Standard Open Sizing
Your standard preflop open should depend on many things, not just a robotic 4x. You must take in to account your position, who's behind, their stack sizes, and your cards, obv. If you know the villain well enough to manipulate his calling range, or know he'll call you regardless of what you raise, then take that in to account as well.
If hero is on the BU with KK and there's a fish in the BB who will call a min-raise with 90% of your steal attempts, but will also call 8x with say 60% of his range, which should you do?
If hero is the CO with 98s and the blinds both have 50bb stacks, what should be the standard raise size? Should you even open here? Think about it.
Against unknowns with 100bb effective stacks, standard open sizing could be something like this: EP - 4x, MP - 3.5x, CO - 3x, BU - 2.5x, all regardless of what cards hero is holding. I don't ALWAYS follow this but it's a good starting point and it's good to think of 'why' these open raise sizes make sense.
Remember, the old 4x standard made it easier to bet pot, bet pot, shove. It's not 2003 anymore however, and the games are a lot tougher and more aggressive, which not only requires us to play even more positionally aware, but vary our rise sizes to adapt to the tagg-filled games of today. Opening less than 4x also provides more wiggle room to play post-flop.
Also, while I'm thinking about it, there's a thread from AOK and his god-awful 19-hand strategy. Not sure if that's still around, but someone should nuke that thing already.
Reply With Quote
