Sizing Your Preflop Raises

Distributed By Wise Hand Poker, Jul 2007

When it comes to preflop raises in no-limit hold’em, many players look for rigid guidelines. They want rules such as “raise to three big blinds if you’re the first to enter the pot and add an additional big blind for each limper.” With only 169 possible starting hands, such guidelines for preflop play are seemingly possible. However, no two games are the same. You should have some basic guidelines for when you’re facing unknown opponents. But once you get a better feeling for how your opponents play, you should optimize your preflop play accordingly.

What’s the Going Rate?

As soon as you sit at a table, your only job is to acquire as much information as possible. One key piece of information will be the going rate for preflop raises. See how much other players are raising to and how the players at your table respond to raises of different amounts. In many online games, opening for a raise to three big blinds will usually win you the blinds uncontested or leave you shorthanded postflop. Meanwhile, in many live games, opening to three big blinds may result in you being in a multiway pot postflop (the $100NL, $200NL, and $400NL games at Commerce, LA’s Friendliest Casino, immediately come to mind).

What Do You Want to Accomplish?

Knowing how your opponents respond to raises of varying sizes, you can then focus on answering the question you should always ask yourself before taking an action at the poker table: “what do I want to accomplish?” Whenever you do anything at the poker table, you need a reason.

If you want to take the pot immediately because you have a good hand and the pot is already large, but you don’t like the postflop playability of your hand, then make your preflop raise large enough to make everyone fold. If you have a big pocket pair, you’d usually prefer to be heads-up or three-handed, meaning that you should make the raise that will get you one or two callers. By thinking about your preflop raises through this filter, you’ll be focusing on goals first and raise sizes second instead of solely focusing on raise sizes.

Be Flexible and Take Everything In

Many people complain about certain tables, saying things like, “I raise to three big blinds with my aces, get six callers, and someone always seems to suck out on me.” My response to these people is always, “change the size of your preflop raises so that less people call.” Properly sizing your preflop raises, like pretty much everything else in poker, is ultimately about being flexible and being aware of all the variables at play.