I still don't get this at all. Please help me understand:

[AdamL]

Preamble:

The theory is that you might give up a raise preflop to keep the pot small in order to win sklansky bucks (make your opponent play incorrectly) post-flop.

The fundamantal theorem of poker is that you win money when your opponents make mistakes. (in short.)

But it seems to me, frequently, that the mistakes the opponents make by calling raises with less total hand equity preflop outweigh any mistakes they might make after the flop.

I'm not even sure when exactly not raising preflop is correct. I have no idea how to implement this into my game. If I'm heads up, I'm often raising for any fold equity I might have. If there are multiple opponents, I'm often raising because of my hand equity standing to be better than my contribution to the pot. So whether I'm heads up or playing a field, I am raising preflop.

So that's where I'm coming from.

Now here's the main question:


I'd like it if someone could show me the math of when your equity edge might be small enough preflop to draw the line and say, "I'm not raising." I would like to see exactly how keeping the pot small when I have only a slight edge preflop actually makes me money.

I can't do it. I'm a nit. Whenever I try, I see myself coming out on top raising even the smallest edge. Because in the end, that's money in my pocket.

The only time I've been able to find NOT raising preflop and trying to wait for the flop to act, is when I don't have any kind of equity edge.

Please help this slackjawed yokal understand!

PS -- I will say, I understand the value of deception. Getting a guy to call down with top pair garbage kicker vs your top pair good kicker makes sense.

It's those "keep the pot small so he doesn't have the correct odds to chase" scenarios that baffle me entirely.

Put it this way: If he has a 35% chance of drawing out on me, I don't want the pot small. I want it to be as huge as possible -- infinitely large, theoretically, and I don't care too much if he has odds.