Raising preflop

[Buzz]

Kitaristi - First I’ll provide what you and others may be seeking.

The very best starting hands are as follows:
• Double suited aces with two wheel cards are the best starting hands. (Of these, AA23d is the best).
• Double suited aces with one wheel card are next best.
There’s some overlapping between the top two groups. For example, AA2Td is a better starting hand than AA45d or AA55d.
• Next come single suited aces with two wheel cards, followed by various groups including single suited aces with one wheel card and double suited A2WX hands. (W means wheel card and X means any card).

There’s a lot of overlapping between all the afore mentioned groups, and there’s a hierarchy that’s not worth going into now (or probably any time), because you generally should want to see the flop with all these hands in a ring game. If you're looking for strong starting hands, note that all the afore mentioned hands are very strong starting hands.

To put things in perspective with some of these starting hands you may not have previously considered to be part of the top echelon, you probably recognize A234 as a fine starting hand (as indeed it is). But while A234-rainbow is a fine starting hand, it simply does not win as much in simulations (and does not scoop nearly as much) as AA45-double-suited. And that’s against various groups of opponents with random hands and in various sized games. At least in the simulations of which I have knowledge, A234, even if double suited does not fare as well as AA45 double suited. However, non-suited A234 simulates better against random hands than non-suited AA45.

If you’re looking for strong starting hands with which to raise, all of the hands and groups of hands listed above qualify.

However, strong starting hands are not particularly what you should be raising with before the flop, in my humble opinion.

*****

Suppose you had magical clairvoyance after the flop and could tell for certain after the flop when your hand would win and when it would lose.

(Temporarily forget about any raising or not raising yourself before the flop).

Further suppose you were playing in a ten-handed game with nine opponents, all of whom would see the flop for a single bet regardless of their starting hands, none of whom would raise before the flop, and all of whom also had magical after-the-flop clairvoyance and thus knew for certain after the flop whether they held winning or losing cards. Since these nine opponents would never chase after the flop when they would end up with losing hands, you could never win any additional money from them after the flop. (They would only continue after the flop with hands that would be winners, as would you).
When you had a winner, you would only be able to collect nine small bets, one from each opponent made on the first betting round - and when you knew you did not have a winner, you would only lose the one preflop small bet. In this case, it would seem that you should see the flop with any hand having over a ten per cent certainty of winning but fold any hand with less than a ten per cent chance of winning.

Now suppose
• (1) seven of your opponents in this mythical ten handed game had the same post flop clairvoyance as you,
• (2) these seven opponents would always see the flop,
• (3) the other two opponents were completely obtuse and had no idea of when they had a winner after the flop, and
• (4) both of these two obtuse opponents would call a bet on each of the next three betting rounds (an additional five small bets each).
In this case, when you had a winner, you would collect nineteen small bets and when you had a loser you would lose one small bet. It would seem that you should see the flop with any hand having over a five per cent certainty of winning but fold any hand with less than a five per cent chance of winning.

It should be immediately clear to you that you can play poorer starting hands against some groups of opponents than against other groups of opponents. It should also be clear to you that the circumstances under which you can favorably relax your starting hand standards are those where you expect <font color="red">chasers</font> on subsequent betting rounds.

Obviously when you have a winning hand, you should not want to create circumstances where you would tend to have fewer chasers on subsequent betting rounds. The only times you would want fewer chasers would be when they take away part or all of what you might have won without them. (Duh).

One all-the-way chaser is worth five additional small bets to you. Those five bets collected from a chaser on the second, third and fourth betting rounds add up to the same as five additional bets gained by a raise on the first betting round - and without the risk of losing one additional small bet yourself. It should be clear to you that you should rather have one chaser than gain an additional five extra bets from your opponents on the first betting round. That's because you win the same amount without risking anything.

Question: In real life should you ever raise before the flop?
Answer: Certainly. When you raise before the flop, you do make matters more difficult for most of your opponents. This factor obviously favors pre-flop raises at least some of the time. But if you're reasonably selective, you'll tend to play starting hands that will end up as winners and then you'll want customers (chasers). Ironically, when you raise before the flop with strong starting hands, although you do make matters more difficult for your opponents, you may also induce them to play more correctly by not chasing with inferior starting hands.

Question: In real life should raising (or not) before the flop depend on the quality of your starting hand?
Answer: To some extent, but honestly, not much.

Question: What is the problem with raising before the flop with a strong starting hand?
Answer: There are four betting rounds, not just one. When you prematurely show the strength or nature of your holding, you may end up not making as much on the hand as if you had played it cool on the first betting round. Whether you should raise or not with your strong starting hands very much depends on how you are playing your other hands and on the skill of your opponents.

Against decent opponents, if you always raise with your strong hands and never raise with your other hands, you'll be giving away too much information. To get around this dilemma, I think you have to make enough "advertising" pre-flop raises with mediocre hands that your opponents won't be able to tell when you have a strong starting hand. But it takes a lot of advertising in Omaha-8 to be convincing and you don't want to be paying too much for advertising.

