Some Thoughts On Raises

Lately I have realized that most people are not very good at applying the correct approach to raising. As a matter of fact, I think mistakes related to pre-flop raises are common and expensive at all limits - that being $0.5-1 or $50-100. It is not the raises themselves that people get wrong. It's the mindset that follows from them that leads them into trouble.

Let's consider the reasons for raising to begin with.

1. You can raise for value, i.e. to get more money into the pot when you think you have the best of it, or at least stand to win more then your fair share. This should normally be your primary reason for raising.
2. You can raise in order to get a free card. As people have a tendency to check to the raiser, a pre-flop raise from late position can often get you the turn card for free. This is worth a lot, especially for suited connectors in multi way pots. Often you'll need to be last to act to succeed in this, and therefore blasting the remaining players out behind you, and thereby buying the button, is also a consideration when raising pre-flop with a possible free card in view.
3. You raise to isolate. This is a concept that a lot of players misunderstand. They cannot accept that some people don't respect their raises, and end up winning with a poor starting hand. But as poker is about winning money, not about winning pots, this is actually okay. What you really want to achieve when you raise "to isolate" is to free some of your outs. By this I mean that you get rid of some hands that stand a small chance of beating you (yet many hands with each a small chance of beating you adds up). A good example is hands that include an over card to the flop (that you have hit). You want these hands out, as this will allow your hand to hold up more often when an over card hits on the turn or river. Therefore you raise on the flop.
4. You raise to gain information. By raising you limit the number of possible hands that your skilled opponents can have. After all it takes some kind of hand for most players (you should know who don't respect raises) to call two bets cold.
5. You raise to seize initiative. This is often a major consideration too. The general idea here is that the player setting the pace of the hand, is usually the one who can make best use of any scare card that lands late in the hand.
6. Raise to win the pot as a bluff. Few players master this art form. The problem with bluffing is that you need to time a good bluff correctly, so you bet or raise at the perfect time against the right opponent, providing him with the data required for him to make a wrong tough lay down. Yet this mind play is one of the most thrilling parts of the game. In order to do this aptly you need to know how your opponent think, and you need to be able to think fast and creatively. Furthermore you need to balance your play well, so you provide cover for your bluffs by playing good hands with the same type of betting sequence. And finally you need to have an excellent sense of the rhythm of the game. By this I mean that you want your opponent to call when you have a good hand and to fold when you don't. The great players have some sixth sense that make their opponent make the wrong choice much more frequently then should be expected.

As you can see there are many good reasons to raise. And the majority of the opponents who I think are no good at raising also master this knowledge. Where they get it wrong are on the following issues:

1. They think that a raise early in the hand commits them to keep on firing throughout the hand.
2. They raise primarily with one purpose, instead of a combination of the reasons listed above.
3. They only raise with their premium hands, giving away way too much information in the process.
4. They fail to stop and consider the relative strength of their hand when they encounter opposition.

Overall these four erroneous raising strategies make people tend to lose way too much money on their premium hands, simply because stick around with them long after a thorough analysis of the situation should have told them that they are in deep trouble.

But lets take them one at a time.

1. I fail to see why a raise early in the hand should have any consequences for the play later in the hand whatsoever. It's � big bet extra for a hand that you sure would have called with anyway. It's as cheap as it gets! If we consider a hand like AK from late position, you stand to be the overall favorite pre-flop. If you miss the flop, your raise might give you the turn card for free, and you do have 6 outs in the deck. These are worth a lot, especially when the pot is contested by a shorthanded, as this makes it more likely that your 6 outs are all live. If you keep betting, on the other hand, you stand to lose 2� big bets more, provided that you don't win. And unless it is very shorthanded (2- or 3-way) chances are that your odds of winning have gone straight through the floor when you miss the flop. Drop it, and find a better spot.

2. Again lets look at the AK situation. Pre-flop your primary concerns were to raise for value (if in late position) and to shorten the field (if in early position). If you miss the flop, you now sometimes have the option of taking the turn card for free. So your pre-flop raise, yield an added benefit at a later street for a different reason then one causing you to raise to begin with. From early position the free card situation also comes up, though the situation here is trickier. Depending on how coordinated the flop was and how many opponents that took it, you might bet out on the flop trying to take it down right there as a bluff. But if many players took the flop you can forget about that. But if you sometimes check-raise the flop when you hit from early position, your flop check might look suspicious enough to give you the turn card for free in any case. And when that happens, you should usually bet out on the turn, as there is a great chance that you can bluff it down there. So conclusive, your pre-flop raise opened up a lot of options on the flop, and which one you should chose is strongly situational. And this again leads me back to point 1. Raises on a previous street often yield unexpected possibilities on later streets. But if you stick to your original game plan, without examining the situation anew on every street, you will miss out on these opportunities.

3. People who only raise with their premium hands give away way too much information by doing so. As their opponent I know that I have to worry about high pocket pairs and AK/AQ. When the board is ragged, I always have a way better feeling for their hand then they do of mine. From there it's all about betting and raising on the right spots along the way, in order to suck him in or kick him off (depending on what you have). Sure I'll pay him off when he has a high pocket pair, but so will he when I have it. When he don't I win big on this.

4. Finally the tight raiser is often extra prone to overplay his hands. It seems like he is thinking "Now I've been waiting this long for a good starter, and dammit if I'm gonna let him push me off it". This will hurt him. And the obvious solution to the problem is to raise a wide range of starters in the early betting rounds, and give them up quickly if the enemy fire back at you. If you do this, you will be the reverse of your tight friend here. You will have the benefits of raising, i.e. value, initiative, information, possibility of free cards, and buying outs, and stealing blinds available. Furthermore, when you run into a tight raiser with a high pocket pair, he usually lack the creativity needed to imagine your hand, and he will overplay his top pair/big pocket grossly.

So the conclusion is that raising should often be done with a wide variety of purposes in mind, and no specific reason chosen beyond the current betting round. Cause in the next betting round you are facing a completely different situation that might completely have changed which of the options now available are preferable. So though it is always important to have a game plan telling you why you are in the hand to begin with, and giving you a general idea of what to do in different scenarios for how the hand can develop, you still need to be able to reassess the situation completely when the next card hits the board. A raise yields no further commitment then the money you invest in the current betting round. And considering the options it often opens for play on later streets, it is often a bargain.

© The Poker Forum.com, all rights reserved