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

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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.

How’s it going Ed, after watching Poker Made Simple I figured I’d read NLHTAP [No Limit Hold’em: Theory and Practice -Ed] again which makes a lot more sense now and I can definitely recommend this to others- all of the pot control stuff makes so much more sense after watching “Small Hands Small Pots”. But my question is regarding the preflop advice in NLHTAP. You guys advocate mixing up your preflop raise sizes in NLHTAP, I realize that you would be making standard raises for the sake of simplicity in the Stoxpoker video’s but wonder if you advocate the preflop style mentioned in NLHTAP for the games around 50NL small stakes- the book is a little vague about whether you mean that this is suitable for all forms of NLH. Also, I notice on your site (NPA) the comments about playing 50nl on FTP, what did you find in terms of raisng preflop worked best for you in these games? Are there any plans for you to be putting out any small stakes vids on Stoxpoker?

Thanks for the great question, Logman.

Here’s the deal with online play versus live. In live play, players are generally raise size-insensitive. That is, in a $2-$5 game, for instance, many players will call a $30 or $35 raise preflop almost as easily as they’ll call a $15 raise. So you have a lot of latitude to adjust the size for your purposes.

Online is a bit of a different ball of wax. The other players are tighter, and they seem to be more size-sensitive, so you get different results if you raise 3.5x BB versus 6BB. Also, you get 3-bet a lot more in general, which adds a whole nother wrinkle.

I’d say that the preflop raise sizing ideas, while they apply to all no limit games, tend to have more value in games where players are relatively size-insensitive and where you can control the final size of the pot through your raise size (i.e., you can expect not to get 3-bet).

Combine that with scrambling to madly click buttons in the face of multiple beeps from all my open tables, and I admit that most of my preflop raises are the “standard” size you get by hitting the pot button on FTP. If I played only one or two tables at a time, I have no doubt that I’d be varying my preflop raise sizes some depending on, for instance, what sort of players have limped or are in the blinds, the stack sizes, and the sort of pot I want to play. But it’s one of multiple subtleties that I ax from my game due to the drive to play ever more tables at once.

One thing I do do very often on 50NL is alter my opening standards based on who is in the blinds/has limped in. When those 50/7/1 players have either entered the pot already or are sitting in the blinds, I try to find an excuse to play many hands… stuff like T6s and K7o. I do it more online than live because live I’m a whole lot more likely to get 3 callers when I try to isolate than I am online. Since I can get more pots heads-up with position against the bad players, I open up more. The one thing I watch out for when I do this is if someone who has been 3-betting me a lot is on my left. If that’s the case, then I tighten back up some.

So basically, I alter my standards a lot based on who is in the pot, and I would likely alter my raise sizes some too if I had more time to take in the situation, but I think in general, because of the way online games play versus live games, that kind of raise size variation doesn’t offer quite as much benefit in the online games.

I’m planning some playing videos as part of the Poker Made Simple series. I have one more instructional video planned, then I’m going to do a quiz video, and then I plan to do some play videos where I emphasize the ideas from the Poker Made Simple series so you can see how they all come together into a simple strategy that beats small no-limit games.

To check out the Poker Made Simple video series (8 videos so far), and to see my table play videos when they’re done, sign up at StoxPoker today.

Tags: david-sklansky, full-tilt-poker, microstakes, nlhtap, no-limit-holdem, no-limit-holdem-theory-and-practice, poker, Poker Made Simple, preflop raise sizing, preflop-play, stoxpoker

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