I would rather call against multiple limpers then re-raised my middle pair to isolate in the early going.Set mining can be a profitable play for you when you can keep your entry costs low. Most of these calls in early stages are correct for implied odds strategy. If you raise it that much, it’s still not a big hit to thier situation, and you will likely NOT get others to fold. You’re immediately faced with a more difficult decision regarding a continuation bet man you’ve got over cards on the board. Why not open raise, but once there are limpers, avoid attacking them when its deep stacked and when the blinds are very small.
You also can’t forget about the 2:1 odds. So if the pot is now one.5BBs pre flop, there is 1 limper, that makes it 2.5BBs. You now decide to raise to three big blinds, making the pot five.5BBs and the limper (assuming everyone else folds) has to call 2BBs to see a flop with 5.five big blinds in it. So he is getting nearly 3:1 on his call.
You have to consider the fact that you’re likely to never be worse than a three to one under dog pre-flop. However there is a problem. Or rather a couple of problems.
The main problem is betting ability of a weak hand. You might have 95s and might be up against AK. The flop comes down 5 J Q. Sure you’re now ahead, but really how much can you afford to bet at this point? Can you even call a standard Cbet with bottom pair out of position? What if you lead into the pot? What happens when he calls? Now do you bet once more here? It’s an expensive guessing game now with just bottom pair?
What about if you have 33 pre flop? There are 3 over cards (which statistcially are likely to have missed your opponent), but how much can you bet at this situation?
Sure you had right odds preflop here, but you are assuming you can get to showdown as well. But when everyone has a lot of chips you can’t do it. You still have 3 betting rounds before you get to fifth street.
But that leads to the second problem. You are out of position and that’s not good poker tournament strategy. This means when you do make you hand you will win less. It also means when you don’t make a big hand, you will lose more than your fair share because the player in position will bet you off marginal hands with a worse hand himself.
If you think about it, in deep stack play, you shouldn’t be concerned with pot odds too much. I am only ever looking at implied odds.. i.e. what is the size of my chip stack and my opponents chip stack. If we are talking about five percent or less of my stack, I am calling with a LOT of cards. Even if they have pocket aces, my small cards and when a huge pot. If they have AA, and I want to be playing my little cards. But if the raise is getting up to around 10% of my stack, then I fold all the weired stuff, except PPs. Still, I am only concerend about the size of the bet compared to my effective tournament stack.
My cards may be 56s and be up against big slick. I have to be rather much httin a huge draw or two pair though, otherwise you will be faced with giving up the hand after the flop out of position. Once in a while you might just want to check here if you hit a low pair, especially if you can put your opponent on a hand.
Even in Every Hand Revealed, Gus Hansen regrets a lot of his calls from players who raise early position. Understandably, these regrets come about as soon as you see the flop which invariably are difficult to play. Now he has physical tells to work with, and, as mentioned, he is Gus Hansen. There are no person to person tells and we can’t play like Gus. Take into account, your opponent is weaker than the players Gus plays against. Whether you are up against people who are capable of folding strong hands or whether they just can’t surrender TPGK is an important distinction.
Guess I’m trying to say is that if you can afford it, implied odds are much more important than pre-flop pot odds. You might choose to play a given hand anyway, but do it for the reason of implied odds and not pot odds, if that makes sense. You have to know how to calculate poker odds when getting into hands like this becuase it may very well determine your long term success in tournaments. Just knowing Poker rules are not enough to win, you need strategy too.