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Everyday players are sitting down at the tables and consistently making fundamental mistakes because of lack of knowledge, misinformation or failing to maintain focus.

Ya my experience with 1/2 Live games are people like to call with gutshots or any kind of equity at all. Play straight forward poker usually most people don't bluff and you know it when they miss there draws because they don't bet. Poker author Steve Selbrede ('Donkey Poker') provides a mathematical analysis of preflop raising in low-stakes live cash games such as played in Las Vegas.

Even just a small strategical adjustment in poker can potentially save you a huge amount in the long run.

In this article we will point out some of the best live and online poker tournament strategy tips you can use to improve your game as quickly as possible.

Tip 1: Play The Right Starting Hands

Whether it be lack of patience, or an unfamiliarity with opening ranges, many tournament poker players still open too wide. This is especially true when it comes to early and middle position opens, where there are still many opponents left to act behind who can be dealt a strong hand.

The problem is when called, wide openers are often at a range disadvantage. Often being dominated by their opponents, they are vulnerable to 3 bets since they frequently won't have a holding strong enough to continue under pressure.

Furthermore, although opening a hand like 7 ♠ 5♠ might at times not be a terrible strategy from early or middle position, speculative hands like suited connectors and gappers, as well as small pairs, work best with deep stacks behind.

These speculative hand types infrequently connect strongly with the flop, so those times they do you want to have deep stakes behind to have the potential to win a huge pot. Modern day tournament structures often only see deep stack play occur during the first few levels of play. This leads us into the next tournament poker tip, being stack size aware.

Learn which hands to open raise in MTT's - Watch lesson 6.1 from the Road to Success MTT Course. A power-packed 50 minute video below, just use one of the button options to unlock it and get instant access.

Tip 2: Be Stack Size Aware

Effective stack size plays a critical role in a tournament players success.

Having a deep stack, and therefore expanding an opening range to include a lot of speculative suited hands and small pairs is a tournament strategy that is going to be punished if a number of short stacks are yet to act behind. This most notably occurs in turbo tournaments where the average stack size is quite short.

Short stacks will be in push-or-fold mode. Being short, they don't have time to wait and will be looking to take any opportunity they can to move all-in. This high rate of all-ins will leave wide openers frequently being forced to relinquish their hands, without even having the opportunity to try to hit a nice flop. Problematic hands often include; J8s , KTo and weak Ax hands.

It's not just short-stacks that can cause a problem, aggressive players will be looking to attack wide-openers. This is especially true when a player opens with a vulnerable M8-M14 (20bb-35bb) stack. 3 bets get good leverage against this stack size, since continuing in the pot represents committing a significant portion of a players stack.

Wide openers would be wise not to commit a large percentage of their stack with marginal holdings, and so will be forced to fold, or face being in a high-risk situation. Staying aware of your own stacks utility, as well as anticipating how opponents will utilize their stacks, is an important tournament poker tip to keep in mind.

POKER TIP: If you are currently using BB to calculate stack size, here's a look at why using 'M' is a better MTT strategy.

Tip 3: Be Careful Overplaying In The Early Stages

As a stack gets deeper, the less willing a competent player will be to put their entire stack at risk since they have more to lose. It's rare to see good players all-in during the early stages of a tournament with hands like AKo or JJ preflop.

Smart players recognize that their counterparts aren't going to be risking their entire stack with weaker hands like AQo . Therefore, even a strong hand like AK could be at a significant equity disadvantage facing a deep stacked opponents all-in range. Could you fold QQ here?

Rather than putting in an extra raise, often times just calling with even very strong hands in the early stage of a poker tournament has great benefits.

• Allows your opponents to continue with hands they were folding to a re-raise that you have crushed.
• Disguises the strength of your hand and keeps you unpredictable.
• Prevents you from getting all-in facing a super strong range where often times you're crushed.

Tip 4: Continuation Bet Aggressively But Not Always

Players have learnt the value of c-betting, but it's a strategy that is often misapplied. Being the preflop aggressor shouldn't lead to a mandatory c-bet and double barrels.

This is especially true in multi-way pots yet players continue to make fruitless c-bets with weak holdings into multiple opponents.

