Two Plus Two Older Archives - Rarely raising pre-flop in PLO/PLO8B

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Poker is a long term game, and what you don't lose is as good as a gain at the end of the year, as much as what you don't win (but could have) being equivalent to a loss.

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This is an excellent reply. If you fail to maximize your opportunities to win when you can, this is indeed detrimental to your yearly earn. But there is also a more deleterious effect on your bankroll. That extra money you gain by mazimizing winning situations is often what sees you through a downswing that is not due to playing bad.

I have stated before and still maintain that it is correct to raise preflop in early position for a variety of reasons, assuming that you play well postflop. If you want to take advantage of your opponent's mistakes, then surely you want to give them opportunities to do so for bigger money. If you disagree and think the optimal plo strategy is just to never raise and see what the flop brings first, then you need to read/reread Mason's essays on non-self-weighting strategies in Gambling Theory and Other Topics. The fact that the stacks are very deep does obviously impact your strategy overall, but just because you can't always easily get allin pre or post-flop doesn't mean you shouldn't raise preflop. In fact with really deep stacks I would even welcome getting limp reraised by another deep stack who has aces when I have 4 straight cards or a pocket pair and 2 other good working nearby cards, especially if that player will automatically pot it no matter what comes.

Also, the only way to effectively protect good made hands is to be able to bet the most possible assuming there are not other reasons not to do so. Otherwise you will frequently fall prey to loose passive/aggressive players who call behind you with weak draws for little money and bluff bet the river when a different draw gets there. Of course if you can snap off those bluffs then all the good although you will often then be supplying the implied odds they needed when you call and they in fact have a hand. Many such players however *might* not be willing to do as much of this if it costs them more postflop by virtue of being confronted with bigger bets made possible by preflop raising.

The fact is that you will never maximize your earn in plo without being more aggressive with preflop raises in the right situations. The reason so many players don't like to do it is that they are too weak tight and not confident in their postflop decisions especially when against aggressive tricky players and don't want those decisions to have to be for bigger amounts of money. It should be obvious however, that if you become very good in your decisions, many of which will be player dependent, then you should welcome those decisions being made for larger amounts of money.