Posted Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:54 pm GMT by lwestatbus
Looking for advice on proper use of the information raise. Raising in general is one of the weakest parts of my game (low fixed limit online (0.50/1.00)) and I am working on it with my favorite reference, Miller, Sklansky, and Malmouth. But I don't seem to be able to use the information raise properly.
Here's a typical scenario. Let's say that I have A9 offsuit in the big blind and am able to see the flop for free and that the flop comes 9XX rainbow. I've now got TPTK. Small blind bets. I would raise to both protect my hand and to see how much confidence SB has in his hand. Regardless of the set up, I get one of two things happen.
1) Everybody folds either right away or by the turn and I win--a good thing
2) Somebody with a better hand (wired pair of Queens or a flopped set) lets me take the lead, put money into the pot, and then slams the door on me on the river with a raise.
So it seems that the hand protection aspect of raising is working out for me (including those occassions when that is my only reason for raising). But I don't seem to be getting accurate information from my "information bets." I'd really appreciate anyone's advice on how to properly execute and interpret the information raise. Is the problem with the stakes that I'm playing?
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Posted Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:18 am GMT by snoogins47
Basically, it's a misnomer. You're never raising entirely for information (at least I hope not... I hope there's at least SOME hope of your opponent folding a better hand, or calling with a worse one), but some raises give you a lot more information than others, and in some situations, the information you gather with the raise is much more valuable than in others.
In your specific example...
Think about the SB betting, and you calling, and now imagine the players behind you. Think about the myriad hands they could be calling with, or raising with. Also think about the SB. What do you know about his hand?
Now, think about him betting, and you raising. Imagine the players behind you now. What hands are they 3-betting here, or cold-calling with? I assure you, it's a much smaller, more well defined subset of hands than the first scenario. The SB now has to respond to your raise and the players behind him as well, and every action somebody takes in a hand = more information for you.
There's always a lot more to it than this, but I'm doing my worst to keep it short and to the point here.
In the slowplay example: if you raise, and your opponent then raises you later in the hand after you take the lead, you still have much more information than you would have, had you just called. If you call, all you have is "he's betting." If you raise the flop, then he check-raises the turn, you now know "He bet into me, called, and check-raised the turn card." That is a much different scenario, and *usually* gives you a lot better of an idea where you're at.
Seemingly every 2+2 book I've run into (at least I know it's in HPFAP and Zee's Hi/lo FAP, and I want to say there's one in SSHE too) has a seemingly almost entirely cut-and-pasted chapter on how to read opponents hands... how to combine the information of how your opponent has played his hand up to this point and come up with a reasonable range of hands that he could be holding. It's short, and fairly simple, but it might give you a good idea of what sorts of things to think about when you're trying to extract the most "information" from a raise.
Basically, just keep in mind that in general, every action a player has to make in a hand tends to = you can narrow down his hand more precisely, and the more significant a decision is, the more accurately you can tend to narrow it down as well (like in your example, when you force the field to call 2 cold in a small pot, and show strength yourself)
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