[Closed] Raising Early Position....

Thing with changing bet sizing according to hole cards is that it makes it easier to put you on a hand imo.

I think open limping is out of the question because you will usually get raised and have no initiative on the flop. However keeping the raise size at 3.5 - 4bb even for small pp disguises your hand and if you get HU you can either take the pot with cbet , hope to hit a set or muck your hand - but the main advantage is that you have initiative since odds of flopping a set with a pocket pair are 7 to 1 and we're not always going to hit sometimes we can try to take uncontested pots in position and c/f OOP imo.

I have been reading a few different schools of thoughts on this, nice topic to bring up

btw you play FR or SH?

I play FR, typically if I raise a normal amount then *if* I get raised then its going to be to around 12-14BB's, the kind of amount where I don't really have the odds to set mine unless someone else calls the raise infront of me.

At low limits villians are not observing your play enough to spot the difference, maybe they should....But it just doesn't happen.

I find that a lot of the time when you raise UTG people fold because they think you have a big hand. So sometimes I will raise with PP from early position and other times I will limp in. I try to vary this by limping in with QQ+ from early position if I know I am likely to get raised behind. that way I can end up 3 betting light from UTG with PP when I see someone squeezing from the CO or BU. I guess it all depends on your table image but I think you need to change things up as much as possible.

Changing your raise because of the cards you hold, in my opinion it's bad. It's not -EV to raise more, if you are sitting in a table full of fish. If you raise more, the stacks would go in the middle easier, if you hit your set. On the other hand, if you are sitting in a table that is full of good players that they will 3bet you preflop with a wider range of hands, then it's not a good idea to raise big preflop. Small pps (22-77) don't play good postflop, even if your opponents 3bets you with 89s.