“Why do you bet so
much before the flop?” (an answer to a question raised at the
table)
I was asked at my home
game last night why I raise such 'large amounts' and potentially shut
out action at the poker table. Or to split the question into three
sub questions: Why do I raise? Why not raise small? and Why not limp
every hand instead and bet from the flop onwards? At the table I did
not manage to fully explain the nature of the 'tight-aggressive'
style of play I adopt and why raising substantial amounts holds many
advantages compared to limping preflop but I shall attempt to give an
overview here.
Tight-aggressive or TAG
for short is a style of poker play that became popular the mid 2000s,
as a direct result of the strategy manuals penned by Dan Harrington
and to a lesser extent Phil Hellmuth. The style is defined by
a twofold approach to the game: 'Tight' in terms of hand selection
and 'aggressive' in terms of betting amounts and frequency. The style
maximises profits from carefully chosen starting hands and avoids
difficult decisions after the flop. Since the style is aggressive
you are always leading the betting and in doing so you ask a question
of your opponents, “My hand is good, how good is yours?” and when
your opponent's call they are answering “Mine is somewhere between
o.k and good, let's see a flop.” The first reason for betting then
is to take initiative in the hand and learn something about your
opponent's hand strength before the flop comes down.
The second reason for
raising is that often, the tight-aggressive player is aiming to get
heads-up in a pot and see a flop against one other person. This is
done to seize a greater equity share (potential profit share) of the
money in the pot from blinds/antes and preflop calls. If 4 players
see a flop then typically no one has greater than 35% or so equity
share of the money. The chances might be something like
35%/25%/15%/25% for the respective hands JTs,98o,22,A2o if you just
deal them out and no one bets from start to finish. If the 22 had
raised in this example and the JTs had called then the chances change
to 48%/52% in favour of JTs. The 22 has therefore gained 33% equity
in the hand by raising and driving out the 98o and the A2o from
calling. This simple example demonstrates why
raising is sometimes necessary in poker to get maximum value from the hands you are dealt.
If we accept for a
moment that raising is a good idea then why not raise smaller to lure
other players into the pot with dominated hands? The answer to this
question is that one person's concept of a large and off-putting
preflop bet is different from another person's. It is up to the
discriminating TAG player to sell his good hands for as much as the
market is willing to pay. In a sense tight-aggressive poker relies on
your opponent's making the mistake of calling the preflop raises with
dominated hands and if players will not do this, then I may decide to
scale my bet sizes downwards. I may not want to risk returning to the
four way flop scenario outlined above with my 22 so if I make a small
raise and receive three callers I only have myself to blame for not
adjusting to table conditions. If you are playing heads-up poker
there is definitely an argument to be made for scaling your preflop
bet sizes down, since there is no risk of multiway pots and losing
your equity share to other prospectors.
The third and final
part of this discussion is to compare the merits of a strategy based
around limping all the time to see flops and then judge how much you
would like to invest in the pot from this point onwards. This is
called a passive strategy and you are considered 'loose-passive' if
you limp more than around 30% of hands dealt and 'tight-passive' if
you limp less. The advantages of a passive style are that it is low
in terms of initial investment, and your hands are well disguised. If
you limp in with AA, 107s, JTo,88 etc. no one can get a feel for how
strong your hand is preflop, unlike the TAG player who has raised and
already told you he/she has a good hand. People who play a passive
strategy are limping into pots hoping to flop a concealed hand such
as two-pair and above and then hoping that someone will follow them
all the way to the river with a worse hand. Passive styles are
inherently risky since you see many multiway flops where the best
hand possible is more often in play compared to heads-up. You are
trying to turn a low equity share preflop into a big profit post flop
and hoping that when this happens it coincides with somebody else
holding a good but not better hand and paying you off. You will lose many
small pots fishing around around for the big catch and you must have
the patience to wait for the right moment combined with the skill to
recognise when it is time to land your big fish. From experience I
know I cannot successfully play a limping strategy unless I am
heads-up against certain types of opponent, so I usually choose to
adopt a TAG approach in games with more than two players.
Additional note re
stealing from the big blind
In our home game we
also discussed a unique scenario at the table: whether the big blind
should automatically raise a small blind who meekly limps when it is
folded around to them, regardless of his/her hand. In this pseudo
heads-up situation I routinely raise the big blind since the small
blind has told me they do not have a good hand and I stand to gain in
this hand and in future folded small blinds by bullying anyone who
limps into me by stealing their money the first time they do this.
Unfortunately for me on this occasion both myself and the small blind
were dealt good hands and the small blind was limp-trapping and I
felt I had to fold on the flop when I bet and was raised. The
potential victim of my bullying tactic turned out to be David to my
Goliath. I can count on one hand the number of times this has
happened, compared to the countless times it has been successful so I
will not be changing my strategy any time soon, I just got unlucky on
this occasion ;)
