Preflop strategy: a contrarian view

Okay here is something theoretical I want opinions on. It has stemmed from my both my own experiences in 3-6 games over the past several years, and also from the quote from Mike Caro that, "In a loose game, it is usually a mistake to raise from early position."

I am finding more and more that this is a position I agree with, in spite of the "conventional wisdom" to the contrary (with Caro seeming to be the lone exception among the experts, or at least the only one I have encountered). Now I agree that in a tougher, higher limit game, it is correct to raise a lot in early position preflop with hands like AJs, AQo and suited, and KQs. I very much favor raising these hands in middle and especially late position preflop. But in early position in a low limit game, especially when you are UTG, I just don't think the positives outweight the negatives. I even (I know this is TOTAL HERESY but please give me a chance to explain) question the merits of raising with ANYTHING, even AA or KK, if you are UTG in a tight low limit game. In a very loose one I think that this is of course correct, if you think that everyone is going to cold call your raise when you have a big pocket pair, then go ahead and do it. But in a tight low limit game (I realize this is a rarity but I have had this happen to me several times), if you raise UTG or close to it with AA or KK, and everyone folds out behind you for whatever reason, that is terrible. To quote Abdul Jalib, to just win the blinds when you have AA is a "major disaster," because AA is worth about 4 times the blinds. Several times I have raised under the gun with AA or KK in a tight-passive LL game, had everyone fold out behind me, and collected 4 bucks. Forgive me for saying so, but this is not the way to win in low limit poker. I don't care about the people who scream "you ALWAYS RAISE WITH AA NO MATTER WHAT, NO QUESTIONS ASKED, TO DO LESS IS A MORTAL SIN!" Well, apparently not so in this scenario. I don't want to hear it when winning 4 bucks with AA or KK is "playing it correctly." If you thought this was likely to happen, you SHOULD HAVE LIMPED WITH AA OR KK. That is the bottom line. It is worth the risk of limping and losing vs. only getting 4 bucks for your hand. If the game is this tight, in my opinion, you should raise UTG with lesser hands instead, because they come up more frequently and it is not a "major disaster," as Jalib says, to net just the blinds with these hands because they weren't as valuable comparatively anyway.

I have even more problems rationalizing the conventional thinking that you should raise in early position with big suited connectors. Lee Jones, in his first edition of WLLH, recommended limping in early position with all hands but AA and KK. Then in his second (2000) edition, he changed drastically and recommended raising with not only JJ-AA, but AKs, KQs, AQs, AJs, AKo, and AQo, even if you have them under the gun. I have tried this and I really think the liability outweighs the benefits in my opinion. If everyone in the game is a cold-calling fool, and they'll all call your raise as happily as your limp, I can see the logic. But usually this is not the case. You'll either fold out everyone but the blinds (resulting in the major disaster I alluded to earlier if you have KK or AA or, to a lesser extent, QQ), or else you will get your JJ or QQ reraised for your troubles when there is at least a 50-50 chance an overcard will hit on the flop, and an even higher chance that the reraise has a matching card that would overcoat your pair. I particularly dislike the notion of raising in early position with big suited connectors (again, this is always assuming a low limit game). As stated before, this would be perfect if everyone would cold call your raise behind you. But this doesn't usually happen, you fold out the hopeless hands who you could have gotten one bet from, and get reraised by the better ones. Now your implied odds are shot to hell for your flush possibilities, and with having to act first on every round you will never really know where you stand. For instance, the "conventional wisdom" says to raise in early position with AJs. Ok, so I do that. The typical response will be some fold out but at least one calls or reraises, often more than one. Now the odds are pretty high that I am not going to get 2 of my suit to the flop. Assuming I do not, what do I do if I flop an ace? Betting and check raising both don't seem to have much going for them. with your 3rd best kicker you are very likely to be behind. Unless you have a bunch of loose people who love to cold call and seldom reraise playing behind you, I just think this is a bad play. And while the loose cold caller scenario is my dream game, in my experience it just doesn't happen very often.

I know this is heresy but I even feel like this about AK. Say I have it under the gun, as happened to me recently. Ok, so I raise. Now if it is a tight game, they are all going to fold and I win only 4 bucks. Or (typically) half of them will fold and half will call. But now, say I get a flop with an ace or a king in it. If I had limped I would be in perfect position to check raise. But becuase I raised preflop, it is much more likely to get checked around. Sure, I know my preflop raise "thinned the field" preflop. But I can't thin what remains of the field on the flop nearly as well as I could had I limped. And I'd rather try to do my raising after I'd seen if an ace or a king had flopped for me, rather than seeing that they hadn't, which would be the case 2 out of every 3 times.

