Tough weekend

Hope everyone's luck was better than mine over the weekend. I'm back playing on Pokerstars, and I'm finding that players are just getting more and more aggressive. It puts you in the position of making some really tough decision on a regular basis and when 9 tabling it becomes hard work. What really gets me is when you make the right decision on numerous occasions and still get sucked out on. That's poker I guess. After such a bad start to the month I've got a lot of clawing back to do.

What I've decided to do for the rest of the week is to buy in for only 60BB rather than the maximum 100. I've found myself in a lot of situation lately facing a big bet on the turn, knowing that a larger bet is coming on the river. I've been unwilling to commit my whole stack to just top pair top kicker. I feel a lot more comfortable re-raising all-in in these situations when I'm only committing 60BB. I also want to start being more aggressive myself (fight fire with fire) and 3 betting more often with a wider range of hands. The problem with this strategy is that you can easily be forced to commit your whole stack before the end of a hand because of the large size of the pot. Again until I am more comfortable with a more aggressive style I am happier just committing 60BB at a time. I'll give it go for the week and let you all know how it works out for me.

Today's topic: Bet sizing by position

Another strategy I've implemented lately with a degree of success is sizing my opening bets based on my position. It's important in NL Holdem that the amount of your raise should not give away the strength of your hand. It is fine to vary your raises, but, before the flop, it is a good idea to vary them based on your position, not on your hand. In general raise in early position twice the blind. In middle position, three times the big blind. In late position, raise three and a half times the big blind.

The reasoning is:

Early position 2x the big blind: There are still plenty of people to act and if someone puts in a large re-raise I've committed very few chips to the pot and can get away from the hand easily. If I'm holding a monster then the 2 x raise can indicate weakness encouraging a re-raise, making it easy for me to 3 bet the pot. Being out of position for the rest of the hand also means that I don't always want to be building a large pot from early position, betting only 2 x the pot can help with this.

Middle position 3x the big blind: 3x is a fairly standard raise, so it makes it difficult for a player to put me on any hand if I make this standard raise from middle position.

Late position 3.5x the raise: In late position I am raising with a much larger range of hands, so I want to discourage the blinds from calling. If I do get a call I'm not worried as I will have position on the blinds, so will still have a good opportunity to win the hand.

If the table is playing particularly loose and I can't steal the blinds with a normal raise, then I'll tighten up my starting- hand requirements and make larger raises.

Today's link:

This link is not poker related, and a lot of people might already be using it, but I have only recently discovered igoogle. It is a customizable Google homepage which has some cool options.