Even in heads-up situations, key factors to consider include;

• How does the flop texture interact with players ranges?
• Who has the strongest range?
• Who has nut advantage (the biggest share of super strong hands)?
• How passive or aggressive is the opponent we're facing?
• How does the stack size/SPR allow us to operate on the flop and future streets?

The following hand illustrates the effect nut advantage can have on profitable continuation betting and how it applies to this tournament poker tip:

Tip 5: Be ICM Aware

The Independent Chip Model or ICM, is a great model players use to make more profitable decisions when deep in a tournament and especially at a final table.

Unlike in cash games, chip values fluctuate depending on the stage of the tournament and the competing opponents stack sizes. At it's most extreme, ICM strategy can make A♠A♣: an easy fold preflop.

Imagine a situation in a satellite where 9 players get a World Series of Poker entry and there's 10 remaining. The action folds around to a player with 100,000 in tournament chips who moves all in from the small blind. You're sitting in the big blind with A♠A♣: and also 100,000 in chips. You look around and see a few opponents with only 1000 chips left, which is the size of the current big blind. Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon.

Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon. Moreover the chance that they collectively out survive your 100,000 stack is extremely remote. You'd likely be a 99% chance to get a WSOP entry, so why would you call with your A♠A♣ and risk busting next around 20% of the time?

Aside from calling too wide in spots when the most profitable strategy is to proceed tightly, the opposite can also be true when it comes to pressuring your opponents. ICM allows players when they have the opportunity to assert pressure on there opponents stacks, to go ahead and do so liberally, since thinking opponents counter-strategy is to play a tight range of hands.

Here's an example of how drastically a hand range can change when the opportunity to assert pressure at a final table exists. 5 of the 6 remaining players at the Pokerstars Sunday Millions have 15bb's, whilst the UTG player has a short 2bb stack. Since the 15bb stacks wants to avoid busting out next and missing out on a large pay jump before the immanent bust out of the 2bb stack, the small blind can adjust their all-in range. Instead of the profitably 57% all-in range in normal play, they can move all-in with 100% of hands to apply pressure on the big blind.

Whilst the big blind should adjust their calling range from the regular 36% to just 10% of hands to account for the ICM effect in play.

The PokerNerve Road to Success course teaches players how to master ICM situations, which is key to tournament poker success since ICM comes into play as the prizes become significant. If there was only one tournament poker tip that you take away from this article, it's that you need to know ICM!

Tip 6: Bet The Appropriate Size

Strong players are capitalizing on their opponents tendencies to bet too big or too small in a number of different situations. With some similar considerations to that of continuation betting, when selecting a bet size important aspects include;

• Which player's range does the board texture favor?
• Who has the greatest nut saturation?
• How does SPR influence our betting strategy

There are many great articles online about bet sizing. You should be sure to check out ThePokerBank's and the Pokerology's to learn more about this tournament tip.

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Tip 7: Take Equity Realization Into Account

Possibly due to the popularity growth of Twitch, many poker players approach to big blind play has evolved. The current trend is to defend the big blind with virtually any 2 cards, as some top pros elect to do, and the justification for this is taking advantage of the excellent pot odds being offered.

While the inclusion of antes combined with commonly seeing a small open raise size does offer the big blind generous pot odds, this has led to a fundamental flaw in the way many players approach big blind play in poker tournaments. The key concept overlooked, is equity realization.

Equity realization reflects a players ability to take a certain hand, and win their share of the pot, frequently enough, to make it profitable in the long-term. Although some top pros have the ability to win their equity share of the pot even out of position, less skilled players rarely do. This leads to a large chip loss in the long run.

It is quite difficult to realize of your equity when out of position, with no initiative and a weak range. This means them glorious odds you are being offered aren't quite as good as you think!

The following article explains this crucial tournament poker tip in more detail; Equity Realization.

Tip 8: Don't Miss Double And Triple Barrel Opportunities

'One and done' is the plight of many aspiring tournament poker players. Everyday at the tables I see players missing profitable opportunities to double, or even triple barrel. Understanding what turn and river cards are advantageous to a players range, along with opponent tendencies, are crucial parts of a winning barreling formula.

