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July 6, 2014
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After reading up on bankroll management I've realised I need to drop in stakes. Earlier today I was playing a session of $10-$50 buy ins and was completely confused when I consistently saw 4x or more opens from early position. I just didn't know what to make of them – they were all coming from 30-50bb stacks in mid/late stages. I ended up just avoiding them and folding mid pocket pairs and KQs type of hands. Any help???
TPE Management
April 6, 2010
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There seems to be a trend ( at least among a subset of players ) leading back to larger opens. Some of the best regs are even opening 4.5x or bigger. Marc and I have spent hours discussing the merits, but one thing we have realized (as you did) is that it confuses the shit out of us. Prevents us from 3 betting light, prevents us from flatting.
Its actually a pretty fascinating dynamic and one that I have not really wrapped my head around yet.
October 6, 2010
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good topic
im the same. if i see someone doing it, my first instinct is wtf! then fold KQ. it makes the merits of the play all the more awesome because of that, because if you can confuse people you half won the battle already
the hard bit comes when we try and integrate it into our game. what sort of range do you do it with compared to normal? do we do it every time? how do we balance this range vs our min open range?
July 12, 2013
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I’ve done this in the micros for some time… Because of the stakes and various opponents I play, I don’t worry too much about balancing it… However it wouldn’t be too difficult to balance I don’t think. I think the range should be similar to a 3b in LP… The only problem is if you don’t feel like you have much of an edge playing post flop it feels like it can be -EV for a lot of players. I’ll be interested to hear others thoughts. Evolution? Or regression?
February 2, 2013
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Very interesting topic.!
I am a very average player and kinda weak pasive. This trend of min raising suits me as I can min raise pre flop and don't have to put out too many chips. If I am big blind and someone min raises, well then that is great as it is not costing me much to call. I want to see a flop as does almost every other player. I am calling here to hit twice and break the pre flop raiser. Of course I can see the benefits of 2-2.5x pre flop but it does give great odds to the players coming behind.
Another reason for small pre flop raises is that it keeps the pot smaller and avoids early pot commitment. Also if you get 3 bet, you can fold and have not wasted too many chips or call the 3 bet which won't be as big as a 3 bet after a 4x open.
The great players in the past used bigger pre flop raises than is common now, so it is nothing new.
I would hate to have to call 4x raises pre flop with a less than premium hand. So from a passive players point of view I would encourage ye all to continue 2-2.5x pre flop and not put too much pressure on me.
Ps. I do think one would have to be balanced in there pre flop sizing. Players do cop on to varying raise sizes.
October 6, 2010
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the issue is, just switching your sizing up to 4x every time is clearly horrible, because if people realise you are doing it full range, they can really punish you as you are putting double the amount of chips in with a similarly weak range. so im unsure what are the best circumstances to use it
July 6, 2014
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I'm definately not going to try this as the majority of times in these stages avg stacks are 20-30bb, which opens you up to being exploited by the many re-shoving stacks, however I am going to try some 3betting light as it would look super strong.
December 24, 2013
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Because I'm only on bovada, I pretty much treat all the out of the ordinary raise sizes as fishy and still 3b light. Losing just costs more. If people are habitually 3xing, yet still do it with the same range you would ordinarily 2x, and aren't capable of changing it up, you can still 3b them light. Flatting isn't necessarily out of the question in spots you'd normally flat if it were a 2x, it just demands you recognize the % of chips going in preflop and attack back accordingly.
That said, you'd probably be right if you made a claim that all large opening raises on bovada are from nontricky/thinking/what have you players. If you're on a network with better HUD use, (and as a result, better players on average), then I'd certainly keep track of a few players that do this and see what happens. but in the micros these guys are just doing it. they're not thinking about it really.
July 30, 2014
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jacobsharktank said:
Because I'm only on bovada, I pretty much treat all the out of the ordinary raise sizes as fishy and still 3b light. Losing just costs more. If people are habitually 3xing, yet still do it with the same range you would ordinarily 2x, and aren't capable of changing it up, you can still 3b them light. Flatting isn't necessarily out of the question in spots you'd normally flat if it were a 2x, it just demands you recognize the % of chips going in preflop and attack back accordingly.
That said, you'd probably be right if you made a claim that all large opening raises on bovada are from nontricky/thinking/what have you players. If you're on a network with better HUD use, (and as a result, better players on average), then I'd certainly keep track of a few players that do this and see what happens. but in the micros these guys are just doing it. they're not thinking about it really.
Playing on Pokerstars I find a ton of players are 3xing, 4xing and higher in early stages of the micros. At first I thought they must have monsters but time and time again these players are holding average hands. Might give this method a go in early stages of tournies just to mix things up!
October 6, 2010
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at the micros, bet as much as you will think they will call! if there is a super fish in the bb, nothing wrong with 7x or something with your value hands if they are still going to call
January 16, 2014
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Strictly speaking from my experience playing Bovada small stakes the short answer is usually you'd be facing a really really good hand, but not usually that the very best hands. Hands like AQ,AK,JJ-QQ, but sometimes AA KK and sometimes some doosies like 56s. I don't know if non-anonymous tables play differently, but I can't imagine it would be too different. That's the short answer, I give the long answer in the next post.
January 16, 2014
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Since Bovada gives you the hole cards I decided to run a report for UTG and UTG+1 using the following filter criteria:
- Buy-in $20 or less (no filter required since my license only allows that much)
- Starting stack 30-50 BB
- With antes (if you consider early stages without antes then it exclude early stages, which I think is fair)
- Opening raise between 4-5 BB
- 8-10 handed (so probably excludes late stages)
http://imgbox.com/Sf6F9nQ7 http://imgbox.com/qABjubfG
July 6, 2014
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Thats really helpful actually JD, hopefully Stars is the same/similar coz that'll make it so much easier to play – just avoid unless monster!
December 24, 2013
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The biggest problems we have with interpreting this is a mixture of villains and a small sample size. If this were one opponent, we'd get a better idea.
Depending on the size of our overall sample (utg-utg+1 open raising at all at those open sizes with antes with 30-50bb stacks), this can be interpreted a few different ways. Like if you look at all the hands in the visual, most were raised 1 hand out of the total population. We really need to have more hands here to get a better picture. The villain who 4x's AKo utg is probably not the same villain who 4x's Q8s that one time it happened. If there are 70 hands total there, ~26 of those hands are < AJs and < TT in value, so you certainly could 3b light there as well. If that were accurate (light to strong of less than 37% of total), you could def 3b light. If you look at just the hands that you have there, a static villain (one who doesn't really adjust) actually has a really light range for 4xing.
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