AA

This is specific to EP in Limit.
Hero has AA.

Assumptions.
Money is earnt by others' mistakes.
It is better to give opponents more opportunities to make mistakes.
AA's equity edge increases with #players.

Now I would really like to get shot down in flames here because my view flies in the face of common knowledge but I'm a newb, so go easy.

I advocate calling. Here's my (crappy) reasoning.

Any call made against AA is -EV and therefore I'd like as many people to make that mistake and for as much money as possible. Best case scenario - a capped ring game.
Raise - best case scenario - everyone folds.

Once you've accepted the fact that your win rate goes down (by roughly 54%)but your equity edge increases (by roughly 130% - I think) you're happy for any extra money in the pot.[the exact figures don't matter]

Now most people give me the explanation that you should raise because bad players will call anyway [ <font color="white">Bad players fold too </font> ]. Which, I admit, is a very profitable situation for you.
BUT
Call and even good players start calling in the -EV situation against your AA. Hands that a good player might have folded in the face of a raise now become raising hands eg. JTs. These good players are making their money from other people, not from you. And it's an easy 3 bet for you, again increasing the money in the pot.
This three bet situation is the optimal one. Even good players are more likely to pay two bets after already putting in one.

I find myself justifying the call with negative check\raise mentality. ie. I'd rather the chance of 1 or 3 bets [ <font color="white"> against 4-8 </font> ], than 2 or 0 [ <font color="white"> against 2-4 </font> ].

I call, knowing that if everyone calls behind me, I'm going to lose the hand 70% of the time. But I look at the long term. Not to mention the benefit of having the table know you can limp with monsters.

Someone tell me where I've gone wrong before I start beleiving my own crap.

[bryan4967]

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Here's my (crappy) reasoning

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That's all it seems to be. Calling an AA raise has a -EV but you have to think about YOUR EV playing AA. preflop raise gives you a higher EV so even if you've had them cracked the last 25 times they have been dealt to you, it is still and always will be more correct to raise with this hand.

I think you've made three mistakes here.

First, you've neglected the very important fact that a raise makes callers put more money in the pot. So, while you have more equity per dollar invested against multiple players, you earn more money on average by just quadrupling (or so) the bet, rather than quadrupling the number of players. That's your most important mistake.

Secondly, you're treating this like an all-in situation. In reality, betting happens after the flop, and your ability to narrow your opponents' ranges when you have AA is critical.

Thirdly, while AA's EV increases as we add random limpers, its EV doesn't always increase as we add realistic callers. Callers of raises are very likely to have an A in their hand or a PP. Limpers are likely to have either of those or suited connectors. Suited connectors and pocket pairs have about the same odds of beating aces, but Ax is obviously really bad against AA. By diluting the hands that we dominate, limping with AA seriously hurts our pocket equity. Raising, conversly, isolates people who we're more likely to have dominated.

[benkahuna]

I think you should read Gary Carson's treatment of AA. He agrees with you in some ways.

Other posts in this thread are absolutely correct. You have higher EV by raising and that does get more money in the pot, also good.

[Xhad]

When you take implied odds into account, limping behind you isn't necessarily -EV. Limping creates immediate pot odds of more than 2-to-1, plus you will likely pay off at least a couple bets after the flop unless it's something absurd like 7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 8 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] when you hold the red aces.

Open-limping AA in a loose game is ridiculous. It's rare (in my experience) to find a game where pots are six-handed without a raise but heads-up with a raise. Give someone a chance to cold-call with 22 while the big blind defends with J6s!

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I think you've made three mistakes here.

First, you've neglected the very important fact that a raise makes callers put more money in the pot. So, while you have more equity per dollar invested against multiple players, you earn more money on average by just quadrupling (or so) the bet, rather than quadrupling the number of players. That's your most important mistake.

Secondly, you're treating this like an all-in situation. In reality, betting happens after the flop, and your ability to narrow your opponents' ranges when you have AA is critical.

Thirdly, while AA's EV increases as we add random limpers, its EV doesn't always increase as we add realistic callers. Callers of raises are very likely to have an A in their hand or a PP. Limpers are likely to have either of those or suited connectors. Suited connectors and pocket pairs have about the same odds of beating aces, but Ax is obviously really bad against AA. By diluting the hands that we dominate, limping with AA seriously hurts our pocket equity. Raising, conversly, isolates people who we're more likely to have dominated.

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Once again, I want to stress, only in EP limit.
OK. Here is my attempt at a little poker maths.

Firstly, as an example, lets assume your raise limits the field to 3 opponents and a call allows 6 opponents.
AA equity 3opponents = 63.9%*3 -1 = .917 x 2 bets = 1.8
AA equity 6 opponents = 43.6%*6 -1 = 1.616 x 1 bet = 1.6

Ok, in favor of the raise. BUT you now only need a very small % chance of a raise behind you (and your chance to 3 bet) before the odds again swing dramatically back in the calls favor.
This raise behind you, I'm not going to try to work it out, but think of all the hands (PP, suited connectors etc) where it is now +EV to raise. Again, these players aren't taking any money from you, you have the nuts at this point. After the flop, it's a different story.

Which Secondly, I think, looking at this decision from a post flop perspective is counter productive. All players tend to go too far with AA and IMHO the raise mentality has a big part to play. What I think a lot of people fail to realise is - even if you manage to limit the field to 3 opponents every time you raise, you will still lose more than 1\3 times.

