Semi-bluff preflop raise. ( Cash Games ) |
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Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:07 am GMT by tutubird
I was reading No limit Hold'em Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller today. I was on the section of preflop strategy. And he talks about semi-bluff preflop raises in cash games. For example he says that after 2 or more players have limped infront of you, you should raise more often with the best of your UF ( usually fold ) hands like J  8 , about 20% of the time.
I don't really understand the value of semi-bluffing preflop with a hand that you would usually fold. If you were to play them woulden't you want more people in the pot so that if you do hit you'll get paid off more? And if you do raise and don't get called, all you pick up are the blinds ( which would have more value of tournaments but in cash games I don't really see the point ).
Is this raise just a way for you to mix up your game and make yourself a little bit harder to read?
Any explaination would be much appreciated.
Kevin
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Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:44 am GMT by xDiamond_CutteRx
Well, for one thing, the book isn't specifically geared toward cash or tournaments in particular, just No Limit games in general, although it's emphasis in on deep stack play.
The reason for the pre-flop semi-bluff is essentially for deception purposes, but it also assumes most of your opponents are somewhat observant, and that you will be with the same players long enough for table image to be a factor.
The other line of thought is that by raising rather than just calling, you're more liable to build a big pot, and if you do get called and hit your hand, it's easier to get your stack into the middle with a big pot than a small one, and your hand will be well concealed.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:53 am GMT by crack
I am planning on buyng this book at some point.
I think this move is probably best in the higher stakes games such as NL200 and upwards, because players are more observant at this level.
This is the first time I have heard this idea. I know about mixing it up but never heard the idea of doing so with your UF hands, but I can see the logic behind it. What Diamond said and also, such a move will mean that the next time you raise a hand, can they put you on a good one or do you have J7s this time?
Mixing it up we should always try and perfrom against the observant players, but at the lower levels, you don't need to worry too much.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:33 am GMT by shorn7
| Quote: | The other line of thought is that by raising rather than just calling, you're more liable to build a big pot, and if you do get called and hit your hand, it's easier to get your stack into the middle with a big pot than a small one, and your hand will be well concealed.
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I think this is the biggest line of reasoning for it. The deception is also important, but less so since in deep stack you are really looking for just the one or two really big hands per session that will determine if you are a winner or not. The book emphasizes pot size and bet size management heavily and the preflop semi-bluff raise is one way to do that for a speculative hand that wants a big pot on the flop already when it hits.
Frankly, if you never used this play below $1000 buy-in games, I don't think you would be losing much. Most of the opponents in the $200 or $400 games won't be paying that much attention, so in most cases you will be throwing $$ down the drain. Also remember that this type of play should be used exclusively for deep stack games since a lot of the restricted buy-in games won't give you enough room to manuever after the flop since you can't scare anyone into folding for short $$.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:47 am GMT by supafrey
I think you're all missing the main reasoning for this move.
1. How powerful could the limping hands be?
2. How often will the flop get checked around back to the raiser?
3. How much respect do you typically give someone when they reraise pre?
4. How often does the preflop aggressor take down boards uncontested?
5. How much does this reraise pre REALLY affect us / cost us in comparison to our stacks?
No straight answers for you.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:34 am GMT by snoogins47
One of the primary reasons for doing it with hands you normally fold is because (theoretically, assuming you're playing right) the hands you'd normally limp in with are making money if you limp. It doesn't mean that you should never raise with a hand you normally limp with in that spot, or that you should never limp with your normal raising hands... but basically, with the best of your 'fold here' hands, one of the more attractive options for a good deal of hands here (limping) is not really a valid option.
| Quote: | | Most of the opponents in the $200 or $400 games won't be paying that much attention, so in most cases you will be throwing $$ down the drain. |
I think that the majority of the players in the nl200 and nl400 games are not very good. That said, I firmly believe that the majority of them are paying at least a reasonable amount of attention: at least enough to over adjust in situations like this. If they're NOT paying attention, then they won't adjust at all... meaning they'll fold too much to our raises like this.
