HOH Vol 1. Clarifying the meaning of 'raise' to or of...

[larrondo]

Here is something that it took me a while to figure out. The phrase 'raise 3 times the blind' and 'raise TO 3 times the blind' and 'raise OF three times the blind' are used interchangeably. In other words, if the big blind is $10 bucks, 'raising three times the big blind' means you are putting in $30 total, instead of $40, which is what I would have guessed it means (because you are calling ten, and really only raising two times the big blind.)

Is this always the way these phrases are used?

[AKQJ10]

FWIW I interpreted it the same way you did (raise of 3x means raise to 4x), but I'm a NLHE noob so perhaps this is just my ignorance.

[blackaces13]

I'm having problems with this all throughout the book as well. He does seems to use "raise to $40" and "raise $40" interchangably which is confusing since the latter should be a larger raise.

Its also confusing when he says to raise twice the size of the BB, is he advocating a min. raise? Many times in the book, especially in the mid stages of a SNG it seems that he is infact saying to make the minimum raise even though I've heard on this board many times that minimum raises in SNGs is an unforgivably weak amount to raise. Either way I'm not sure if raising twice the BB means making a 20 chip BB 60 to go or 40.

There's one example in particular where this really got to me. Its the last problem example on page 81.

"You check and he bets $20K, the pot is now $38,700. What do you do?

You of course should raise...make it a good sized amount, about the size of the pot.

You raise $50,000 and he folds."

Is he saying to put $70K in chips out here or $50K? My feeling is that he means to raise to 70K but because the words "raise" and "raise to" are ambiguous throughout the book I'm not really sure.

[larrondo]

Well, that's what I used to think, but by studying the examples, I now think that the 'to' is implied, weather it says it or not. So I think he means you shove $50 in (calling 20 and raising 30. I guess.)

I read Pot and No Limit Poker. I don't remember if this ambiguous in that book or not, but I interprited it the other (more logical, to my thinking) way.

[larrondo]

All right, I take it back. Upon looking at the example, I think he means to put 70K in.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]

Is he saying to put $70K in chips out here or $50K? My feeling is that he means to raise to 70K but because the words "raise" and "raise to" are ambiguous throughout the book I'm not really sure.

[/ QUOTE ]

My interpretation of that is to raise to 70k, because although the language is ambiguous, I always thought the point of a pot-sized raise or pot-sized bet was to give your opponent just 2-to-1 odds to call. If you raise to 50k, the pot now contains almost 90k and it costs him 30k to call - he's getting 3-to-1 on his money, so even discounting implied odds he can stick around with something like a flush draw + live overcard or whatever.

[blackaces13]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Is he saying to put $70K in chips out here or $50K? My feeling is that he means to raise to 70K but because the words "raise" and "raise to" are ambiguous throughout the book I'm not really sure.

[/ QUOTE ]

My interpretation of that is to raise to 70k, because although the language is ambiguous, I always thought the point of a pot-sized raise or pot-sized bet was to give your opponent just 2-to-1 odds to call. If you raise to 50k, the pot now contains almost 90k and it costs him 30k to call - he's getting 3-to-1 on his money, so even discounting implied odds he can stick around with something like a flush draw + live overcard or whatever.

[/ QUOTE ]

The flop is one with no real draws to speak of and we have TPTK with KQ so we don't really have to worry so much about straight/flushdraws and there's only 1 overcard to our hand.

[blackaces13]

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