should i raise bigger next time

craigcu12

i managed to get into the £4k Bh through a sat and would have expected decent play yet already i have seen A3 and A4 calling a shove K10o calling a 4xBB and now a 88 shoving when the blinds are still small and i have just raised big

larrylad	Small blind		30.00	30.00	10012.50
paperboy25	Big blind		60.00	90.00	1732.50
	Your hole cards	J J
Herbie536	Fold
craigcu12	Raise		240.00	330.00	9565.00
Loderingo	Call		240.00	570.00	5720.00
larrylad	Fold
paperboy25	All-in		1732.50	2302.50	0.00
craigcu12	All-in		9565.00	11867.50	0.00
Loderingo	Fold
craigcu12	Unmatched bet		8012.50	3855.00	8012.50
paperboy25	Show	8 8
craigcu12	Show	J J
Flop
		4 9 7
Turn
		K
River
		8
paperboy25	Win	Three 8s	3855.00		3855.00

benc

Nothing wrong here from what i can see Craig, initial bet size is definetly big enough and you get 8s to shove which you always want when your sitting with Js. Just very unlucky, nothing to do with bet sizing or bad play.

bearlyther

No raise less 240 is way too big.  1st levels until 25/50 always 3x raise pre when it gets to 25/50 and above change your raise sizes to slightly over a minimum raise.  4xing is a leak id be making it 140 pre here.

BorinLoner

100BB-effective deep, 3x would be better than 4x. I hope you'd be making the same raise with your entire hand-range though. Asking "Should I raise bigger?" suggests you'd consider varying the size of your raise dependent on the strength of your hand, which would be bad.

Pre-flop, you just need to think about how deep the stacks are when sizing your raise. In the super-roller, for example, I would be making 4x raises pre-flop at least in the opening few levels because you start 330BB deep. If you want to be threatening your opponents stack by the river, you need to be building a bigger pot from the start and if you want to take any hands down pre-flop, then you need to raise a little bigger. If you raise really small when super-deep, people just peel because they "can afford it" and you play too many multi-way flops.

On the other hand, when we have around 30BB-effective we want to be making min-raises pre-flop because that's enough to threaten our opponent's stack but it doesn't cost us much when it goes wrong, if we're opening a wide range.

So I don't like saying that "in level 1 make it x amount pre-flop, and in level 12 make it y amount." Base your bet-size on the effective stack size and how to threaten that stack by the river.

The effective stack is basically the biggest stack that can be played for in the hand. So if you go heads-up to a flop and the two stacks are 25BB and 40BB, then the effective stack is 25BB as that's all either player can play for. If you go three-handed to a flop and your opponents have 20BB and 30BB but you have 100BB, then the effective stack is 30BB because that's the most you can play for. Obviously the 20BB stack complicates how the hand will play, but you're playing 30BB effective.

Slykllist

Only problem I see with the opening raise size is that it is 'non-standard' a 4x raise as opposed to whatever your standard raise is, be it 3x, 2.5x, 2.1x etc..... (personally I don't have a problem with any of these sizings at this level, as long as it's consistent) tells you're opponent something about your hand straight away, as bearlyther says, it's a leak and decent players will very quickly pick up what it means and be able to exploit it.

Balancing our play is massively important which means that we should play our strong hands in exactly the same way that we play our bluffs / semi-bluffs.

As for the rest of the hand, absolutely standard, UL.