I have read "all the books" and I am not novice, I have played a lot of 3-6 and have tried and discarded a lot of concepts. I find statements like NEVER EVER LIMP WITH AA OR KK, EVER!!!!!! kind of annoying because if you just think about it, this is just not so. If you are pretty certain all you are going to net is 4 bucks when you raise with your AA, than raising with it is NOT correct, and you SHOULD limp in an attempt to get more. I just want to hear what the justification is for raising in early position with big suited connectors like AJs, AQs, KQs, and AK. I know that "for value" is the popular response. Well if you knock out everyone, there is not much "value" in that, you are only going to win a couple of bucks. If you are in a tight passive game, or if the guy on your immediate left will 3 bet a cow pie, then I think doing so just doesn't make sense. And yet I think many people have a "no matter what" raising attitude burned into their brains about all these hands, particularly JJ-AA and AK/AKs. I just tend to disagree from what I've experienced. I only agree if you were in a rare game where everyone would cold call your raise, but if they would do that then odds are they would all check around when you tried to check raise on the flop, so your check raising potential (your only potent weapon up front) is out the window there too. Just wondering if anyone else feels this way too or approaches their low limit games in this way.

Thanks,


Tim

I limp with AA KK in early position occasionally, mostly against opponents who over estimate my tightness, simply because as you say, they all fold when i bet. It really sucks though when a pair of 4's comes on the flop and you end up beat by 4,7o when you know they would have folded had you bet! That is a sin!


If your opponenets are that tight i think you need to semi bluff more with marginal hands, sounds like you'll probably drag a few small pots until you get caught, and then maybe someone will call your AA raise when it comes again...

I sort of agree and sort of disagree. Mostly it depends on the table. The table I was at tonight didn't even blink when half the hands I was playing I raised preflop - they just shoveled in their chips with K7o or WTFever. In games where people can and will fold preflop it may be a good idea to not raise early with tier 1 hands - you will almost definetly have the best hand at the table and if you're playing with someone like me who will raise preflop with tier 2 (arbitrary assignment) hands in late position you can limp-reraise and really get some payoffs.


If you're in the game I was tonight, though, you might as well raise because at most it will kick out 2 people that otherwise would have limped. If 6 people would have limped and your early preflop raise made 2 of them fold you're most likely still making a profit from it and you have less people that can outflop you/draw you.

i used to feel as you do that i shouldn't raise pre-flop with AA or KK but for a different reason. the reason was that almost noone was going to fold anyways (i had been playing in loose passive 2-4). when no one folds and you're in a 10 handed game, your AA or KK can get buried pretty quickly unless you flop a set, and even then, the flush and straight draws will be out in force with so many people in the hand. after a few times of having my AA cracked with some ridiculous hand like 94o or something like that i realized that there is little money to be made in 2-4, not only because of the betting limits but because the swings in your opponents luckiness have a direct effect on the swings in your bankroll. i would lead the action with my AA overpair through all the betting rounds only to get raised on the end and lose to someone who made trips on the river with J4o. since then i have jumped up to 5-10 and find it much more profitable, my opponents are smart enough to fold the garbage hands. i think the main reason for preflop raise being much more beneficial when it gets people to fold is that in 2-4 when people stay in with garbage hands such as say 52o or something like that and you have AA, even though you have a huge advantage, you don't really have their hand "dominated" such as a situation where one player has AA and the other AK, 52o still has outs against you. in 5-10 i have found that when i raise with AA or KK and i only get a few callers, they are calling with hands that are likely severely dominated, like AQ or a lower pocket pair. It is indeed a tragedy to only win 4 bucks with AA or KK, but it is a far worse tragedy to let a bunch of trash hands in with you and then have one of them get lucky.

Quintilian

I agree that you may not want to raise tier one hands in early position if you cannot get the garbage to fold. If your raise UTG still has you playing against five or six payers consistently, then I would stop raising. The pot is big and you don't tip off your hand. I think that given five or six callers you have to treat your big pairs like medium pairs and not bet them unless you spike a set or you have major undercards and no action on the flop. If you can limit the field to 2-4 players with your raise, I say raise ahead. I also like raising suited connectors or pairs from late position or the blinds in these everybody sees the flop games.

