KQs early position

Can someone explain to me why KQs from early position is a raising hand? It seems to me like if your opponents have any clue about calling early position raises, JJ is the only hand you can beat, and you still have to hit a piece of the flop to win. I can't find the logic in this raise so far.


Thanks again,

Allan

The case for raising:

1. You probably have the best (e.g., most profitable) hand and prefer weaker hands to pay to outdraw you.

2. You prefer picking up the blinds to multiway action, and especially prefer to drive out the weak aces.

3. Raising preflop makes it easier to knock out a small pocket pair that beats you on the flop or the turn.

4. Raising often makes it easier to play your hand after the flop if you miss. The opposite is true if your raise merely ties you on.


The raise is probably better in tighter games where most pots are contested heads-up or 3-way, instead of a loose passive game where everyone just calls and doesn't bet their hand.

In addition to what Chris said, which was very good...


It's not always a raising hand. You should just about always raise with KQs or even KQo in any position if you are first to act, but if someone has already limped in then the value of this hand goes down considerably. This is in part because you can no longer steal the blinds, and in part because you figure the early position limper to have a good hand. However, you should still raise if the limper is likely to have any old hand, which is often the case in low limits.


Also, you should generally raise more against bad players than you would against better players, and low limit games are full of bad players. Raising gives them harder choices to make, and the definition of a bad player is someone who makes bad choices. For example, a lot of low limit players would cold-call an early position raise with hands like KTo, A4s, Q9s, etc, and that's almost always a big mistake.


TRLS