I lost a decent amount of chips when he outflops me.
I should check how often AK hits on the flop, I guess that would ease my mind. I guess if he misses more often than he hits than its +ev in the long run to make this play, and just shitty in the short run when it happens.
If he had AK at this level all the chips are in preflop, but ya you are prob beat at this point.
First, do you have any history on this player? How many hands have you played against him?
Second, is he raising a lot? Say more than 30% or 40% of his hands? Or is he playing fairly tight and only raising 15% to 25% of his hands?
Third, have you seen him push in a hand recently when the flop looked very co ordinated like it did?
All these questions will help you in accessing your opponents and deciding what course of action you should take. I"m not saying he didn't have AK, he certainly could have, but he's just as likely to play with Ad and a rag in his hand, or he might even caught a set on you.
The point is, you can't have too much information. Personally, if you felt you were beat, good fold. Take your lumps and move on to the next hand.
Just remember that folding SAVES you money. And folding on a flop like that, against someone you have no history on, is not a bad move. That being said, you can't win without risking a portion of your stack either, so again, the more information the better.
Good luck Quinner. You're asking all the right questions, and its great to see some strategy being discussed here again. Keep it up.
+1
Definitely nice to see the discussions. Can't wait to see Quinner winning big money and then showing him these first posts...LOL
But on a serious note, I have also learned a lot in a few months just from these discussions because of the different minds sharing thoughts.
Like they always say Poker takes a few minutes to learn but many years to master (if you can call it mastering)
FYI relative position refers to your position in relation to the pre flop raiser in a multi-way pot.
For example, MP raises, you call on the button, bb calls also.
Flop hits and BB checks, original raiser c-bets and you...have poor relative position. You are sandwiched here and need a big hand to continue.
But he does has a point, it is important to mix up your game, but for beginners, its MORE important to play ABC poker and leave the tricky stuff for another time when you have enough experience and skills to make such a play profitable.
This means that most of the time you will lead the hand and if you call you'll win it about 50% of the time. I think you could have called here, but it's another very marginal decision.
Curious...how did you come up with this percentage? Can you justify it?
30%: He has AK - and wins 30%
30%: He has AQ and hits his nut flush about 40% of the time= he wins 12%
30%: He has AJ - 12% there also
10% - He's on a bluff or holds a lower pair - he wins 0%
So IF my guess about his hand distribution would be correct, he will win 52% of the time if I call his shove. With the money/chips already in the pot (Quinner didn't give us the exact amount, but since he re-raised I would guess it was a decent amount) that means it should be profitable for us in the long run to call. At least in a cash game (In tournament play you have to consider what the equity you'll gain if you win the pot is worth compared to the other scenario: that you will be busted and out)
If you've read anything by Sklansky or especially Harrington's books you should be familiar with the type of reasoning I'm trying to do here. To simplify the situation above, let's say there was 300 in the pot already and hero and villain both had stacks on 1000. Now: say we play this hand 100 times and Villain shoves every time. What will happen?
If we fold we will have 1000 left in our stack every time - Average stack size after the pot: 1000
If we call we will be either busted 52% of the time or double up to 2300 48% of the time - Average stack size after the pot: 0.48*2300=1104
So it should be positive expectancy to call... Let's not forget however that Villain still has the advantage here, because he can add some fold equity to his estimated winnings by playing the hand like this.
Surpsingly, these two posts have helped my game ENOURMOUSLY. I never thought about this. First off great 3-bet range from the blinds, it's strong enough to be fine on a very good number of flops so I use it and secondly...re-raising the button lots....wow huge huge huge +EV. For two reasons a) its a raised pot IN position, duh. b) I steal so many flops from scared low limit players its insane. They always think I have it. Great example, KJo on the button, standard raise from CO I 3 bet, get called, flop comes down 6,7,9r checked to me, I throw in a decent sized bet and take the pot down 90% of the time. So far anyway....I haven't had THAT many opportunities to try it out. Anyway great posts!
Remember there are people out there that will notice this. When they notice we're not seeing what your showdown cards are, they're going to pick up on what you're doing. When they call you on the flop and you can't fire a second or third bullet, they're going to notice. Suddenly, they're pressuring you back, and trapping you...
Basically, it's still great to do, but you REALLY have to develop your "spidey-sense"
mark