Even a donkey who pays very little attention might take notice if you raise preflop and show down something like J7s.
| Quote: | | And if you do raise and don't get called, all you pick up are the blinds ( which would have more value of tournaments but in cash games I don't really see the point ). |
All poker is, is fighting over the blinds/antes.
I also don't think that we have to worry about "only doing this in deep stack games," unless we consider the Party NL games deep. We buy in for 100BB, two limpers, we raise to 5/6xBB... get a caller, pot is 12BB. We've got 94BB behind going into the flop. That doesn't give us endless options, but it gives us a good amount of 'wiggle room' as it were.
Now, if the games are VERY short, we probably want to be raising more loosely in this spot as well, but not with the same kinds of hands. I'll get off this tangent though.
I could (and very well might) keep rambling on this for days. I won't give a solid "I agree that you should raise with your UF hands 20% of the time after two limpers" or anything like that, but, I will say that there's a lot of underestimating going on: both in underestimating how often you pick up pots without a fight, and in underestimating the average opponent. The average opponent may be a braindead twit, but the average braindead twit still has emotions, memory, and some way of taking observations to a conclusion. The majority of players are, on some level, "thinking" players. The biggest difference is just how they're thinking.
The most important point I can stress in this thread, though, and it's one that will probably get me to start yet another thread on the topic...
Your winrate, relative to zero, is meaningless when considering how to play. "You're not losing much" means "You're not playing optimally" and even if you're giving up just a fraction of a BB, that fraction matters just as much whether you're a longterm donator, or a longterm 10BB/100 winner.
I'll probably be back to respond to everybody who calls me a 'fish' in a couple hours.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:54 am GMT by shorn7
I respectfully disagree. Unless you consider yourself a dominant player relative to your competition, you will likely be losing EV by making this play other than playing optimally. Really...how many 200 and 400 online players really limp and then fold to a raise unless it is a big one? The number of times that you will take the blinds + limp money in these situations is pretty small. So, unless you are willing to make a big raise with a very marginal holding, and then ba able to manuever your opponents off their hands after the flop, I think this is not a good play to make.
I agree that the goal is to play optimally. However, it is my opinion that Sklansky is providing this play for people who are playing in games where you have well over 100 BB's behind each hand (he even calls a 100 BB stack "medium deep" in his book). In the games that most of us play, this isn't the case. Therefore, you would have to win a sigificant majority of your semi-bluff steal hands to make this a +EV play for the type of games that we play. I don't think that is a reasonable assumption.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:54 am GMT by supafrey
snoo btw i figured out a small flaw in your "any mistake" is a bad mistake theory. Hypothetically, general "blocks" of mistakes are taken by people as the correct decision - not just singular mistakes for singular situations.
What i mean is that people don't usually have one small leak for one particular situation (which, like you said, would still be just as bad for a long term winner or loser) but rather tend to play a certain chunk of situations in a certain way. It's alot easier to just have a general idea of the game, make some mistakes, some good plays, but basically not think too much along the way... (Your "c" game, as you put it). These small leaks could actually be compensated for with other over-tweaking that our hero might be doing simultaneously and unconsciously.
I guess the only example I could think of is how people play sets. Generally, if any person pushes all in each time they get a set they'll prolly make money. Sure if they razzle dazzle a bit they might make a bit more, but the small mistakes are outweighed by a general wave of smart play-er-y.
P.S. How come you never answer my questions, Snoo? you never do what i want to do.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:04 am GMT by MasterShake
Raising with hands like these, and then having the opportunity to show them if you have to fold seems like it will get you more action for your big pairs, especially if you're seen as a rocky player by the rest of the table.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:23 am GMT by snoogins47
| supafrey wrote: | | P.S. How come you never answer my questions, Snoo? you never do what i want to do. |
Of course I don't, because that's what you really want me to do.
I'm not 100% positive that I follow exactly what you're saying supa... For the set example you gave, what outweighs the small mistakes? Do you mean that by adopting the general rule of pushing all the time, the times he could have won more by dancing around and being tricky may be rendered meaningless (or even damaging) by the times that pushing all in is significantly better than an attempt at dancing around?
