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This could also be titled “Why it sucks to get minraised OOP (feat. T-Pain)”

There’s a reason many poker players are fascinated by investing– our day-to-day job is essentially a collection of small investments; he raises UTG, I have 55…. I’ll invest 4bb. Maybe my investment pays off, maybe it doesn’t. In real-world investing, however, leverage is the name of the game. Let’s consider real estate quickly. The larger the loan you receive from a bank to buy a house, with a low interest rate, means the less of your own capital you have to risk to make the investment. Let’s take a house being sold for $1M. If the bank puts up $500,000 and you put up the other half million, you’re not getting very good leverage. You’re both risking the same. However, if the bank puts up $900,000 and you put up $100,000, all of a sudden you’re leveraging the bank. You are risking a relatively small amount against the large amount of the bank. Assuming that you can turn a profit from renting the house at a rate higher than the interest on the loan, the better your leverage the faster you’re in the green.

Cool, so what does that have to do with poker?

I’ll give you something from my experience. I played pretty ABC en route to beating 2/4-5/10 on FTP, but when I reached 10/20 I realized that ABC was probably not going to be enough to cut it anymore. However, I was reasonably good at picking out mistakes in overall game dynamic, and I quickly realized that people were c-betting way way way too often (a problem that is just now slowly becoming corrected). So, my plan was to raise and c/r a lot of flops. Sounds like a good plan, right?

Damn straight it was. The problem was that I had no sense of leverage. In the past, while playing ABC, I had generally been raising the flop with strong hands far more than bluffs. And, when you raise a strong hand, it doesn’t make much difference whether you raise huge, average, or small, so long as you’re still stacking off. For example, if I have 55 at 5/10 with 100bb stacks, I call a raise OTB, pot is 82 on a flop of 7h5h2c. He bets 60, I raise to 300, it doesn’t really matter that my raise size is kinda too big because I’m always stacking off when he shoves.

The problem is, if I have Ts9s on that same flop, and I raise to 300, I’m burning a fair amount of money. It’s not that raising T9s is bad on that flop–it’s not bad at all. It’s that past a certain point, I’m not buying anything with the extra money in the pot. I’m sacrificing leverage. What’s the difference between raising to 300 and say, 250? How about 200? How about 175? Let’s assume, for the sake of debate, that 175 is the optimal amount to raise on that flop. If my opponent comes over the top, he’s generally committing a stack. So we’ll say that i’m risking 175, and he’s risking about 750. That’s leverage. Now, he needs me to be bluffing more than 4 times for every 1 time i have a hand worth stacking off with to break even by shoving over the top. He’s unlikely to be able to profitably come over the top enough times. Additionally, his default with overpairs is going to be to autoshove a flop like that, which is actually incorrect (except with AA) in situations when I’m only really calling him with the NFD, monster combo draws, 2pair or sets. Essentially, the beauty of leverage in position means that our opponents can basically do nothing right.

Often, the only theoretically correct move when faced with such a small raise is to just call it OOP. This allows villain to continue with bluffs. However, a good villain will manipulate board texture and bet sizes in such a way to bluff and value bet at proper frequencies to keep us from playing profitably at all. In short, if you keep bet sizes small, your range balanced, and you dominate the button, it’s damn near impossible to play OOP.

One theoretical hand to consider:

MP raises, I call OTB with XX (i call a very wide range here). Pot is 8bb.

Flop is:

8c7c3s

MP bets 6bb, I raise to 18bb with…..? (5c6c 9c6c Tc9c 87s 88 77 33 Acxc QJs Axs 44 KQo AdJd AA 22)

you get the idea.

One thing to think about: Some villains nowadays have started reducing their c-bet % by c/f a lot of flops as the PFR. This is a GREAT reason to call a wide wide range facing their raises pf. However, it should disincline you to raise flops with air as much as you might normally do.

Try this on for size.

HA

A

check out my blog at www.balugabay.com

i can see why people say you're a great coach

Hey Baluga, sweet article, I published it so that it shows up on the front page etc. which created its own forum thread, so I'm just gonna lock this one to avoid confusion.

-DeathDonkey