preflop raise sizes

Preflop Raise Sizes That Win | Upswing Poker Level-Up #29

LISTEN ON YOUR PLATFORM OF CHOICE

(YOU CAN ALSO SEARCH "UPSWING LEVEL UP" WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS)

This article is a transcription of the Level-Up Podcast, hosted by Upswing VP Mike Brady with Gary Blackwood. You can watch or listen to the entire episode via the links above or read on if you prefer a written version.

Mike Brady (00:01):

We are back after a two week break to help you level up your poker skills. I’m Mike Brady and I’m joined by everyone’s favorite Scottish Poker Pro, Gary Blackwood.

Gary Blackwood (00:10):

Welcome back to the podcast guys and girls. Today we are looking at pre flop raises. We’ll be talking about single raise pots, three bet pots, four bet pots, what to do versus limpers, all things pre flop raise.

Mike Brady (00:21):

The plan is to start by walking you through the “GTO” raise sizes for every pre-flop spot with 100 big blind stacks and that’s going to act as our go-to baseline strategy.

From there we’ll talk about the money making adjustments you should make when stack sizes change or when you get reliable reads on your opponents. We’ll also talk about playing versus limpers.

Optimal Preflop Sizes (Use These As Your Baseline)

Let’s start by running through the optimal sizes for all the common pre flop spots. If you play online 6-max games, you’re going to be very familiar with these sizes.

Open-Raise Size

So Gary, what is the optimal open raise size, when the action folds to you and you’re raising first in what size are you going with?

Gary Blackwood (01:00):

Let’s start with early position. You want to be using very small raise sizes here. A lot of players min raise. Some players at very low stakes like to use 2.2x because of the rake structure and whatnot, but very small is good from early position and middle position. And the reason for this is that when you’re under the gun, you’re going to be out of position very, very often and as we all know, being out of position is much harder than being in position. So we want to keep the pot small. We’re also going to have to do quite a lot of folding versus three bets when we’re under the gun and when we’re in middle position.

(01:31):

So we want kind of lose the minimum in that scenario. So we want keep the pot small when we’re out of position and when we have to do a lot of folding versus three bets and kind of lose the minimum in both different situations. As mentioned, middle position is really quite similar to under the gun. Our raise size can be the same for both of these positions, but when we’re in the cutoff we want to use a larger opening size, much more likely to be in position. Ranges start to get wider. We want to be using at least 2.3x from the cutoff. You can even use 2.5x if you want to and on the button we’re guaranteed to be in position. We can do a lot of calling versus three bets, so no more small opens here. 99% of professionals use a 2.5x open size on the button.

(02:09):

It’s something that’s been really consistent, poker has changed so much over the last 10 years or so, but 2.5 x button open has been really consistent online for as long as I can remember. Very standard opening size on the button and when you’re in the small blind, you don’t want to use anything other than 3x as your opening size any less than that and you’re just allowing your opponent to defend really wide because obviously the smaller our open, the better price they get, plus the fact they’re being in position means that they get to defend really wide and being out of position for us versus a super wide range can be very, very tricky. So you want your opponent to pay for the privilege of being able to see a flop.

Mike Brady (02:45):

A big takeaway here is that when you’re raising in earlier positions compared to late positions, you should be raising smaller. That’s just generally the best way to approach it. Even if you’re playing in games where the open sizes tend to be much bigger than this, maybe you’re playing in live games, you should still be following this scheme where you’re raising to your smallest sizes from early position and then you’re raising to your biggest sizes from the button and then eventually the small blind.

3-Bet Sizing

Now let’s move on to three bet sizing. Gary, what are the golden rules for three betting both in position and out of position?

Gary Blackwood (03:19):

There used to be this golden rule of using 3x in position and 4x out of position for your three bet sizes, but that’s a bit of an outdated strategy and if that’s something you’re still doing, you for sure want to update your strats a little bit. As we’ve spoken about under the gun likes to min raise to two big blinds to keep the pot small and save themselves some money and so on. If we’re in the cutoff and we three bet to six big blinds, we’re allowing them to exploit us massively with such a small three bet in terms of the number of big blinds, so when we face min raises or 2.2x opens, we don’t stick with the golden rule of using a 3x three bet size. We want to go slightly bigger than 3x, not by much but slightly bigger. So if someone opens to 2x, I make it 6.5. If they open to 2.2, I make it seven big blinds and if they open to 2.5 big blinds or more, that’s when I start to use the 3x three bet size.