If so, that's probably accurate, but I still am of the opinion that from our standpoint here in strategy discussions we should be trying to figure out the best play for each specific situation, as opposed to accepting a 'good enough' approach with more of an 'umbrella' strategy.
Shorn: For much of the post, we can do nothing more than 'agree to disagree,' (especially in how often we can win uncontested pots at the nl200/400 level... I seem to win them somewhere along the lines of 'unbelievably often' but personal experience isn't good enough to be definitive) but there's a few things that I think should stay open on the discussion, for everybody to read/chime in. (Though I do think that the assumption that DS is referring only to games with buy-ins well over 100BBs is probably not a great one... especially if he considers 100BB "medium deep" and he obviously knows that the vast majority of his readership aren't going to play very often in games much deeper than that. We can't really solve that without asking him, but I think a valid discussion could come, regardless of DS' intention, of whether or not this would apply in shorter games)
The one thing I wanted to address here though:
"Therefore, you would have to win a sigificant majority of your semi-bluff steal hands to make this a +EV play for the type of games that we play."
How do you arrive at this, from the stacks being shorter?
One thing that I didn't mention, that I probably should have, is something that you did touch upon: your skill relative to the others. A lot of players who are indeed winners, don't play that well after the flop. These players may make enough significant mistakes after the raise, that they may do well to tighten up here. Of course, if this were the case, then their "usually fold" range should theoretically be larger, so the hands that they'd make this move with would be better, which would subsequently make the move sound again. And if they can figure all of that out, chances are that they're not really bad enough at poker to be in the situation in the first place  One of the fun parts of theoretical poker discussion.
The other problem of course, is that we're all poker players, so we all (naturally) consider ourselves dominant to the competition.
If I can dig up the ol' trusty "Shania" post from 2+2 or UPF, I'm gonna probably have to link it, since it puts the meta-game nonsense from hands like this in more interesting terms than I could ever do. Regardless, what Shake mentioned is a big part of it. Even if half the table isn't going to take any notice, just put yourself in the opponent's shoes to see why this thing is powerful. How easy of a decision do you have when you know that every (or, very close to it) preflop raise an opponent makes is a pure, rockesque value raise? This is probably even more especially true in regards to re-raises. Now how much more complicated do all your decisions in response to his raises get once you've seen him make that raise with something fairly random?
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:44 am GMT by supafrey
i think meta game may be overrated here.
Also... answer my bloody questions and you'll get alternate reasons for the reraise pre. You guys are diverging from what I thought the best reasons for the move are.
Posted Mon Jul 24, 2006 12:47 pm GMT by shorn7
Sure, I can see some merit to the play very infrequently. But, my point was that many of these games are significantly loose that your re-raise will be called in multiple spots unless it is really big. So, the question now becomes how big a % of your stack do you want to commit preflop hoping no one has trailed in with AA or KK? The larger point being you will have to win many small pots with this move (either folding everyone preflop or taking it down on the flop uncotested) to potentially make up for the one time someone comes over the top again and you have to lay it down, seeing no flop cards after investing somewhere upwards of 10% of your stack. Not only that but we aren't counting the times when you get stacked because you flop a second best hand.
I guess my thoughts are (and you alluded to this in your most recent reply), not that many "good" players play well enough after the flop to make this a routine move for them. So, many players would be much better off simply (as you put it) increasing their folding range and limiting this play to better hands. I mean, Sklansky uses J8s as his example hand, one which I think we would all agree is very marginal and speculative. Someone who uses this play for this hand plays VERY well after the flop and has a very loose preflop calling standard (which I would argue is a good way to play).
Bottom line - No play is right or wrong. It all depends. In this case, I think it depends mostly on the player, his relative skill to the table, and hsi ability to maneuver out of tight spots. On the margin, using this play once or twice a session (say 4 hours) might slightly add to your overall expectation. But, I think that in the wrong hands, it will end up a detractor.
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