Should You Raise With Big Hands From the Blinds in Limit Poker?

Here’s an opinion I have that many others do not share, although I’ve found a few that do … raising AA from the blinds [or kk, qq, ak etc] is a bad idea – especially from the BB.

Here’s the situation: you’re on the bb with aces and five players come in behind you. The sb calls. I argue that you should just check. Now, if there were only two players in behind, or if the pot had been raised and you had a chance to drive some players out with a re-raise, checking would be a bad idea. But with 5 in and no raise, I say check and here’s why.

1) With 5 or more players in the hand, your aces are no longer a favorite to win the hand. To be more precise, you are no longer a majority favorite – you will lose this hand more than you will win it. You are, however, still a plurality favorite – you will win this hand more times than any other single player. You want your money in with majority favorites as often as possible. Making moves with plurality favorites is a high-variance strategy and really only pays off if you are a much stronger player than your opponents.

2) Your raise can make bad players unwittingly play good. Sklansky has written about this in his TH for advanced players. Basically, your raise makes the pot bigger, giving correct odds to long shot hands.

Example: 5-10 hold ‘em. 5 players call, including the sb; you are on bb with AA. You check.
There is now $30 in the pot. The flop comes K J 3. You bet and two players call; player A with KQ and player B with Q9. At this point both callers are making a mistake [the KQ an understandable one]; the two pair draw and the gut shot draw [our q9 pal is fishing for a 10] both need roughly 11-1 odds to make their calls correct. When you bet, that makes $35 in the pot, so player A is calling $5 to win $35, or 7-1.

But if you raise pre-flop, there is now $60 in the pot, $65 with your bet, and the draws are getting close to the correct odds to call. They would call either way, but one way they’re very wrong to call, another way, they’re pretty correct. But they didn’t do anything different – only you did. Think about that, captain pants

Get your daily dose of poker news with the PTP Hit and Run.

Props Get Paid up to 125% Rakeback. Click for Offers >>>