(04:07):

You do also have the option of using 7.5 on the button versus a 2x under the gun open and the reason for that is that you’re on the button, you’re in position, you’re guaranteed to be in position for the hand. So if you’re in the cutoff and you three bet, the button can cold four bet you and you could be out of position. So you can also take that a little further and three bet even bigger when you’re on the button because you’re guaranteed to be in position. Even if someone cold four bets, you can still play the pot in position but you cannot use a 3x three bet size versus a small open. You’re allowing your opponent to exploit you and you kind of want to re-exploit them by using that slightly larger three bet size as mentioned. If you’re wondering how they are exploiting you.

(04:47):

But if we use the small three bet sizes because their price is immediately better and they get to see more flops and peel more three bets so we’re playing into their hands, if we use that six big big blind three bet because they suddenly are getting a much better price and they’re just able to see way more flops, which is obviously better for them. The exact same concept applies when you’re out of position if someone makes it too big, so you’re kind of playing into their hands by making it eight bigs. So you want to go just a little bigger so you’re not offering them a really nice price, particularly when they’re in position. One last thing to talk about is when you’re out of position in three betting from the big blind, you want to go even bigger. Say the button opens to 2.5x, you can make it 10 or 10.5 from the small blind because you’ve got quite a strong range here that doesn’t have much air or junk or trash in it, but if you’re three betting correctly from the big blind, you’ve got all sorts of weird and wonderful hands in there.

(05:38):

It has like king five suited, queen eight suited, five four suited, ten six suited. The list goes on. So you want to be a little bigger from the big blind to sort of reflect your polarized range.

Mike Brady (05:48):

To summarize those golden rules that Gary mentioned at the beginning, have his answer going 3x as a three bet in position and 4x out of position, those are still pretty solid rules. They’re just not set in stone. You can go roughly 3x when you’re in position for example, but you have to be willing to go bigger if the open raise itself was very small, if you’re up against that two big blind raise size, you don’t want to play into their hands by making it six big blinds in position or eight big blinds out of position. You got to jack it up a little bit. But if your opponents are going more in the 2.5x range, you can kind of stick to that 3x 4x rule structure unless you’re playing out of the big blind where you should tend to make it a little bit bigger because you have that more polarized range.

Squeeze Sizing

Now let’s move on to a different type of three betting, squeezing. We’re talking about when someone raises and then someone else calls and now you’re putting in the three bet. Gary, how are you sizing your squeezes both in position and out of position?

Gary Blackwood (06:43):

This is for sure where people go too small. Let’s talk about being in position. First of all, it’s not that often though we’re going to get the opportunity to squeeze when we’re in position because people don’t really flat much in the hijack or in the cutoff anymore. But sometimes we will be, somebody can open in middle position and a fun player can flat in the cutoff for example, and it’s really important that we go big here, say under the gun opens to 2.2x and the cutoff calls you absolutely cannot three bet here to anything less than 11 big blinds. That might sound massive, but it’s very, very standard. Squeezing spots are always big sizes. You’re up against two players. There’s already more money in the pot because of that call, so you must size up in this spot and obviously we can scale up or down based on a couple of different factors like number of callers, stack sizes of our opponents, open sizes, all those different factors. If under the gun opens to 2.5x and MP calls and then the cutoff calls, we should be going 14 big blinds here on the button as an absolute minimum.

(07:39):

Don’t be afraid to put in these large squeezes where necessary. In terms of being out of position, we want to go even bigger, say under the gun opens to 2x and the button calls, it’s a small open and there’s only one caller, but we still go really quite big here we go 12 big blinds as an absolute minimum. It’s really important that we put in these large squeezes. We don’t want to give our opponents the opportunity to peel our three bet for a great price. We’ve got to factor in that the extra player makes all the difference. So when the opener raises and there’s a caller, that means that our size should be much bigger because the pot is already that little bit bigger, which means that we should squeeze larger.

Mike Brady (08:14):

Well that’s definitely a bit bigger than I was squeezing, so I am learning alongside y’all today.

4-Bet Sizing

Let’s move on to optimal four bet sizing. Gary, how are you sizing your four bets both in and out position when you have 100 big blind stacks?