The most common scenario at the table, is a heads-up pot where the big blind calls an open-raise. And this happens to be a great spot to barrel. Big blind defenders have a wide range, and it's important to pressure this wide range, especially on only partially connected board textures with one or multiple high cards.

RedChipPoker has a great article on spotting profitable double barrel opportunities which you can read here: THE +EV DOUBLE BARREL GUIDE

Tip 9: Check-Raise More Flops

The biggest difference between the current tournament population, and the future generation, will likely be their approach to check-raising the flop. This opportunity typically occurs in a heads-up pot, after defending the big blind verse an opponents raise.

Currently, MTT players only check-raise the flop in this situation around 7-8% of the time, when closer to 20% is a more optimal strategy. On certain flop textures, check-raising close to 25% of the time is an extremely profitable strategy. And if players are getting out of line with their c-bets, then check-raising at an even higher frequency could be a profitable exploit.

By giving up too easily on a wide range of board textures, or taking a more passive approach and simply calling, c-betting can be done with reckless abandon. However, by selecting a nice mix of check-raising hands, combining some strong hands with some good semi-bluffing candidates, a check-raiser can become tricky to play against and exploit the average players tendency to over c-bet.

POKER TIP: Applied correctly and check-raising becomes a super powerful weapon in your arsenal leading to more profitable poker results. But also think beyond the flop, there's plenty of check-raising opportunities you may be missing. This video demonstrates an interesting turn check-raise situation.

We discuss check raising strategy in more detail in our post over on unfeltedpoker.com.

Tip 10: Develop A Good 3betting Strategy

Whilst 3 betting aggressively is a strategy many players employ, especially in online poker circles, failure to apply optimal 3 betting strategies has certainly led to a lot of spewy poker. Simply attacking opponents who are suspected of opening wide doesn't cut it in the modern poker world.

Players have learnt to deal with 3 bets more profitably, by mixing in some calls with timely 4 bets. Moreover, the role stack size plays when it comes to 3 betting it still largely misunderstood by much of the poker community.

Sure there are certain stack sizes where 3 bets gain a lot of leverage, but how about the role blockers play? And when is 9♦7♦ a better 3 bet candidate than K♦T♠ ? These are just some of the considerations when it comes to a profitable 3 betting strategy. See how to design strong 3betting ranges in this article by Donkr.

Bonus Poker Strategy Tip: Avoid and Deal with Downswings

As a poker player you want to earn your money as easily and as stress-free as possible right? Well, understanding ROI, variance and bankroll management can help (see TopPokerValue's article on bankroll management).

All poker players at some point experience downswings. In some cases, this can affect their play, volume or state of mind.

You'll be miserable, hating poker, playing less and earning less per tournament as your play will suffer.

Along with finding ways that work for you to keep a positive mindset, taking pro-active steps can help keep you confident by knowing you are dealing with the situation like a professional whilst at the same time taking positive action to get back on track and winning.

What is ROI and variance?

Every tournament you enter has an EV associated with it. So if you enter a $10 tourney, as a good player maybe you have a 30% ROI, so you make $3. So it doesn't matter whether you brick that tourney or win it for $5000, you make $3 in the long run.

Now, of course, you don't make $3 each time. 80-85% of the time you lose that $10, some percentage of the time you win a little bit, and some very small percentage of the time you win a lot. How small those ‘small percentages’ are primarily depends on not only your skill edge, but also the field size which is an extremely important concept that is often ignored.

Variance is a factor of two things:

1) Your edge

2) The field size

Example 1)

You play the Hot $55 which has $30K guaranteed, every day for a year on Pokerstars. It has 1600 runners and you have a 5% ROI, because turbo ROIs are small. Your average yearly profit is $605 however you will lose money on the year 55% of the time.

Example 2)

You play a $20 tourney with $3K guaranteed on a softer site every day for a year. It has 200 runners and you have a 30% ROI, because it's a normal speed tourney and you’re against an easier field. Your average yearly profit is $2400 and in this case you lose money only 12% of the time.

