“Why do you bet so much before the flop?”

“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 ;)