Gary Blackwood (08:31):

So a really big, quite common leak that a lot of people have is they use massive four bet sizes. Going to go off on a very quick tangent here and talk about something else that’s a really big leak. A really common thing I see is different sizes for different hands. The amount of people who panic and four bet to 27 big blinds with Ace King and Ace King only is really, really common. It’s something I’ve seen from a lot of students over the years. So firstly, whether have Aces or King Jack suited or anything in between use the same size. We don’t use bigger or smaller four bets based on the size of our hand. Have one size and stick with it and know what that size is before you play. Don’t just kind of make it up on the fly because that’s when things start to change and you start to go a little bigger when you’ve got Ace King or a little smaller when you’ve got a bluff because you don’t want to lose more big blinds. In terms of the size that we actually want to use here,

(09:20):

there’s no real golden rule of X size versus X three bet, but we want to allow for post flop playability, so we don’t want to go massive. What I mean by that is if we go really big, like 27 big blinds and our opponent calls, there’s 55 big blinds in the middle and we lose a little bit of our skill edge because the pot is so big we’re much more likely to just be all in and then variance kind of takes over. So if we four bet to a more correct size, which I’ll talk about in just a little second pot is that little bit smaller, which allows us to bet flop, bet turn and shove river as opposed to just being all in on the flop or all in on the turn for example. Let’s get into some specific sizes now. Say for example we opened in the cutoff to 2.3 big blinds and the button makes it 7.5 big blinds.

(10:03):

We don’t need to go 23 or 24 big blinds here. A lot of people tend to do that because they want their opponent to fold when they’re bluffing for example. We can go 20 big blinds or 21 big blinds just fine and that will generate the fold equity that we need. For example, your opponent can’t call your four bet with Ace Eight suited or Ace Jack offsuit whether you go 21 or 23 big blinds. So you do generate that fold equity and it’s still a very large number of big blinds that you’re putting into the pot. So it’s not like you’re missing out on value when you’ve got to hand like Aces or Kings, there’s going to be 43 big blinds in the middle and you can still play for stacks very, very comfortably. So we don’t want to go too big to fold out the weaker parts of our opponents range, and at the same time we don’t want to go too big to get max value.

(10:44):

We get the best of both worlds by using a more appropriate size in this specific example of 20 or 21 big blinds. So the specific example we’ve just given you that was approximately 2.7x versus our opponent’s three bet. Let’s talk a little bit about when we’re in position, that was out of position. Say for example we opened the button to 2.5 big blinds, the small blind then makes it 10 big blinds, an appropriate four bet from us on the button here is going to be 23-23.5. So interestingly enough, that’s actually a smaller multiplier. We’re going 2.3 or 2.35x our opponents three bet, but it ends up being more big blinds because obviously the three bet is bigger. So we tend to use a smaller multiplier when we’re in position because we’re in position, but it ends up being more big blinds than when we’re out of position because obviously the in positions three bet is a little smaller. So when we’re in position, it’s really important again that we’re not using massive four bets. Our multiplier of their three bet is actually smaller than when we’re out of position even though it’s going to end up being more big blinds.

Mike Brady (11:44):

Alright, so we’re done walking you through basically the entire pre-flop game tree. You now know those optimal sizes for 100 big blind stacks. Those are going to be your go-to sizes in theory. Obviously if you play live games and such, it might be different and we’re going to touch on that in a second.

Stack Size Adjustments

But now let’s start talking about adjustments that are based on stack size changes. Again, we were talking about 100 big blinds before, so now let’s scale down and talk about say 50 big blind stacks. So Gary, when stacks get shorter, how are all of the sizes we just talked about changing?

Gary Blackwood (12:16):

What we just spoke about a moment ago with regards to playability, that also very much applies here. You want to use smaller sizes when stacks get shallower to allow for more post flop playability and not just be left with the option of being all in on the turn or all in on the flop for example. That’s when variance can really start to take over. So shallower stacks mean smaller, opens smaller three bets, smaller four bets, even post flop can mean smaller c-bets sometimes as well.

Mike Brady (12:41):

Yeah, pretty simple there. When stacks get shorter, everything scales down, easy to remember. All right, now let’s talk about deep stack adjustments. When stacks approach 200 big blinds or even 300 big blinds, Gary, how are you adjusting all of those sizes?