Arg. There is a thread like this every two days... always with the same complaint and the same conclusion. This is the conclusion:


If too many people are folding to your UTG raises with hands like AA and KK, do NOT stop raising with them. You don't get those hands often and you need to extract as much money as possible when you get them. INSTEAD, raise OCCASIONALLY with a hand like JTs UTG. If you are lucky, you will win the blinds. If not, then hope you get a chance to show your hand down. Once you do, you won't get people folding to your AA or KK raises anymore.


I think I play a little too predictably. I had a hand a couple of days ago that changed my view on this considerably. I was in the cutoff with JTo. Folded to me, I raised. Blinds called. Flop comes T-high. Checked to me, I bet every round. Final board is still T-high. I turn over my cards and the guy in the small blind stared at me and said, "YOU raised with THAT pre-flop?!" Of course I would raise with anything I would play first in from the cutoff, but that one hand of advertising I think completely shook up his view of me as a player. Now when I raised, he had no idea what I had.


So basically, you leave a whole lot more money on the table by not raising AA than you do by occasionally raising a weak hand for deception.

If you raised preflop as much as I do, then the last problem you have is everyone folding to your preflop raises /images/wink.gif .

I suggest you raise UTG with 94o and win $4 everytime. You seem very convinced that everybody is going to fold when you raise.

It sounds like you need to raise in early position with more hands such as ATs, 99, and AJo. If your opponents see you raising more often, they'll either have to call your raises or allow themselves to be raised out of pot after pot.


Why is "RAISE FOR VALUE" the popular reason for raising with AA & KK? Because it's the best reason.

Ok guys, you have convinced me about AA or KK. But what about the big suited connectors, most specificially AJs and KQs? I really don't understand the rationale for raising in early position with these. In late position I would raise them every time, but in early I just don't think the potential of winning with them justifies the investment. If I am wrong please correct me but that is currently how I see it.


Thanks for the comments,

Tim

I've really been struggling with similar issues, I duck out of tight games and find myself a loose one. If you do that, you will face the problem of being called too much, an even more unnerving problem, because the value of big pair decline in multiway pots.

I've been struggling with this very issue. The more players in the pot, the more their combined outs combine against you. That's why you lose to 94 off-suit, because someone has hit the flop with that shit hand and was willing to call as many raised as necessary to see that flop, and wasn't going anywhere so long as he has a bare-ass chance of making any type of hand. Five of six players like that can kill you, because their combined out massacre you initial advantage.


Here are some of my recent thoughts on pre-flop raising in these crazy, and I mean insanely, loose games. You can raise AA or KK under UTG, because those hand do have value and may win on their own often enough to justify a raise into a full field; but it is also correct to just call, knowing you will be called anyway, and set up a check raise on the flop just as Tim in OR described.


You can also raise UTG and anywhere with Big Suited Connectors (BSC), because as drawing hands, they likely outrank the field, and if you hit, you want callers.


Be less inclined to raise UTG with Queens to eights and will Big Unsuited Cards (BUC) as they are less likely to be drawing hands and you will need to set up a check raise to win with them, or even have to wait until the turn to bet into a small pot thereby encouraging (or more accurately discouraging) even the loose player from calling for such a small pot.


In sum, UTG play in a loose, crazy, insane game is a lot like Cut-off and button play in a tighter game. You raise with premium drawing hands to build the pot.


In Late position in a Loose, Crazy, insane games, you can raise even with medium suited connectors (MSC), because if you hit, you will take home the bucks, and these are pure drawing hands. Then again, calling to see the flop cheaply is fine too.

Seeing Rich (The Rock) P. post again reminds me of a very large thread started by him on 10/23/01. There are many opinions in that thread which advocate why it's best to raise with big pairs in these kinds of games. Rich had posted that it was incorrect strategy to raise with these hands. It's an interesting read.


My opinion is best stated in the response "Unbelievably Misguided".

Hi Tim,


I didn't understand the value of raising these hands either and asked about it....its in the archives:


KQs early position

december7 2001

started by Allan


Chris Alger's response was excellent...check it out. Hope it helps you...


Allan

exactly. the point of raising preflop is to either: 1) raise for value hoping for calls with your AA. or 2) knock everyone out if your raises are getting too much respect. you have to know your opponents.

Da Poochess say you lookin at de wrong issue.


Da Poochess say you should be raisin' a lot more against dese rocks!


Now either dey be callin or you be rakin' in a lot o blinds!