A lot of people would look at those two tournaments and make a decision based on the buy-in and 1st place prize money as to which was better to play, and it would be grossly wrong. Once you accept all the above, you realise that the 'up top' number is largely meaningless.

Yes, on the same site bigger fields may mean a lot of fish have registered to play, but you'll find a lot of small field, soft, non-peak hour tournaments have a great pro-to-fish ratio and hence are great value. Of course once you consider other sites that have smaller fields, you'll often find they are a better choice than what might be running on Pokerstars.

So what can you do?

When players start losing money and along with that, confidence, not only does their game deteriorate but they often compound that problem by failing to make rational decisions. Often losing players, or players on a downswing, go 'bink chasing' and decide to take a shot to win all their money back in one tourney. Or load up some quick $82 hyper-turbos to try to turn it all around quickly.

People get overly fixated on what's 'up top' and wanting to score big in one tournament. That’s a sure-fire strategy to fuel a down swing. If your house got knocked down would you try to slap it back up in a week? Take that opportunity to rebuild a better, stronger house.

Make sure you're adding in some study and keep focused (see Sky's Matsuhashi How To Study Poker series), and stay fresh and positive as you approach each session. Be smart and get back into profit quicker instead of enduring a 6-12 month variance rollercoaster!

Closing Words On Tournament Poker Tips

Poker is a multi-faceted game which makes it fun but challenging. Challenge yourself to factor in the relevant concepts, and make more profitable decisions. Tighten up from the big blind, and in general around the table. This tip often quickly improves a new players results, or those that have a got a little sloppy with their play.

Calculate stack size using 'M'. Always be aware of your own, and your opponents stack sizes so you don't get yourself caught in awkward situations. One awkward situation that often comes up is when you hold an overpair to the board and an opponent puts the heat on you. Don't be afraid to make big lay downs to preserve your stack, especially in the early levels.

Be aware of your cbetting frequency. There's no need to waste tournament poker chips cbetting every time, especially when the pot is multi-way. Pick your spots to make profitable plays. Remember when it comes to the final table, regularly profitable playing ranges might alter due to the payouts. ICM is the key when it comes to those final big decisions.

Another key to success is knowing when to fire multiple bullets at your opponents. Barreling, especially against a wide big blind range can really help increase your non-showdown winnings. Finding ways to accumulate chips without always having the best hand is what top players do. This is why check-raising and having a good 3 betting strategy is so important. Correct use of these strategical concepts and the other tips outlines will get you winning more at the tables.

Now that you've acquired some great holdem tournament strategy tips to help you achieve MTT success, go out there an implement them!

One of the quickest way to improve your poker game is to take on a poker coaching, a course or join a poker training site; if that is something that interests you be sure to check out the PokerNerve road to Success Course for some advanced poker tournament strategy or you can check out HowToPlayPokerInfo's guide on poker training & poker courses to find the right option for you.

Any other poker tournament strategy tips? Leave them below in the comments, we would love to hear them!

Preflop raising decisions can be very complex. What stakes are we playing? Is it a live game or online? How strong is our hand? Which limpers will call? Will we be in position postflop?

Sometimes our decision is obvious: 'I have aces, so I'm going to raise for value here.' Sometimes it's subjective: 'I think I can force the limper to fold here.' But we should also consider what a mathematical analysis of preflop raising can teach us. When is a raise our most profitable action for the moment? When might it be the most profitable action for the hand?

Las Vegas $1/$2 NLH Stats

In order to calculate the expected value for our preflop actions accurately, we need to know certain key frequencies that are typical for our game.

Figure 1 below contains some of the most useful stats for these EV calculations for both online NL100 and $1/$2 NL live games in Las Vegas, most of them published here for the first time. (Check out Donkey Poker Volume 2: Postflop, Section 7.5 to see how these stats were generated.)

Here I define 'EP/MP' as the first four seats after the big blind on a nine-seat table. Since the vast majority of Vegas $1/$2 players are position-dumb, we can combine the results from these seats into a single stat in order to make the stat more reliable. The hijack and cutoff stats are similar to the EP/MP stats.

