[TStoneMBD]

as oreo mentioned, by just smoothcalling preflop you are giving your opponent an incentive to freely raise every hand knowing he wont get 3bet. if he knows youll 3bet often hell be more apt to fold weaker hands as well as complete more often.

for instance, if he has a hand like Q7o that can limp and call a raise from you out of position, he might as well raise it himself since you wont 3bet him. this way he doesnt give you value the times you hold marginal hands that would much rather see a free flop. if he knows youll 3bet liberally, he may and should start limping more hands. probably not Q7o caliber but hands not much worse than that.

one problem i have with never reraising out of position is that i have trouble playing out of position without the lead. i do not feel comfortable checkcalling flops. i know we spoke about checkcalling flops before being an important strategy but i told you that i usually dont checkcall, i checkraise instead because i feel like checkcalling bleeds money. by not having the lead the opponent will be picking up many pots when i have a hand like queen high and he has 7 high. if i were to 3bet my QTs out of position those pots would be mine.

it could just be that my checkcalling game is underdeveloped, but when im playing against players who regularly checkcall i feel that they are very exploitable because i am picking up so many more pots then them. they rely on me betting their hands for them and spewing chips but i carefully try to avoid that.

i guess the issue with taking the lead is that sometimes youll take down pots you wouldnt have while other times youll get raised postflop and be forced to fold or pay extra bets to see the next street or showdown when a checkcall strategy would have been cheaper. the problem with not having the lead in those instances is that youll often lose bets because you allow your opponents to dictate the amount of bets that go into the pot. i think the advantage of picking up pots and dictating bets is more valuable then keeping the pot small and saving bets postflop.

now i know youre talking about a checkraising strategy and not a checkcalling strategy, but in order to checkraise your pairs you also have to be willing to checkraise draws and most importantly, checkraise bluffs. checkraising your bluffs costs more of an investment then simply 3betting preflop and leading the flop and turn because youre investing 2bets on the flop with little pot equity when a preflop 3bet plus flop bet invests only 1 bet with little pot equity as the preflop bet invested is with above average hot and cold equity. as a result, im sure you fall culprit to often checkcalling and bleeding off chips since checkraising with no holding can be costly.

just to clarify, im not arguing that smoothcalling preflop is a bad strategy. if dreamclown, one of the best HU players does it then im sure it has merit. but there are many other excellent HU players that do 3bet out of position preflop. so that begs the question, is one strategy better than the other, is it simply a matter of playing style or are such strategies dictated simply on opponent's tendencies? i would have to assume that its the predominantly the latter 2. playing style wise, 3betting out of position suits me better as i feel more comfortable with that strategy, but i am also very interested in knowing when to impliment a smoothcalling out of position style against my opponents as well. i really doubt that always using a smoothcalling out of position strategy against tough, aggressive opponents is optimal. it seems like according to game theory, it is better to switch being playing styles simply to confuse the opponent.