And now thirdly,

equity (%) win (%) / tie (%)
Hand 1: 82.6366 % [ 00.82 00.00 ] { AdAc }
Hand 2: 17.3634 % [ 00.17 00.00 ] { KdKc }

equity (%) win (%) / tie (%)
Hand 1: 79.3958 % [ 00.79 00.00 ] { AdAc }
Hand 2: 20.6042 % [ 00.20 00.00 ] { JcTc }
So as you can see, the difference between the quality of hands that calls you doesn't have that much bearing. Even HU (because you have the made hand).

Here is the best scenario that you could ask for. HU against another ace. But this situation (HU against an opponent with A10 or higher) will occur less than 1% of the time.
equity (%) win (%) / tie (%)
Hand 1: 93.0317 % [ 00.92 00.01 ] { AdAc }
Hand 2: 06.9683 % [ 00.06 00.01 ] { AsQd }

I'm still not feeling any less conviced at this point.

C'mon people, I suck, don't let me get away with this crap.

[Xhad]

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Which Secondly, I think, looking at this decision from a post flop perspective is counter productive. All players tend to go too far with AA and IMHO the raise mentality has a big part to play.

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This reasoning is horrible. If raising preflop causes you to make mistakes postflop, then work on your postflop play. Don't try to "fix" your postflop mistakes by playing weakly preflop, that's adding a leak to fix a leak.

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Which Secondly, I think, looking at this decision from a post flop perspective is counter productive. All players tend to go too far with AA and IMHO the raise mentality has a big part to play.

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This reasoning is horrible. If raising preflop causes you to make mistakes postflop, then work on your postflop play. Don't try to "fix" your postflop mistakes by playing weakly preflop, that's adding a leak to fix a leak.

[/ QUOTE ]
On the contrary, I think my post flop play is better because I understand these concepts. And I think you may have got me slightly confused.
I whole heartedly advocate raising preflop with AA (just not straight away).
My point is - I think the disadvantages of letting more players in, is outwayed by the possibility of getting more players for three bets +. Think of it as a trap rather than weak play.
From what's been said so far.
Cons to calling:
1. Slightly harder to read hands after the flop.
2. You've shown no PF strength.
3. You give weaker hands a cheaper way to see the flop and draw out on you or drop.

IMHO.
1. You're OOP anyway. Hand reading is going to be difficult.
2. Only if noone raises.
3. Isn't that exactly what we want before the flop ie. weaker hands calling - isn't that automatic +ev. (Lower win rate exchanged for higher equity)

Pros to raising.
1. Reduce the field.
IMO.
Someone else in EP or MP might do this for you and you make it 3 bets.
If a raise comes in late position and you make it three bets, you may still reduce the field.
At this stage, anybody who shouldn't have called, is more likely to stay in - good for you. And anybody who should be there, probably would have called your raise anyway.

Once again, I stress the fact that AA has a larger equity edge against more players.
In NL, I totally understand the raise. Because at any one time, your entire stack is on the line. I'm talking long term, specific to EP in limit.
I hope someone can produce some solid figures to tell me why the trap isn't the better option. eg. %pots raised with UTG limpers.
There's got to be something out there.

[KramerTM]

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This reasoning is horrible. If raising preflop causes you to make mistakes postflop, then work on your postflop play. Don't try to "fix" your postflop mistakes by playing weakly preflop, that's adding a leak to fix a leak.

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This reasoning is horrible.

It is perfectly legitamite, and in fact suggested, to plug poor post-flop play by playing less-than-optimally pre-flop. It is too idealistic to simply say "work on your post-flop play."

[Twitch1977]

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Firstly, as an example, lets assume your raise limits the field to 3 opponents and a call allows 6 opponents.
AA equity 3opponents = 63.9%*3 -1 = .917 x 2 bets = 1.8
AA equity 6 opponents = 43.6%*6 -1 = 1.616 x 1 bet = 1.6

Ok, in favor of the raise. BUT you now only need a very small % chance of a raise behind you (and your chance to 3 bet) before the odds again swing dramatically back in the calls favor.

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I think you're making generous assumptions on calling to back up your point of view. You're completely ignoring the fact that even by raising you may get 6 callers. By just limping in you may only get one or two callers. Sometimes when you raise someone else is going to reraise behind you. These are the situations that are going to bring the added profit to raising with AA. They aren't going to happen all the time but when they do happen they'll greatly compensate for all those times you limped in and got a couple extra people in the hand.

Plus as I said in the other thread, raising AA helps you bring in the best of both worlds in terms of % chance to win and net profit. Raising before the flop you only need half as many callers as you would if you limped to get the same amount of money in the pot, plus now your equity is that much higher since your aces only have to hold up against half the number of hands.

You can keep constructing your custom examples where if you limp you get 341 callers so that's much better then if you raise because then you only get 2 other callers. Plus when you limp by god one of those 341 other players will raise then you get to three bet and my just think of the money!!!!! But you proved our point with:

[ QUOTE ]
Firstly, as an example, lets assume your raise limits the field to 3 opponents and a call allows 6 opponents.
AA equity 3opponents = 63.9%*3 -1 = .917 x 2 bets = 1.8
AA equity 6 opponents = 43.6%*6 -1 = 1.616 x 1 bet = 1.6

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