POKER POLL: Should I ever just call SB when its folded to me?

Question

If not what are the ranges of my raise?

Acknowledging that it depends alot on the BB, lets say he is neither very loose nor very tight. Now,

I heard anything like {22+, A5o+, A2s+, K7o+,K4s+, Q9o+, Q6s+, J9o+, J7s+ and T9} is good to raise. But why do that oop?

Answer 1

It depends a lot if you mean during a cash game or during a tournament I find.

Personally, during the early stages of a tournament, it is not really worth it to risk your chips playing hands that could get you into trouble. If you are raising to steal blinds at this early stage, you would have to raise at least 3 times the bb to get the person in the big blind off a hand, and i find i get called quite often and risk being outdrawn even if u do have the better hand. You must risk about 3 times the bb to win just 1 bb.

As the tournament progresses, just play it tight and hope you hit a few of your good hands to build a few chips. I will usually try and wait until the antes come into play at a table before starting to steal blinds. Your are getting better pot odds at this stage to risk stealing the bb, with the antes already in the pot. Also, as the tournament progresses to this stage people are more cautious and want to make the money so they wont risk their tournament calling your raises, compared to the loose opening stages.

Of course this all depends on your chip stack, your opponents stack, and whatever table info u have got. But personally i chose to play this style. Hope it helps you a little.

On cash tables I find tight solid play is the winning way in the long run. you will never make a fortune robbing fixed blinds, especially on the lower limit tables, but theres no harm in raising it up every now and again, to keep your stack from getting too low if your not in the cards.

When you say should u just call, this i do use to trap an opponent if i have a strong hand and want to try and get some action, let him hit something. The danger of just calling with mediocre hands is that u are gaining no info on his hand, therefore you can get into trouble.

Answer 2

I want to address the comment about just calling as a sign of weakness.  First off if you're always raising or folding here that's not a sign of weakness it's an actual weakness and a decent player will use that as an easy way to figure out your game.  As a general rule you're not just looking to win hands you're loooking to maximize your profits with the winning ones.  You're going to need at least some deception here to do so where the BB isn't really sure what you have or what you're doing and the easiest way to do this is to vary the way you play your hands here.  Part of this is going to be just calling.

The next thing is that you might not have a hand good enough to raise but risking a half a BB might be worth it.  Aggression is good but it is only good if it's in the greater context of sound play.  If your opponent is overly aggressive on the BB though you're going to want to take this into account and be more careful calling, in addition to doing so as a way of trapping these people.

How the opponent plays post flop is also a consideration to whether you want to get involved.  This is where you can make the real money in this situation, not just taking down the BB with a raise.  This is especially true in NL.  As a rule, the worse the player, the more you want to see the flop.

In a nutshell though it's said by some that any hand worth a call is worth a raise but this isn't always the case and you want to take all things into account, and in a situation with 2 to act you're playing the player a lot more than the cards although you always want to play both.

King Cobra

http://kingcobrapoker.com

Answer 3

If you are playing in a full ring game, just chop the pot and save the increased rake if any.

By the way, it is a sign of a bad game to play in if there are many chopped pots and perhaps you should look for another game.

Answer 4

The only situation is if you have a strong hand and  a loose aggressive player in the BB who might actually raise you with a marginal hand to move you off the pot.  And even then, I'd probably only do it late in tournaments when the blinds have actual value.

Answer 5

Calling from the SB in an unraised pot is a sign of weakness.  It means that you're hoping to get lucky for half a bet, and I've seen it more times than I can count: SB calls, BB raises, SB insta-folds and loses half a bet.  Having said that, it can be very useful as a tool to disguise the strength of your hand when you're holding a monster.  Call, let the BB throw more money into the pot, and then come over the top of him.  If you had raised right away and he had folded you would have lost out on a larger pot.  Do this a couple of times and the BB will stop being so aggressive, which means you're now able to limp in with weaker hands and see flops cheap.  Mix it up, sometimes fold and sometimes raise 3X BB with marginal hands, and you'll put the fear in him.  But if you're going to just call you need to either be planning a bluff from the beginning or hold a monster.  Otherwise you're just throwing away half a bet.

Answer 6

Of course every hand is different so you have to consider the size of the stack in Big blind and the style they have been playing. I would recommend if you play a lot of poker that you read this free e-book called Make a Living Playing Online Poker available at http://www.winpokercash.com