What psychology is at work when...

[Pirc Defense]

...your opponents tend to call your raises more often than call your limps? I play micro limits at Paradise and it seems that at times I get more callers preflop when I raise, than when I limp.

I've started to think it's ego-related; "you're not going to push me around!" goes their thinking.

It's an odd phenomena, and maybe it doesn't happen all that often, though it seems to occur more than it should. Maybe it's because if you raise often when you enter the pot, a limp looks suspicious?

Any others experience this?

[Robk]

People like to win big pots. Raised pots are big, so people want to play in them. That's my theory.

[rhwbullhead]

I totally agree with RobK's point. In a lot of wild games, the raises and reraises will help bring people in. Ask anyone that plays in California. $40-80, three bets, and people will come in for the big pot with rags.

[Mike]

When I became good enough to be a danger to myself, it was inconceivable that there were better players than myself at the table. Any raise was a cheap attempt to push a bad hand. I could'nt let that happen. Be outplayed by those low lifes who think they know how to play poker? Not a chance.

Eventually reality set in and I learned to leave my ego at home.

[Robk]

This is an interesting point. I see it online a lot in shorthanded play. A guy will be open raising a lot. So instead of scaling hand values down and calling some slightly weaker hands then he would normally play, the opponent thinks "Man he could have anything, so I gotta call" So he starts playing all types of junk for raises. (Which ends up being suicide if the raiser is scaling his values down to some weaker hands, and the caller starts playing terrible cards.)

[JimRivett]

Any others experience this?

I see this quite a lot in loose, low limit games.

I feel that in these games, you raise your opponents IN rather than raising them OUT.

Jim

[smd]

I agree. Your raise is for building the pot, not decreasing the field. I have given up on expecting the blinds to fold to a raise.

[rkiray]

I haven't really seen games like that on-line, but I don't play microlimit. But there is a place where I see games like this fairly commanly. It is 5/5 games in CO. These games really attract action players. It's amazing how much difference there is between 2/5 and 5/5. Most 5/5 are fairly reasonable, but I would say between 1/4 and 1/3 are what I call action games. These games need at least 2 maniacs and often have 5 or 6. Lately the % of action games has been growing; and I have started to see what I call total nuts games. These games are capped evey hand (and the cap in CO is 6 bets, normally $30, but the total nuts games, EVERY PLAYER POST A LIVE BLIND SO IT'S $35 PREFLOP EVERY HAND). I have never even considered playing in the total nuts games. I've heard some of the dealers derisively say that those games people arn't playing poker, they are playing bingo. The dealers generally like dealing the total nuts games because the pots are huge and they get great tips. ON the other hand because so much money is involved and the action is so crazy the games are hard to control. I must admit these are extremely interesting to watch.

To get back to your point, the action games play like you describe. Raises tend to bring people in, not out. This is because the people who play in these games came to gamble. A raise might draw one or two in, but at least in the CO 5/5 game, what really draws them in the second raise. This is because they know that it will be a big pot and they want to be in on the action. People routinely say that whenever a 3 bet goes in the pot will be capped (and it's almost always true in these games, and remember it's a 6 bet cap). These can be great games, but you do need to play tight. Especially on your reraise hands. Everyone else will gamble way too much. THe bad thing is that if you do this enough, the regular players will catch on and give you less action than anyone at the table. Quite often people complain I play too tight in these games. I think I actually play a little too loose, but compared to most of these players I'm a total rock. Generally they don't worry about my raises very much since they know I'll raise with a fair number of hands (but way fewer than most of them). But in some of the games people will call and cap everyone's reraises but mine. Everyone but the original raiser will fold to my reraises. This can be good or bad. They know if I reraise, I have AA, KK, AKs, AQs, and maybe QQ (marginal RR in these games in my humble opinion). Of course when they start folding to my reraises, I start reraising with more hands. The games I really love is when there are one or two maniacs who know my raising standards and will still cap with me when they have hands like 66 or 57s, or J2s. I make a lot of money in these games overall but the swings can be insane.