Gary Blackwood (12:55):

The opposite to what we’ve just seen. When you’re shallower, you want to use smaller sizes. When you’re deeper, you generally tend to favor using larger sizes. When you’re in position in particular, you want to use bigger sizes, particularly when you’re three betting, not by a lot. We’re not talking massive three bets all of a sudden, say for example you’re 200 big blinds deep and the cutoff opens, you want a three bet to 8.5 big blinds on the button. So it’s not a massive difference, but it sort of just scales up the size of the pot, that little bit that allows you to sort of play for stacks if you want to by the river. In terms of being out of position, there’s a bit of a debate particularly for three bet pots. Some great players like Doug Polk for example, he was playing the heads up challenge versus Daniel Negreanu,

(13:35):

he was using smaller three bets the deeper they got, and I’m sure the logic behind that is that Doug wanted to keep the pot smaller because he’s out of position. There are some very good players who prefer to use larger three bet sizes when they’re out of position because they want to keep that sort of stack to pot ratio similar to when they’re a hundred big blinds effective. And they do that by using those larger three bets. Almost everyone will use larger open sizes. For example, if you’re 200 big blinds deep and you’re in the small blind in a single raise pot, you want to open to a little bigger than 3x. And again, not by much, it’s just that little bit bigger, but you can kind of go both ways when you’re out of position. If you want to keep the pot small because you’re out of position, you can use smaller three bet sizes. But if you want to sort of keep the stack to pot ratio similar to when you’re a hundred big blinds effective, you can use slightly larger three bet sizes and then play for stacks a little more easily.

Mike Brady (14:22):

It might not sound like a big difference. Gary said you three bet to 8.5 big blinds instead of 7.5 big blinds button versus cutoff when you’re deeper, and you might be thinking an extra one hole big blind, how much does that really matter? But it matters quite a bit because there’s an exponential growth that happens with the pot. Now going into the flop, the pot’s going to be around 18 big blinds instead of around 16 big blinds. That means when you bet say pot, you’re betting 18 instead of 16 going into the turn, that means the pot’s going to be five or six blinds bigger. Then going into the river, the pot’s going to be like 12 to 20 blinds bigger. So you can kind of see this exponential increase that happens just by that small increase that you made pre flop. And then to talk a little bit more about that sort of out of position debate because I’m very familiar with Doug’s thinking on how this works particularly in heads up.

(15:11):

So the way poker works at a fundamental level is that when stacks get deeper, the in position players pot share, in other words how much of the pot belongs to them, equity and expected value wise, goes up. So when you’re in position and stacks get deeper, you have a very big incentive to juice that pot up because more of it belongs to you, a bigger proportion of it belongs to you. And when you’re out of position the thinking goes, you actually want to keep the pot a little smaller because that way your opponent is winning more of a smaller pot. You want to avoid them taking advantage of the fact that they have more pot share. That said, I suspect this is mainly a concept for heads up games specifically probably a function, and I’m just guessing here of the very wide ranges. When you’re playing heads up, you open on the button 80, 85% of hands and there’s a ton of junky stuff in there.

(16:07):

So even if you open on the button and I three bet to a very small size, you still have a bunch of hands that have to auto fold. You have Ten Five offsuit, Ten Four off suit, Jack Three offsuit even against a small three bet, those are folding every single time. So I don’t really have to worry about you being able to call my three bet very often so I can make it smaller like Doug and all the top heads up players tend to do. However, if you’re playing 6-max games or full ring games, your opponents aren’t opening 80% of hands, they’re not opening 85% of hands, they’re opening much stronger ranges and that means a much bigger proportion of their range is going to be able to continue against a small three bet. I’ve looked at a lot of hands played by top players to kind of figure out the mechanics of this whole concept and debate and I suspect that it’s just not as much of a thing in 6-max games to actually size down your three bet out of position as stacks get deeper.

(17:03):

I haven’t seen basically any top 6-max players do such a thing, so I’m going to assume that either the EV is very close or it’s just straight up worse and you should really be either scaling up your three bet out of position or maybe even keeping it roughly the same. Overall, I doubt there’s a huge EV difference between any of these strategies as long as your three bet size is accompanied by the correct range, given your size, your EV’s probably going to be pretty good compared to the other possible strategies. But I just wanted to present the rest of that entire debate because it’s something I’ve thought about a lot since the Doug versus Daniel Negreanu challenge a couple of years ago. So I just wanted to forward that knowledge onto you here.

Adjusting vs Loose Players

Alright, now let’s move on to some non stack depth based adjustments. Let’s talk about adjusting versus different player types, adjusting in loose games, adjusting versus limpers, things like that. So here’s a simple question for you Gary.

Suppose there’s just one very loose player behind you, very high VPIP, playing a lot of hands. Are you adjusting your sizing at all because that player’s behind and if so, how?

