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(3 votes) 
June 11, 2012
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hey all,
after not playing a lot the last couple of months i started playing more and more again.
it seems that two trends are popping up:
1.) 2.1-2.3x raising even in the ante stage
i saw a lot of good players at the tables making it 2.1-2.3x from all positions deep. e.g. moorman1 bigger75 final 30 or so, pads1161 in the sunday500. FireFaux deep in the bigger75 even made it 3x almost the entire time
– so my question: is this a new trend as people are realizing that people are defending there blinds often. therefore charging slightly more preflop against weaker ranges or is it just a psychological thing as the bet sizes look so strange then. lets say at 900/1800 making it 3780 instead of 3600. for me the 3780 gets me to think longer to size the 3bet
-3bets are getting bigger:
i watched pads1161 a lot last night in the sunday500 and he made almost all his 3bets 3x IP and 3.5xOOP.
this is something i am doing on a regular basis. especially OOP with ante as people are flat calling 3bets very wide. which they actually should given the good odds.so again making it bigger charges more when hero has value hand and when he is doing it as a bluff it helps ranging opponent better as the calling range should be slightly tighter
whats your opinion?
cheers
TPE Pro
August 3, 2011
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I am pretty much on board with all of what you are saying. The only time I minraise now is in turbos so I can play more hands due to time restraints before your stack dwindles. Deep I don't think you really need to go as big as 3x in position and 3.5x OOP but something like 2.5x in and 3x out should suffice. Depends on your opponents, hand strength (be careful if opponents regs they will exploit sizing tells), and dynamics of what we wanna do in the hand. For ex, 3.5x 3bet OOP with A-rag to get a laggy opponent to fold.
Hope this helps.
GL
August 10, 2014
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I've been trying to come to terms with this as well, as it is clearly an evolution from 5 years ago.
A couple follow up questions if you don't mind,
If people are increasing their pre sizing they're also tighting their opening range?
Those of us still playing the micros and small stakes, is it safe to assume people are still folding too frequently to min raises? And we're safe keeping a wide opening range?
June 27, 2015
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you guys check out the article in the article section titled “evolution or raise sizing”? quick article but a great read I thought.
August 10, 2014
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Thanks! I'll check it out.
February 20, 2015
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A root cause of this trend could be the overall average increase in starting stacks.
June 12, 2012
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First question would be (IMO) how comfortable are you with your post flop play… And regardless of your comfort level you still don’t want to play too many hand OOP.. But In regards to those sizes, yeah it has been a more trending style lately, but no matter what the open sizes are, you have to find a way to exploit them w/o letting the rest of the table that you own them now. Like DannyN said regs will pick up on exactly what you are doing, so try not to become the one who gets exploited.
There is also a TON of limp calling raises OOP as well, so focus on what these players are turning over, then adjust accordingly.
Cheers!!
Keep Calm and Grind Hard
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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Personally, I’ve had a lot of success varying raise sizes according to stack depths. I find that since postflop play has such a big impact on the overall EV of a situation, and deeper stacks are liable to generate more postflop play, raising bigger at deeper stacks tends to increase our postflop EV in these situations by growing the size of the pot, while raising smaller at stacks <30bb gives us greater maneuverability.
It’s essentially the same principle as sizing your bets postflop according to whichever % of pot allows you to get all-in on the river – you size your bets preflop according to how much there is behind in stacks that will be in play once you get postflop or once 3/4 bets go in. This tends to generate a lot of 3xing at stacks >80bb, and a lot of minraising below 30bb, with plenty of variation in between depending on the situation and opponent tendencies.
August 10, 2014
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theginger45 said
Personally, I’ve had a lot of success varying raise sizes according to stack depths. I find that since postflop play has such a big impact on the overall EV of a situation, and deeper stacks are liable to generate more postflop play, raising bigger at deeper stacks tends to increase our postflop EV in these situations by growing the size of the pot, while raising smaller at stacks
It’s essentially the same principle as sizing your bets postflop according to whichever % of pot allows you to get all-in on the river – you size your bets preflop according to how much there is behind in stacks that will be in play once you get postflop or once 3/4 bets go in. This tends to generate a lot of 3xing at stacks >80bb, and a lot of minraising below 30bb, with plenty of variation in between depending on the situation and opponent tendencies.
Great post Mr. Ginger. Thanks!
In the mid and late stages when stacks are more shallow, I 2.3x open most of the time. I usually min the button.
Does such a slight difference change things in the way you’re describing? As opposed to min raising? I imagine it doesn’t change much for the BB, but it may tighten other position’s ranges, and make post slightly easier?
I just wonder if it is too small of a sizing change.
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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It doesn’t necessarily influence people’s actual ranges that much in some spots, but the crucial difference is that it should theoretically influence their frequencies at least a little, and that difference between what actually happens and what should happen can allow us to generate an additional edge on occasion, especially once you consider the relationship between preflop ranges and ranges further on in the hand.
As far as pot sizes go, think of it this way. Let’s say we’re looking at a hand where we raise preflop, get one caller on the button, and we bet all 3 streets for exactly half pot and get called. If we minraise preflop, the pot going to the flop is likely to be around 6.4BB, then after the flop it’ll be 12.8BB, after the turn it’ll be 25.6BB, and after the river it’ll be 51.2BB. If we make it 2.3x preflop, then the pot going to the flop will be 7BB, then after the flop 14BB, then 28bb, then 56BB. A 0.3BB difference preflop resulted in a 4.8BB difference by the river.
This is just a very simple example – you can see how in situations where we have enough chips behind to play multiple streets, slight changes in raise sizing can create situations where we can gain extra EV from our opponents’ mistakes. If we made our betsizing bigger than half pot postflop, the difference would have been bigger, too – I just made it half pot to simplify the calculations.
August 10, 2014
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Well put, thank you for the reply!
Not an inconsiderable amount of EV, as you describe.
February 20, 2015
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Another thought: We know awareness about calling minraises from the BB is pretty high these days. Even a 2.1X raise could dissuade that philosophy for those who don’t understand why they’re calling these raises from the BB. In other words the gap between 2 and 2.1X is psychologically larger than the gap between 2.1 and 2.2X, for example.
On the other hand, if people are making this call and exposing themselves to poor post-flop play, maybe that is better for you, provided you can play post-flop better than your opponent. (And you’ll be in position, so hopefully you can :))
TPE Pro
August 25, 2012
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Yeah, that’s a good point. However, it’s important to realise that if your raise sizing changes and your frequency of folding to 3-bets stays the same, then it’s probably you who’s getting exploited. As your raise sizing gets bigger, your range should get slightly tighter, because you’re incentivising your opponent to 3-bet bluff you more since there’s more in the pot for them to win. You need to be correspondingly decreasing your frequency of folding to 3-bets once you increase your sizing.
Ideally we would want to be making these changes for exploitative reasons – putting our opponents in positions where they’re not making the adaptations that they should be. But we need to bear in mind what the counter-exploit for that would be, because there are times where we could get exploited without even realising it, or without our opponent even trying – against a particularly aggressive player, for example, who 3-bets an unusually high %, it may end up actually costing us quite a bit if we raise bigger “to make him fold more” or “to make it more expensive for him to bluff us” and then don’t make the corresponding adjustment to our folding frequency once he actually does 3-bet us. In this scenario, he benefits because he simply wins a bigger pot every time we raise/fold.
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