In my humble opinion, whether to raise or not before the flop depends more on the overall situation and on the probable perception your opponents have of the situation than on the actual quality of your starting hand. (I realize the foregoing is a vague statement, but there are many different situations).

Of course nobody has the ability to always see with certainty whether or not they have a winner after the flop. However, while some players chase with hands that are destined to be losers, other players are better able to judge after the flop when they will not end up with a winner, especially when they gain information from a pre-flop raise (and thus they generally are lost as "customers").

A common misperception that prevails is that seeing the flop too often is the most expensive mistake that Omaha-8 players make. I don’t think it is.

I think chasing is the most expensive mistake my opponents make. I think chasing is where people lose the most money. In my humble opinion, one needs to find a game where some opponents will chase - and opponents should be encouraged to chase. Sometimes you’ll get burned by the chasers, but more often you’ll show additional profit because of chasers.

I think the confusion arises because many individuals who see too many flops also chase. Or, looking at it from the opposite direction, individuals who chase also tend to see too many flops.

Just think of low. Suppose, playing two card Omaha-8, you were dealt an ace and a deuce, offsuit. (Note that two card Omaha-8 is substantially different than high/low Texas hold ‘em, because you have to play both cards in Omaha-8). Suppose one of your nine opponents was dealt a deuce and a trey. Holding an ace and a deuce yourself, you’d have a much better low hand than your opponent holding a deuce and a trey (and you’d also have a better chance to win for high). Should you raise or not?
Before answering, think about what would happen if you were holding an offsuit deuce and trey yourself in this game and somebody in front of you raised before the flop. Would you want to call the double bet? (Maybe you would, because with only two cards, there would not be such a great likelihood of being up against an ace-deuce or ace-trey as with four cards). At any rate, O.K., you might or might not call. Whatever.... a wary opponent holding 23n would at least consider folding to the double bet.

Now think about limping with 23KK-double-suited in regular four handed Omaha-8 and then getting stuck for an additional bet on the first betting round from a late position raiser.

As an aside, 23KKd is a hand without an ace and the cards are not all coordinated, but it’s still a fairly decent starting hand. To put it in perspective, it simulates slightly better than A238n although not as well as A234n. (You should be generally seeing the flop with all these hands and can raise with them or not).

Suppose you limp from mid-position with 23KKd after a couple of other limpers. Also suppose Button raises and is called by both blinds and both limpers. There are various possibilities for Button’s hand, but you should strongly suspect Button may have A-2-X-Y or A-3-X-Y. It’s only one more small bet to call the raise and there are at this point eleven small bets in the pot. You surely are getting good enough odds (11 to 1 plus implied) to call the raise.

Suppose, holding 23KKd, you do call the late position pre-flop raise after already 1limping, the flop is 6-7-T-offsuit, and it’s your turn with the late position raiser still to act behind you. Are you going to bet? Are you even going to call a bet?

Holding 23KKs after a flop of 67Tn you might not call a bet anyway. Whatever. At any rate, I can assure you that without that pre-flop raise, a lot of my opponents holding the third nut low draw hand would call a second round bet, then a third round bet, and finally a fourth round bet - and some opponents might at some point bet themselves, or even raise.

However, that pre-flop raise generally completely changes the dynamics of the hand, at least at the typical Omaha-8 tables in which I find a seat.

Sometimes the change in dynamics is good for you. For example, when you are trying to steal the pot (and have a decent chance of succeeding at stealing the pot), you want everybody else out of there.

However, when you probably can’t steal the pot anyway (as in a typical low-limit or mid-limit ring game), and when you’re drawing for, or have flopped the nuts, and thus have a good chance to win one or both ways, I think you should generally like chasers. (You only don’t like them when they take away part or all of what you might have won without them - and you can take steps on the second, third, and/or fourth betting rounds to try to get rid of them when that might be possible).

There are lots of different possibilities, depending on your cards and your opponents - and probably depending on various other factors.

The main point of this post is there simply is not a particular threshold above which you should raise and below which you should call. There isn’t even a particular threshold above which you should limp and below which you should fold. Some starting hands are clearly better than others but when considering whether and how to play a particular starting hand, “it depends.”

There are at least a couple of major principles involved here.

• A decent player can successfully play more starting hands against a group of opponents that includes chasers than against a group of opponents that does not include chasers.

• Although you probably gain more on the first betting round by raising before the flop when holding what is probably the best starting hand at the table, you don’t necessarily gain more on the second, third, and fourth betting rounds when you have a winning hand. Overall, with any particular high quality starting hand, you may actually profit less by raising before the flop than you would by playing the hand more subtly.

That’s just my opinion.

Buzz

[dcasper70]

Hey Buzz,

You ever think about writing a book on this stuff? You've probably forgotten more than most of us know...

I'd bet gergery's got a few empty web pages you could fill....

[templar999]

we need to sticky this to the top of the forum.

[kitaristi0]

Thank you very much for going through the trouble of writing out your excellent response. That definitely cleared up many questions that i had.