One of the most common questions I am asked is, “Which hands should I reraise with before the flop?” (A reraise is also called a three-bet.) The answer is not cut and dry. As with most things in poker, your strategy should depend entirely on your opponents’ strategies. If you blindly three-bet the same range in all situations, you will lose a huge amount of money in the long run.

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• Raise Reraise Poker Tournaments
• Raise Reraise Poker Game

Three-betting ranges are referred to as either “linear” or “polar.” A linear three-betting range consists of only the best hands. This is an example of a typical linear three-betting range:

It is ideal to three-bet with a linear range versus players who will call your three-bet with many hands that you dominate, and only four-bet with premium hands that crush even your strong linear range. The vast majority of weak, straightforward small-stakes players fall into this category.

Limp re-raise works best against aggressive players. Most often used as a trapping play, limp re-raising is a powerful tool that will help you mix up your play and keep your opponents guessing about your cards. By learning when and where to limp in and re-raise you'll have yet another way to increase your poker profits. See full list on playfreepoker.org. LearnWPT breaks down a common cash game situation in which a player is dealt a decent hand on the button (ace-jack) but faces an early position raise. Live Events 1 Lone Star Poker Series. A polarized three-betting range consists of the absolute best hands and a few hands that are not quite good enough to call a preflop raise with. This is an example of a typical polarized. Reraise A reraise is one that follows a raise by another player. If one player bets and is raised by a second player who is in turn raised by a third, then the third player has made a reraise. Related Topics: Raise, Cap.

For example, if a somewhat splashy, small-stakes player raises from middle position to three big blinds out of his 100-big blind stack and you are in the cutoff or on the button, you should often three-bet with the above linear range. Your opponent will usually call with many hands you dominate, such as 4-4, A-4 suited, and K-10, and only four-bet with A-A, K-K, Q-Q, and A-K. Your strategy against these players is incredibly simple and intuitive. When they call your three-bet, you extract a huge amount of value and when they four-bet, you get off the hook. If you want a detailed discussion on the strategies I use against small-stakes players, I wrote two books on the topic: Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Tournaments and Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Cash Games. You can get them at JonathanLittlePoker.com/books.

A polarized three-betting range consists of the absolute best hands and a few hands that are not quite good enough to call a preflop raise with. This is an example of a typical polarized three-betting range:

It is ideal to three-bet with a polarized range versus players who will either four-bet or fold most of the time. Many good, aggressive players fall into this category. It is important to realize that your hand’s post-flop playability isn’t too important when you will rarely see a flop.

Notice that both the linear range and the polarized range examples contain about nine percent of hands. While 9 percent is not a magic number, it is important to understand that players can three-bet the same percentage of the time, but with drastically different ranges. Do not assume that all three-bettors are three-betting with the same set of hands.

In fact, the example of a polarized range could consist of a different set of bluffing hands. Here is another reasonable polarized three-betting range:

You should be more inclined to three-bet with hands containing a “blocker” (an ace or king), versus players who will almost certainly four-bet or fold. The presence of an ace or king in your bluffing hands makes it less likely that your opponent has a premium hand because there is one fewer ace or king in the deck. Against players who may be inclined to call your three-bet, you should three-bet a range that contains various suited connected hands because you will play postflop more often.

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It is important to understand that when you three-bet with a polarized range, you are calling with many hands that flop well, such as 6-6, A-J, Q-10 suited, and 7-6 suited. Calling with these hands allows you to realize their post-flop equity as opposed to three-betting them and then being forced to fold to a four-bet.

So, the next time you find yourself facing a preflop raise, ask yourself what you expect your opponent to do if you three-bet. If you pay attention, you will find many opportunities to get out of line with marginal holdings, allowing you to steal pots that you would otherwise concede. Even if you steal only one preflop raise per hour, that will add a huge amount to your win rate in the long run. ♠

Jonathan Little is a two-time WPT champion with more than $6 million in tournament winnings. Each week, he posts an educational blog and podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com, where you can get a FREE poker training video that details five things you must master if you want to win at tournament poker. You can also sign up for his FREE Excelling at No Limit Hold’em webinars at HoldemBook.com/signup.

This is something that used to happen back in the olden days of poker. UTG would limp with Aces and that would be the general line they would take. This became outdated and unused as it was too obvious and unbalanced. Everyone used to joke 'oh u limped utg, you must have AA' and they did have that 99% of the time.

Limp re-raising should be done nowadays only for value. Its so hard to do it preflop and get the bet through, players will call and play postflop in position. So if we are doing it with rags we are going to find ourselves in a tough spot. One side rule of this is if you have specific notes on someone. An example of this would be a very aggressive big blind. A mass tabler who will always raise the BB if the SB limps and then instantly folds when 3b by the sb. This you can then do all day with rags until the BB adjusts.

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If we are going to limp re-raise bluff and we have the perfect spot to do so i'd recommend having somewhat of a playable hand post flop incase we are called pre. Playable hands consisnt of suited connectors, suited gappers and anything that can generally make somewhat of a hood hands post flop. Such as 79, K10, 46, 910.

The best time to limp re-raise is when there is a mad aggressive opponent behind you. The type of player who always re-raises and cant see a limped pot. Here we can limp our value range and get value for it pre flop and post flop. It allows us to build a larger pot pre flop and not allow our opponents to see cheap flops when they just flat us pre. Its also great as we get to see what every other player does behind us. We can see who flats, who 3bets and then adjust our play according to this. Obviously if we have QQ, KK, AA or AK we are fist pump jamming it in no matter what action happens behind us. But boarder line hands such as JJ, 1010, AQ, AQ can be made simple for us to play.

Raise Reraise Poker Tournaments

Raise Reraise Poker Game

An example of this would be: $50nl table hero utg limps $0.50 aggro fish raises $2.50 cut off peals $2.50 button peals $2.50 small blind folds BB makes it $9. we can now figure out whats the best line to take. We have the info that the flatters probably are not strong, we have the info that the mad aggro player never has anything and we now know everything about the BB from play history, huds and table image. Sometimes it might be vs the biggest nit ever so we can sigh fold our 1010 or AQ. Other times it could be vs another laggy fish. So we can decide if we want to flat, raise, jam and our sizing.