Raise or Fold: Open Sizes, 3-Bets, and Never Limping

Your default open size

When you're first into the pot, raise — and use a consistent size. Online 6-max games conventionally open between 2.2 and 2.5 big blinds; live games play much bigger, typically 3-5bb (or more when the table is limpy), because live players call far too loosely for a small raise to thin the field. Pick one number for your game and stop thinking about it. Beginners who vary their size by hand strength are broadcasting their cards to anyone paying attention.

Why limping burns money

Limping — just calling the big blind — surrenders both of poker's edges at once. You can't win the pot preflop (no fold equity: nobody folds to a call), and you invite a multiway pot where your hand plays a guessing game out of position. Raising does the opposite: it can end the hand immediately, it builds a pot for when you're strong, and it hands you the betting lead going to the flop. If a hand isn't worth a raise, it isn't worth playing. Raise or fold.

The 3-bet: your first re-raise range

A 3-bet is a re-raise over someone's open (their raise is the '2-bet'). Your starter range is simple: QQ, KK, AA, and AK. These hands are strong enough that you want the pot big now, and re-raising gets money in while worse hands still call. Size it to about 3× the open when you're in position and about 4× from the blinds. As you improve you'll add bluffs to this range — for now, a 3-bet that always means business is perfectly profitable at the micros, because nobody is tracking your frequencies.

Defending your big blind

The big blind is special: you've already paid 1bb, so you're getting a discount on the call. Facing a 2.5bb open with the small blind folded, you call 1.5bb into a pot of 4bb — needing only about 27% raw equity to continue. That's why you defend the big blind with many more hands than you'd play anywhere else: suited cards, connectors, and most broadway hands are fine calls. What the discount does not buy: junk like J3o. Folding trash is still free.

Punish limpers with the iso-raise

When someone limps in front of you, don't limp along — raise (an 'iso-raise', short for isolation). Size up to about 3bb plus 1bb per limper, and do it with any hand you'd normally open. The goal is a heads-up pot, in position, against the weakest player at the table, with the betting lead. That's the single most profitable recurring situation in micro-stakes poker, and limpers manufacture it for you all night.

When they 3-bet you back

Sooner or later your open gets re-raised, and having a plan beats improvising. Against unknown micro-stakes opponents a 3-bet almost always means a genuinely strong hand — these players are not re-raising light. So: 4-bet your very best holdings (QQ+ and AK) and be happy to get the money in; call in position with hands that flop well and can win a big pot, meaning pairs looking to hit a set and suited broadways; and fold everything else, including the hands that feel too pretty to fold, like AJo and KQo out of position. The mistake to avoid is the reflex call — flatting a 3-bet out of position with a hand that can only ever make one pair is how ten big blinds disappear on a flop you were never going to like.

The squeeze, in one paragraph

When one player opens and another calls, a big re-raise from you is called a squeeze — the caller is trapped between two raises and usually folds, and the opener now faces a re-raise knowing someone else lurks behind. Because there's extra dead money in the pot, squeezes need to be sized bigger: roughly 4× the open or more. For now, squeeze with the same QQ+/AK range as your normal 3-bets. Just know the name — you'll meet it constantly.