VPIP and PFR are the primary stats useful to determine an opponent's playing style. '35/6' means that the average Vegas player voluntarily invests in 35 percent of his dealt hands, while raising only 6 percent of them. This player would be considered a 'loose-passive' player in an online game, but he is average in a Vegas $1/$2 game.

Calling a Preflop Raise (CPFR) is a statistic that applies only when a player calls a raise after having already invested in the pot, which applies to limp-callers as well as to the blinds. This is not the same thing as Cold Calling Preflop (CCPF).

Compared to an online game, a Vegas preflop raise is fraught with more risk. Not only is our average raise size larger, our Vegas opponents are more likely to call it. Although their calling range is weaker, we often face multiple callers, which is rare online. Consequently, it is extremely important to have a solid idea of how these stats influence the profitability of our preflop action.

A Simple Example: A Big Blind Hero vs. a Single EP/MP Limper

Let's consider a situation which is relatively easy to calculate. Suppose an average player limps from one of the EP/MP positions. It folds around to Hero in the big blind who can check his option or raise.

Figure 1 indicates that that Mr. Average has a range of 35 percent, but he normally raises with 6.1 percent of this range. So we can assign his limping range as [6.1–35]. The specific card combos within his range depend on the ranking system we use. Although there is no single ranking system that is always correct, I will use the Flopzilla NLHE ranking in this column, since it is easy for anyone to access.

Suppose Hero has and decides to check. We can estimate Hero's 'Momentary Expected Value' (MEV) as...

MEV_Check = Pot₀ × EWC = $5 × 0.474 = $2.37

...where Pot₀ = $5 and EWC (Showdown Equity When Called) is 47.4 percent for Hero's pocket deuces when facing Villain's range. I call this his 'momentary' EV since it applies only at the moment he checks.

Suppose Hero decides to raise to $10 with the same . Figure 1 shows that an average villain will call a preflop raise after limping in EP/MP about 56 percent of the time (Row 8). This would be a Flopzilla range of [6.1–22.7].

Hero's Fold Equity is FE = (1 - 0.564) = 0.436. His showdown Equity-When-Called is EWC = 0.454. Notice that even though the villain has folded nearly half of his range, Hero's EWC is only slightly worse than when he checks. This suggests that the villain's actual limping and calling ranges are not critical in establishing Hero's MEV.

After deciding to raise, we can calculate Hero's MEV as...

MEV_Raise-$8 = (FE × Pot₀) + ((1-FE) × (EWC × Pot₁ - Raise)) = $2.27 + $0.28 = $2.55

1-2 Live Poker Strategy

The first term is just the average amount earned when the villain folds. The second term is the amount earned when the villain calls. ' Pot₁' is the size of the pot after he calls, minus the rake. 'Raise' is the size of our raise ($8 in this case). Since three-betting is so rare in Vegas $1/$2, and limp-three-betting is even rarer, we can ignore it for this calculation. Again, we consider this our momentary EV since it only applies at the end of the preflop action.

So Hero's raise appears to be more profitable (by $0.18) than checking. It gains nearly all of its profitability from fold equity and a just little from showdown equity. This is generally the case for heads-up battles.

However, there is a serious issue with these estimates. MEV uses showdown equity, which essentially assumes that the hand will be checked down postflop. This rarely happens in a real game, which makes its usefulness imperfect. We haven't considered such factors as skill and position, which can increase or decrease our expected profit in the hand. Hero's inferior position in this scenario suggests that his actual 'Hand EV' (HEV) will be lower than his calculated MEV. Even Hero's superior skill will not likely overcome his inferior position.

Since Hero's inferior postflop position makes it difficult to realize the full MEV of either action, it's difficult to say which action would have the higher HEV. Hero's best decision could depend on whether the villain appears more or less likely than the average villain to fold to Hero's raise. We might also consider that if both actions result in a similar HEV, the check does so with less risk.

Figure 2 shows the results of these calculations applied to some of the hands listed in the Donkey Poker starting hands chart. The solid symbols represent Hero's MEV when raising to $10, which is positive for each of these combos. 'JTs-' denotes 'suited connectors JTs and smaller.' Meanwhile the '+' symbols represent the difference in MEV between raising and checking.