Gary Blackwood (18:06):

No, and we shouldn’t be, particularly when we’re playing online. Generally when you’re playing online there is one weak player, maybe two and the rest are solid capable thinking regs. Say you’re under the gun and you’ve got Aces and the really fun fun players in the big blind don’t open to three big blinds or 3.5 big blinds because well I want to play with the fun player on the big blind and I want to build up the pot. I understand that logic, but you’ve got four guys in between who are really solid thinking players and all of a sudden you’ve opened to 3.5x and their King 10 suited isn’t going to three bet or their pocket eights isn’t going to three bet. Think about how many times you get three bet online in one session. You are going to very much deter those marginal three bets from doing so because you’ve opened to 3.5 big blinds to allow the fun player to bloat the pot ever so slightly.

(18:57):

So when we’re playing online, there are some instances where we can use larger opens, for example, if we’re on the button or if we’re in the small blind and the very fun, fun players in the big blinds. But overall we really shouldn’t be changing our sizes when we’re playing online to sort of cater to trying to target weaker players who are very loose and very splashy. It’s just not going to be a higher EV strategy because we are going to deter the other solid thinking players at the table from playing their standard game. And their standard game involves three betting a ton and we want to continue to allow them to do that. So online I think it’s a big, big mistake to sort of use bigger open sizes to target players and so on.

Mike Brady (19:38):

So that’s in the tough world of online, not really doing much adjusting unless you’re say in the small blind against the big blind who’s a weaker player, because in that case there’s no one in between. So you can just really target that player, right?

But what about live when you’re playing at a table where you don’t have a bunch of three betting going on, you don’t have a bunch of sharp players, it’s not one weaker player and six good players. It’s more of kind of in between. There’s going to be maybe a couple decent regs, maybe a few weak players, it’s going to be a lot softer of an environment. How are you adjusting your raise sizes in those games?

Gary Blackwood (20:10):

This is something that we’ve spoken about a lot during our live poker episode. Generally you can very much get away with altering your size based on the strength of your hand in very good loose live games. So if you’ve got Queens for example, you can three bet larger or you can open bigger and even post flop. If you’ve got bottom set on A83 and you’re up against two very loose players, you don’t want to bet really small there. You can use larger C-bets et cetera in these really good, really splashy live games where nobody notices your bigger sizes or maybe one guy at the table notices your bigger sizes and one guy in a nine max game is much better than four guys in a 6-max game. That’s for sure. So that is the scenario where you do get to alter your sizes and your three bet sizes and your open sizes and your cbet sizes based on the strength of your hand.

(20:56):

That’s completely okay and that’s going to be far higher EV in a lot of situations. For example, a really fun, fun player opens and you know he’s just not folding versus your three bet and you’ve got pocket Queens or Kings or Aces or Ace King or something like that. You can use a larger size then, you can still use your standard size if you’ve got a hand like Ace Jack suited or King 10 suited, something like that and you’re just looking to isolate that player. But when you’re playing these really loose, really good splashy live games, you can alter the size of your bets and your raises based on the strength of your hand. And that’s something that Mike and I spoke in depth about in one of our previous episodes and if you haven’t seen that, I would recommend you download it or watch it on YouTube because it’s full of lots of great ways to exploit your opponents in those particular splashy live games

Mike Brady (21:45):

On YouTube that episode is called Live poker is incredibly easy, and on the podcast platforms I think it’s just called Live Poker or something like that. So just scroll back a little bit. It’s not too long ago, one of our best episodes and most liked episodes yet, so go check that out if you’re a live poker player.

Raising Over Limps

Finally, my last question for you, Gary, before we get into our quiz, how are you adjusting against one or more limpers when you’re raising over those limps?

Gary Blackwood (22:12):

I generally use a 4x isolate size versus one limper. Again, this is us going back to talking about playing online cash. And again, if we’re 40 bigs effective, you can go smaller, something like three big blinds. If you’re 250 bigs effective, you can go bigger. Or if you know that your opponent is not folding, and this happens very often online as well, you’ve got players that play a lot of pots by limp calling, they want to see a flop. You can use larger sizes to isolate those players to 6, 7, 8 big blinds. It’s not uncommon to be playing with a player who has 60 VPIP and 8 PFR, which means they’re limping a ton and they’re not going to fold versus that raise. So you can exploit that player by using really large isolate sizes. When there are multiple limpers as well we want to go a little bigger, a solid strategy for that I tend to use 4x versus one limper and then add one big blind for every other limper that’s in the pot.

Mike Brady (23:03):

So let’s get into these quiz questions.

