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19th Lecture - Raising For The Right Reasons

Raising For The Right Reasons

The following lecture was the 19th Tuesday Session, held February 9, 1999, and later
appeared in Card Player magazine

Raising By Whim Can Be Costly - You Need a Reason to Raise.

I can tell you in one word the main motive for most raises. Whim. That's right, most of the
raises you're ever going to encounter in your poker lifetime are made at whim. They're not
carefully analyzed raises. They're not goal-oriented raises. They're just made at whim.

Of course, there are some hands so powerful that players raise on that basis alone - often
correctly. But most raise decisions aren't obvious. These borderline choices should be decided
rationally. But they aren't. Repeating, they are decided by whim, and that's a very expensive
method.

You can add significantly to your profit if you consider key factors when deciding whether or
not to raise. Today we'll look at some of them from a lecture delivered at Mike Caro
University of Poker, Gaming, and Life Strategy in February. It was the 19th in the series. I
have taken the one-page handout that accompanied the lecture and expanded the concepts
exclusively for Card Player. The title of that Tuesday Session lecture was…

Raising for the Right Reasons

• Don't raise to "get even" with an opponent.
In poker, it doesn't matter whom you get even with, just so you get ahead. Taking bad beats
personally is a common mental mistake. If Jerry beats you out of $100 and you beat Norman
out of $500 ($400 total profit), that's better than if you beat Jerry out of $150 and Norman out
of $150 ($300 total profit). It's the overall profit that you're after. So, there's no reason to get
even with Jerry.

One of the instinctive ways people try to get even with opponents is to raise more liberally
than usual as an act of retaliation. You should never do this. I don't mean that you should
never raise them. I mean that you should never raise them for that reason.

It's OK to raise to send a message by raising, but you should do so against someone who will
be influenced by the message and might back down on future warfare, thus leaving you in
control. Many opponents won't react that way. Players who have been beating you are
motivated. They are not timid or predictable. But it is precisely against timid and predictable
players that borderline raises work best. If - instead - you choose borderline raises against
deceptive and aggressive foes, you will simply lose money in the long run. This is not just
theory. I have simulated these situations by computer. It turns out that borderline raises

against volatile opponents simply don't work. You need to win control over these opponents,
and you can't do it by overbetting vulnerable hands.

• Tend not to raise from early positions.
Poker is largely a struggle for position, and when you don't have it, you're often wise to just
call (or fold). In general, you will lose money trying to assert dominance from an early
position. Save these early raises for your very best hands, and even then, you can often make
more money just calling. When you raise from an early seat, you are apt to chase away
opponents you would profit from most if they stayed. You also might find yourself stranded
against less profitable hands. That's why "thinning the field" from an early position is almost
always a bad motive to raise. It thins the wrong people.

• Tend to raise from late positions.
Hands that would lose moderately from early positions win moderately or heavily from late
positions. This means you can easily establish psychological dominance by raising when you
act after your opponents. Most serious players know this, but they fail to realize the extent to
which this concept can be profitably applied.

When it comes to raising, position shouldn't just be a concept that you intellectually
acknowledge. It should be a primary factor in deciding whether or not to raise. Think about
your strategy. If you can't honestly tell me that position is a main consideration every time
you think about raising, then I'm betting that you're making much less money at poker than
you should.

• You should often raise when you will chase away players who would otherwise act
after you on future betting rounds.

This primal struggle for position can be the main factor in deciding whether to raise. It's often
worth taking slightly the worst of it by raising with a borderline hand now to gain position on
later betting rounds.

• You should raise less liberally when you're on the button (i.e., in the dealer position).
You don't need to gamble to get position, because you already have position. However, you
should mix up your strategy and sometimes raise hoping to chase the blinds out and isolate
(with better position) on the original bettor or raiser. AND…You should tend not to re-raise
as the big blind against a late-position raiser, because it's unlikely that you can ever get
position. (Very rarely you might be able to isolate against the small blind, immediately or on
future betting rounds, by choosing to reraise and act last throughout the hand, but this isn't
usually worth the risk of a reraise.)

Of course, if your big blind hand is exceptionally strong and there are lots of players already
committed to the pot, you can raise to extend your profit. But with anything less than superior
strength, I seldom raise in the big-blind position other than against the small blind alone. I
will often make an exception to this rule, though, if I can reraise and force players who have
so far only called a single bet out of the pot. This is where it's important to know which
opponents will usually fold if faced with a double raise. When I'm in doubt - usually because I
haven't watched opponents play long enough to form an opinion - I seldom reraise as the big
blind. That's because the assumption that typical opponents will call a double raise is usually
right. And if they do, I'll have invested risky extra money in a situation where I will have a
positional disadvantage throughout the hand. So, I don't do it.