I get PMs fairly frequently asking for poker advice (obv brag) in one specific situation or another and I try and take the time to respond to most of them. Some are better than others and it's kind of fun to read the question and be able to gage how good/advanced a player's knowledge is just by the way he phrases his poker questions.That being said, I don't post in a ton of strat threads here anymore and I still like giving strat advice. Maybe this thread will stick and maybe it won't, but I figure that I could open this up to the forums and just start answering some more advanced questions or just laying better groundwork for people. I am not really looking to critique hands here since you can start your own thread for that, but if you have well thoughtout questions of a more general nature, I'd be more than happy to answer them since the general strat forum never gets much action aside from the Goals Thread.So, with that being said, here's the first one:
Quote
Hi Acid,I was wondering about raise-sizing on the flop. I checked the FAQ but couldn't see anything addressing it specifically. I was wondering if you had any advice for me. For example, if somebody is leading in to you and you've decided you'd like to raise for value, is there a general rule of thumb I can use to make sure I am sizing my raises correctly? Raising pot for example? Also, if I am making a similar raise out of position (check raising or 4-betting for example), should I be making it slightly larger?Any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
Hey,The key to making any raise successful is to know how your opponent will react to it and more specifically, getting him to react to it in a way that you want.If you are going to 3bet or 4bet bluff a dry flop, you had better have a damn good idea of what range your opponent raises or 3 bets you with in the first place and also what part of his range he's going to fold if you raise him back. If you don't have a good idea for why you're doing things, then you're just spewing money. It all depends on your style. For most opponents who are playing me, I like to keep checkraises and raises in general as small as possible since I am c/r bluffing way more than I am with a hand where I want action, so the cheaper I can do that, the better for me. What is best for me will not necessarily be best for you though.I think that as a general rule you should always be raising more on draw heavy flops with made hands as well as bluffs, but you should also raise these flops less frequently against tricky aggressive players and more frequently against timid and straightforward players. Also, raising when OOP should always be slightly larger because you're already at a disadvantage and you want to make them pay the maximum if they are going to continue in the pot against you.Some people will lead into you and you'll think that they're weak. Some of those guys will fold to a minraise and others don't want to fold unless you shove on them. Just figure out which people will fold to which raise because there's no sense in raising a guy 4x and overexposing yourself when his donking range basically includes hands that he either wants to stack off with or will fold to a minraise.My raise sizes tend to vary a lot. You really need to look at the stack size of your opponent and how the next street(s) will play out if he flat calls your raise and you're playing an inflated pot. Will you have 1 street to make a play on or is there enough $$ behind to force him to make decisions on two streets? All of these things are things that you need to be looking at before making a play. Generally, my raise sizes vary from a minraise up to about a 4x raise, which is usually about a pot sized raise, depending on my opponents, stacks, image, board texture etc.
0