When MEV is positive, raising is more profitable than checking, which is true for a range including approximately 22+, A2+, KT+, and QJ (i.e., any pocket pair, any ace-x hand, any two Broadway cards). This represents 27.6 percent of all starting hands.

Since we are out of position in the scenario, our HEV is probably lower than these values, so checking is probably preferable when the Delta MEV is close to zero.

Button Hero vs. One Limper

The previous scenario is rare in Vegas $1/$2 games, but it serves to illustrate the principals used for our analytical EV calculations. A more common and useful example is when the Hero is on the button with and facing a single EP/MP limper. In this case Hero can fold, limp, or raise, where folding has an EV_fold = 0.

This calculation has additional complexity because we have the blinds behind us, which means we must consider their propensity to check behind or complete and their propensity to call a raise. (We will ignore their negligible three-betting frequency here.)

Suppose Hero limps and the two blinds raise 4.8 percent and 3.4 percent of the time, respectively. If the small blind completes with [4.8-50] and the big blind has a range of [3.4-100], we will have a four-way pot about 92 percent of the time.

Let's suppose the other 8 percent of the time Hero limp-folds after one of the blinds raises. (This is plausible for those hands with which Hero would actually limp.) We can also assume that the EP/MP limper has a range of [6.1-35.7]. All of these values are based on the actual Vegas stats listed in Figure 1.

We then have...

MEV_Limp = 0.92 × (Pot₀ × EWC-Limp) - (0.08 × Limp) = 0.92 × ($8 × 0.222 - $2) - (0.08 × $2) = -$0.38

In other words, limping on the button with is not immediately profitable.

Suppose we raise to $10 with on the button. Using the above frequencies, everyone will fold 23.1 percent of the time. A single villain will call 47.0 percent of the time, two villains will call 25.7 percent of the time, and everyone will call 4.2 percent of the time.

It turns out our EWC is nearly the same no matter which villain calls, so we can treat each villain as interchangeable. Thus, Hero's MEV is approximately...

MEV_Raise = (0.231 × Pot₀) + (0.47 × (EWC₁ × Pot₁ - Raise)) + (0.257 × (EWC₂ × Pot₂ - Raise)) + (0.042 × (EWC₃ × Pot₃ - Raise)) = $0.63

...where the various values depend on how many players called our raise. We can see that raising with our pocket deuces is much more immediately profitable than limping with them. Furthermore, our Hand EV should be better than this since we have superior position and skill and since we can leverage our profit when we flop a set.

Note that when the blinds are tight and/or passive, they are less likely to call our raise and less likely to three-bet. (Pre-loading tells are very important here.) In these situations, raising a single limper from the button is even more +MEV. And our HEV is even more enhanced since we are less likely to face multiple villains in a raised pot. (It's generally easier to outplay a single villain than three of them.)

Figure 3 depicts the MEV results for various hand types. The symbols represent the MEV for raising to $10 in a Vegas $1/$2 game. Each series represents a descending hand grouping. For example, 'T9s-' denotes 'suited connectors T9s and smaller.'

Bottom line: in low-stakes cash games such as the $1/$2 NL games in Vegas, raising is nearly always more profitable than limping (except for 63s, 53s, 65o and 54o). In fact, 33 percent of all starting combos are immediately profitable. And some of the negative-MEV combos are probably profitable for the hand due to our superior position.

Since most Vegas $1/$2 players are position-dumb, they generally limp and call with a similar frequency from the hijack and cutoff positions. So our very wide button raising range is valid for any single-limper situation when we are on the button.

Button Hero vs. Multiple Limpers

The previous single-limper scenario occurs only a small fraction of the time in Vegas $1/$2 games. We can readily extend this to multiple-limper scenarios, which are much more common. This calculation is even more complex and we are less likely to fold everyone out with a $10 button raise. This time I will spare you the gory math and show you the results below in Figure 4.

Here the top four curves represent the MEV for raising to $10 facing one, two, three, and four limpers. The smooth line represents the average MEV of limping. These curves show that our 'immediately profitable' raising range is 33.6 percent when facing a single limper, and that our range decreases to 13.4 percent when facing four limpers.

