I’ve been interviewing professional poker players for many years, and I’d be lying if I said I’d never slipped in a question to help an area of my game I was having problems with. I’ve received fascinating strategy insights from countless World Series bracelet winners, but the one gem that has always stuck in my mind was about preflop raising from the legendary Annie Duke. If you’re a student of the ‘raise 3x the big blind every time’ school of thought, you may want to read this new textbook.
I thought that out of every concept in poker, the one thing I’d nailed was preflop raises. By raising 3x and keeping all your preflop raises consistent, you effectively disguise your hand, right? ‘But why 3x?’ she enquired. ‘Because that’s the standard raise?’ I stammered. My reply was met with a snort of derision and although Duke admitted that on the whole raising 3xBB isn’t disastrous, she made me break down the logic piece by piece.
Mathematically, it turns out that 3xBB is about the size of the pot and as such you only need to be successful with steals about half the time to squeeze out a profit. It’s also a raise that usually gets the pot heads-up, and given that hold’em is often a battle of who wins when nobody has a hand, you want to discourage as much action as possible. Thirdly, it’s a raising amount that causes your opponents to be selective with their holdings, which means you can narrow down their range. If you try to get clever and raise to 2xBB, the big blind is practically on auto-call and you get close to zero information about their hand.
Raising revelations
Duke’s killer point was that 3xBB is sometimes totally inappropriate. Let’s say you¹re in a situation where you raise and get five callers; your 3xBB raise isn’t exactly having the desired effect so you should consider shifting up to a 3.5x or 4xBB opener. While this may fly in the face of the ‘disguising your hand’ theory, it’s clear that if your raise isn’t doing the things it’s supposed to - i.e. thinning the field, narrowing hand ranges and giving you control - then disguising your own hand is the least of your worries. And for those awkward situations where 4xBB is not getting the respect it deserves, the answer isn’t to push up to 5x or 6xBB, because you’re laying too big a price on the pot.
The answer? Surprisingly, it's to start limping. If you open for 5xBB and get six callers, you’re just looking to get lucky and hit your hand, which is exactly the same situation as when you limp, except you don’t have to waste all those extra chips! If extra chips don’t buy you anything like information or a lead on the pot, there’s little reason to raise.
So next time you reach for your chips, stop and consider what you’re trying to accomplish, otherwise Annie Duke may have some harsh words for you!