Quiz Question #1

We’re going to ask the question, we’re going to pause for a moment. Feel free to pause the podcast while you think about your answer and then a couple seconds later we’re going to talk about the answer and you can see if you got it right.

So jumping into the first one, suppose you’re playing in an online cash game, $1/$2 stakes, the action folds to you on the button with $200 effective stacks. What’s your default raise size here?

.

.

.

.

.

.

Gary Blackwood (23:34):

The answer is 2.5 big blinds, which will be $5.

Mike Brady (23:39):

That was an easy one to start off, but they’re going to get a little tougher moving on same online cash game.

Quiz Question #2

This time the cutoff has raised to $4.50. That’s a 2.25 big blind open. You have pocket Aces on the button. What’s your three bet size with $200 effective stacks?

.

.

.

.

.

.

Gary Blackwood (24:02):

The answer is around $15. If you’re around $15 then you’re absolutely right, $15 is perfect.

Quiz Question #3

Mike Brady (24:09):

Moving on now you’re playing a live cash game $2/$5 stakes, a player in middle position raises to $15. The cutoff calls, the action is now on you on the button with pocket Aces. What’s your three bet squeeze size with $500 effective stacks.

.

.

.

.

.

Gary Blackwood (24:33):

So that’s a three big blind open and a call. We don’t want to be going any less than $70. I think around $70 would be the perfect answer.

Mike Brady (24:42):

Yep. So right around 14 big blinds there if you were anywhere near that correct answer, although you don’t want to be much smaller than that, keep in mind you really don’t want to be sizing your squeezes too small. That’s a big takeaway.

Quiz Question #4

Same exact spot. Now, only this time you’re in the small blind instead of on the button. So we’re going to be squeezing out of position. Again, middle position makes it $15 cutoff calls and the action folds to you. What is your three bet squeeze size?

.

.

.

.

.

Gary Blackwood (25:14):

So the fact that we’re out of position here means that we want to be going a little bigger. I would go at least $75 in this spot, which is of course 15 big blinds. I think around $80, which is 16 big blinds would be perfect here.

Mike Brady (25:26):

Yeah, about 15 or 16 big blinds. You are on the money when you’re squeezing there.

Quiz Question #5

Moving on, you sit in a live $1/$2 cash game stakes are going down a little bit with $300 stacks and you get a raise worthy hand in the cutoff. What is your default open raise size when the action folds to you?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Gary Blackwood (25:45):

So generally when we’re playing live, we’ll see larger open sizes compared to when we’re playing online. So I think anywhere between $7 to $10 will be completely fine here, but if we’ve got a really strong hand and everyone behind it is really loose and really splashy, let’s go a little bigger. Let’s go $12 or $14 here.

Mike Brady (26:01):

You can really pull off whatever you want at live poker tables pretty often. Just be sure to keep an eye on your opponents. Make sure they’re not going to figure out what you’re up to because that would be a disaster. You don’t want them to figure out that you’re actually raising bigger when you have good hands. That’s just asking to get three bet when you open smaller.

Quiz Question #6

Moving on to the last question in that same $1/$2 cash game, you witness a player limp for $2 in middle position and then call a $12 raise. That player goes on to show down Eight Four offsuit in that hand, a few hands later, that player is in the big blind and you are in the cutoff with Ace King suited the action folds to you. What’s your open raise size?

.

.

.

.

.

Gary Blackwood (26:39):

We of course want to be raising to a larger size here. Something 14, 15, 16 is completely fine. It’s really important that we don’t overdo it though. We don’t want to be opening to $20 and forcing this particular player to fold, so we absolutely want to be opening a little larger. It’s live poker and it’s all about exploiting your opponents as best as possible, but be sure you’re not overdoing it and making people fold when you’ve got really strong hands. That would be disastrous.

Mike Brady (27:02):

Alright, that’s all we’ve got prepared for you today on pre-flop raise sizing.

By the way, if you’re wondering why we were gone for two weeks, I have been extremely busy working on the upcoming Lucid GTO Trainer coming soon to Upswing Poker.

I’ve been talking to about a dozen different poker pros, including Gary, including some super strong high stakes guys to really dial in our solver outputs before we launch this tool because we want to make sure we’re giving you guys the best possible information to study when we launch Lucid GTO.

If you haven’t heard of Lucid GTO, go ahead and check out our previous episode. We kind of gave a little preview into what the tool is and how it works, and we kind of teach you something in the process, so I recommend checking that out.

(27:44):

If you are interested in being involved in the early access beta period for the Lucid GTO trainer, go ahead and sign up here.