We can make several conclusions here:

• The more limpers we face, the tighter our raising range should be from the button.
• When facing one or two limpers, we should generally either raise or fold, since once raising becomes unprofitable, limping is even more unprofitable.
• When facing three or more limpers, limping is generally more profitable than raising once raising becomes unprofitable. So we now have both raising and limping ranges.
• When both raising and limping have MEVs near zero, limping may be preferable since we risk less for the same reward.
• Our slightly negative-MEV combos may still have slightly positive-EV for the hand. Our superior skill and position, coupled with our ability to leverage our big flops should increase our profit for the hand. This is combo-dependent since some combos are more likely to flop big. (22 is stronger than 54o.)
• Another way to state this is that some -MEV combos may have sufficient implied odds play. For instance, we can play a -$0.50 MEV combo if we believe our implied EV for the hand is worth more than this.

The Effect of Raise Size

A typical rule of thumb for these Vegas $1/$2 games is to raise to about 4x BB plus one additional BB for each limper. Thus we would raise to $10, $12, $14, or $16 as the number of limpers increases. The previous analysis kept the raise size constant to see the influence of the number of limpers.

A key question we would like answered is how the villains will respond to reasonable variations in raise size. Unfortunately, that data does not exist for these Vegas games. My general feeling, however, is that most Vegas $1/$2 players are not very sensitive to our raise size as long as we keep it within the table norm. So, to a first approximation, we can assume that the Figure 1 stats do not change very much when we increase our raise size incrementally.

Figure 5 shows what happens to MEV_Raise as we increase the size of our raise when facing four limpers. We can see that that our raising range decreases slightly as we increase our raise size. This effect is fairly small and may be counterbalanced by a decreased likelihood that a villain will call a larger raise.

Here the symbols represent the MEV for raising to $10, $12, $14 or $16 in a Vegas $1/$2 game. These combos are sorted in order of MEV_Raise.

The important thing to notice in this graph is that we have a much larger MEV when we raise our best hands by the maximum amount that will not result in a villain adjustment. If we have aces and the villains will call a $16 bet as often as a $10 bet, we should bet $16.

On the other hand, we should consider betting smaller with our borderline raising hands. Of course, this sets up the possibility that we could be telegraphing our hand strength. But most Vegas $1/$2 players are not paying much attention to our bet size unless the size is unusual for the table. Here we can make adjustments based on our knowledge of the players at our table.

Hero is in the Cutoff

Putting the Hero in the cutoff makes the analysis even more complex. Making some reasonable approximations, I can make a few generalizations:

• All players, including the button, are very unlikely to three-bet, so we should generally ignore this possibility when deciding to raise. (If our particular button opponent likes to three-bet, we should consider changing seats.)
• The button is less likely to cold call our cutoff raise than an EP/MP player is to call after a limp.
• Being in the cutoff facing three limpers is similar to being on the button facing four limpers. This is equivalent to the button replacing the fourth limper.
• The average button will call our cutoff raise about 22 percent of the time. We will then not have a postflop position advantage on every villain. This means that our average HEV will not be as enhanced from the cutoff as it would be from the button, and thus our cutoff raising range should be somewhat tighter that it would be from the button with one additional limper.
• If we have a tell that suggests that the button intends to fold, we can play the cutoff exactly as we would normally play the button.

Conclusions

We can't yet decide on a specific hand range for each scenario since we have not yet determined just how valuable our superior position and skill is. Nevertheless, it is clear that the more limpers we face, the tighter our raising raise should be.

1-2 No Limit Live Poker Strategy

Also, our raising range should be much wider than the typical Vegas player. We can also play from the cutoff facing X limpers with a similar range as from the button when facing X+1 limpers.

Live 1/2 Nl Poker Strategy

And of course, we should always adjust our ranges depending on the tendencies of the specific villains we face and based on specific tells we observe.

Steve Selbrede has been playing poker for 20 years and writing about it since 2012. He is the author of five books, The Statistics of Poker, Beat the Donks, Donkey Poker Volume 1: Preflop, Donkey Poker Volume 2: Postflop, and Donkey Poker Volume 3: Hand Reading.

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