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Reasons to Raise Preflop in Shorthanded No Limit Hold'em
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Friday, December 7, 2007
By Chris Gorve
PartTime Poker
Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a casual poker player and we got on the topic of the hyper-aggressive preflop style that's promoted by the Cardrunners set. When I started describing the preflop raising frequency some of the pros over there advocate, he reacted with a slight roll of the eyes and said something like: "Man, whenever I try to play with that kind of mindless aggression, I just get rocked."
That conversation is what gave me the idea for this article. It struck me that while a high level of preflop aggression is in many ways an optimal strategy for shorthanded no limit, it's still going to be tough to utilize that (or any) strategy effectively if you're using it 'mindlessly.' To put it another way, it's not enough to know that raising preflop should result in a winning outcome. You have to be aware of the effects you're hoping to achieve by raising preflop and the connection between those effects and a profitable outcome, and that's exactly what we're going to discuss in this article.
The concepts discussed in this article are rooted in experiences at mid stakes online no limit 6 max games, but should be relatively transferable to a wide variety of limits, formats and games.
You raise preflop to: Gain position for the rest of the hand
Acting last in a hand on all post-flop streets is an advantage that's worth your investment. Think of how much easier it is to play somewhat marginal hands like straight draws, top pair with medium kicker, and so on when you get to act last on the flop, turn and river. When you're one or two off the button with a hand that plays better with position, it's often worth it to raise just to try and 'steal the button', as doing so literally increases the value of your hand.
You raise preflop to: Maximize the value of position
In theory, thinking players should see a direct, positive relationship between the amount of information they have in a hand and the quality of the decisions they make. The better your position, the more information you have, and the better your decision making will be. Getting more money in the middle when you have that kind of fundamental edge over your opponents is a tactic that's going to yield positive results in the long run.
You raise preflop to: Make opponents play more predictably
Poker is all about the deductive process of determining what hand your opponent is most likely to hold. When you just limp, you lower the risk your opponents face by getting involved in the hand. With lower risk, opponents are likely to play a much larger range of hands, making your job of narrowing that range far more difficult. Raising preflop helps you to tighten that range from the word go. Additionally, raising preflop builds the pot which has two effects. One, as pots get larger in 100BB buy in and under games, it becomes more and more difficult for most opponents to disguise their hands. Two, average players just tend to behave more obviously in larger pots as they begin to freeze and act reflexively.
You raise preflop to: Narrow the field
While there are certainly situations where you prefer to play multi-way pots, the general rule of thumb in no limit hold'em is that the fewer opponents you have, the greater the chance that you're going to win the pot. Narrowing the field also gives you more chances to engage in direct confrontations with opponents, giving you more information about how they play in various situations, and increasing the potential for you to exploit those tendencies.
You raise preflop to: Build pots
The larger pots get, the more likely bad opponents are to make mistakes, especially if they're already stuck.
You raise preflop to: Take the initiative
In heads up pots, your opponents miss the flop more than they hit. The same is true for you. Whoever takes the lead in the betting preflop is likely to win the (very substantial number of) pots where neither player flops anything. Raising preflop creates the presumption that you have something, and when your opponent misses (or flops weak), it dramatically increases the chance that you'll be able to win the pot with a bet on the flop.
You raise preflop to: Frustrate opponents
Whether they know it or not, people generally sit down in poker games with some sort of general expectation regarding how much they should 'get to' play. When you raise preflop, you force them to fold some hands that they would have played if they were allowed to limp (or see the flop for cheap / free from their blinds). Eventually, most players will get annoyed (again, whether they realize it consciously or not) by the disconnect between how many hands they expected to get to play and how many hands they're actually playing, and they'll often start playing hands solely to make up the gap. Whenever you can make people play hands for a reason other than a positive expectation over the long run, you're probably doing something right.
You raise preflop to: Isolate bad players
It sounds obvious to say that playing hands with bad players is how you make money in poker. But as obvious as it sounds, a lot of players still don't take the logical next step suggested by the truism – doing everything (within reason) to get into pots against bad players heads up. When a bad player limps and you have position, or a bad player is in the blinds and you're opening the pot, not raising allows other people to come into the pot against the bad player, decreasing your equity in the pot. Not only that, but bad players are only going to be at the table (and the site) for so long – you can't afford to just passively sit back and hope for a confrontation to develop. You have to actively take steps to force that confrontation before one of your smarter opponents does.
That's far from a definitive list of reasons to raise preflop, but it's a start. Hopefully it's enough to get you thinking about what you're trying to accomplish by raising before the flop – because it's that sort of thinking that stops your aggression from being mindless and instead develops it into a tool for increasing both your control over the game and your win rate.
PartTimePoker.com
