HOH2 Musing

[petvan]

Don't have my book handy, but this concept is a bit general and I'd be interested in some feedback as I find it is a concept that challenges me.

Harrington describes a UTG hand where he finds 88 with small stacks (M<3) in the blinds, and the rest 10+ with his stack in the 10+ category. I think I'm pretty close here.

However, from an open raise size perspective, he describes a situation which to me seems flawed (which likely means I'm missing something).

He talks about the relationship of his opening raise size to the calling odds he'd get if any of the larger stacks pushed over him. Clearly, the more he raises now, the better his calling odds will be should someone put him all-in on a call.

To me, it seems like as you increase your open raise, you decrease the pushing range of the set of villians while increasing the likelihood you'll call a push. In other words, the more you raise, the more likely you'll get all in against a better hand should one be out there. This seems non ideal to me. This is almost like trapping yourself if someone is sitting on 99+ or AQ/AK etc.

Of course, at some point as your raise size increases, it may begin to convey weakness and thus decrease calling ranges.

Key point here is the set of villains have you convered, but not by more than a factor of 2, and your M is >10, such that one has to ascribe some level of respect to your open.

Harrington seems to convey that by creating more favourable calling odds, you are doing yourself good, which to me implies getting all-in with 8's UTG is a good thing, which I don't agree with.

Am I missing something here?

P