What I'm reading today

[PygmyHero]

Being aggressive preflop with a good hand is important, and I have been working to apply this in my game, particularly in situations where I have a big ace or a decent pocket pair. The rub is basically that I must raise to destroy the implied odds of all the hand that are limping against me (small pairs, suited connectors and the like). Here's Clarkmeister with an explanation:

Forum: Small Stakes Archives
Poster: Clarkmeister
Post: A good theoretical question
Number: 287441
Date: 7.2.03

Here's another thread where Clarkmeister and others explain why you should raise preflop when you have the best hand. The Hero has JJ in the SB against 4 limpers. I think this is an especially good thread because this is a situation where a lot of people are more likely to just complete, knowing that their jacks will often not survive the flop.

Forum: Small Stakes Archives
Poster: bad beetz
Post: raise jacks out of the small blind?
Number: 301785
Date: 7.26.03

For more reinforcement of the same concept, you can re-read the 'Playing AKo Preflop (Raise or Call)' post I made on 11/7/05.

Personally, I need a lot of reinforcement, so here are two more tools.

The Poker Room Database.
You can use this to find the EV of specific hands in various positions against a certain number of opponents, and at a particular limit. If you don't want to repeatedly query the database, just take a look at the top left links on that page: total stats by card, and total stats by EV.

Please be aware that these stats are NOT a calculation. Rather, they are the result of many many hands dealt at Poker Room, and played by the players there. I am not sure how many hands, nor do I know how often the database is updated.

The GoCee.com Poker Database
This page show the percentage of time a certain hand expects to win against x opponents. Note that this is against a certain number of opponenets, NOT the number of hands that were dealt. So the against 9 opponenets colum means you're at a full 10 person table (you are the 10th person but don't count as an opponenet). Likewise, against 1 opponent is HU.

Basically, you should be raising preflop if you expect to win more than your fair share. Your fair share is:

1/number of hands dealt.

Or,

1/(number of opponents + 1)

if that format makes more sense to you. So against 3 opponents, your fair share is 25% and you should raise with any hand that figures to win more often than this. Note that the table currently lists hands in the conventional order (AA, AK, AQ, ..., A2, KK, KQ, etc.), but you can also sort the table by percentage of pots won (that is, the best performers will be at the top). Again, the idea is to raise any time you will win more than your fair share, even if you hand does not currently figure to be best at the moment (there are certain hands that typically fall into this category - suited aces for example).