[Ed Miller]

Randy,

TheDude is right. He is saying that you cannot evaluate the "Raising vs. Calling" mistake (from UTG) in quite the same way that you evaluate the "Calling vs. Folding" mistake.

For the "Calling vs. Folding" mistake you CANNOT lose (on average) more than the cost of the call due to that error alone. It's mathematically impossible to have an expectation lower than the price of the call.

In the "Raising vs. Calling" mistake, it's very unlikely to have an expectation differece between raising and calling bigger than the size of the raise... but it is POSSIBLE. Calling could be wildly profitable, and raising could chase out everyone who would have given you action if you had just called. So calling might possibly be +$3 and raising +$0.

Now in reality, that's simply not the way poker works. If calling is worth $1, then raising will almost certainly not be worth less than -$1 (again, in our $2-$4 game). But I asserted that it is a certainty when it isn't.

Now what is true is that raising can be no worse than two bets of expectation worse than folding. So if you KNOW that calling is break-even, then you can set a hard limit on the size of the raising error at -$4.