Excellent points fellas!

To ice: It definitely makes for problems. The worst was this guy I played live for $500 who would live straddle every hand--giving him the raise PLUS position PF.

I'd have to look at data to say that I can't beat these guys, although without looking, I can definitely say that they're tough.

Consider this counter-strategy, however:

Ok, you're raising 75% of hands with position (completing or folding the rest?). I'm going to fold half the time. 25% of hands I'm going to flat call, and 25% of hands I'm going to re-raise hard (4-5 times your bet, whatever that is). While the composition of both my call and re-raise group is variable, both include some hands that I'll play for stack PF and some hands that I won't.

That's my current counter anyway. I guess the main reason I haven't gone ahead and done it myself is that Phil Ivey doesn't do it, and Harrington doesn't recommend it. I just figure that if it were the best way to play, they would be doing exactly that.

I think it probably works well against players who will fold too much OOP and/or won't hit you back with counter-aggression often enough (don't know whether my suggested percentages are optimal, but I almost never get anyone who doesn't back down from the constant raising anymore). But I have yet another raising strategy from the button against such players that I like very well.

To ice: One thing I was thinking after this raising discussion is that these raises might also become more attractive in a HU cash game. In any case, the bigger the pots you create, the better chances you have of beating the rake, and more raising is obviously going to mean bigger pots.

In a tourney situation, I think it's a bit different since the rake is fixed in advanced. So, in a sense, you don't care whether it takes you 150 hands or 2 hands to win.

To k3nt: A situation like that may be unavoidable. But here's a problem I've had against tight opponents: I'm cruising along winning lots more small pots than they are, get up nicely, then BAM, they catch a hand, mine's alright but not as good as theirs. Then suddenly we're back to even or they're even up a little if I let them make a big pot out of it.

When the game is going like that, I've REALLY been trying to look carefully at my hand before I get in very deep. With a board of AXX against a tight opponent where I have A7 and my CB gets called, I may not even take it past the turn and can definitely fold to a raise there (or try to, anyway).

If a more loose-aggro type has AK vs. my A7 and we both catch top pair, well, then I'm probably going to lose my stack. It's just that against the latter player, I've got to make a stand at some point because HE's taking down all these small pots. Against the tighty, you're taking down all the little pots, so just go ahead and let him have this one before it gets too big.

Basically, against a WT opponent who plays back at you, one's first response (regardless of what you have) should be "fold." But before you click the "fold" button, take another good look just to make sure you aren't holding the nuts.

Anyhow, I don't know if all this applies to your A7 vs. AK situation, but it's something I've noticed in a lot of my matches, so it's a leak for me that I've been working on fixing.

Oh, and one other thing regarding 76 vs. K4. Phil Ivey (and I'm pretty sure a number of others) seem to like playing these connectors to raises or themselves raising with them. Harrington is less of a fan. So, that's obviously just a general question of taste.

I've been playing somewhat more Harrington-esque in that regard but am seriously considering changing that. One thing, anyway, about 76 is that against a lot of raising hands you do have two live cards. And if you're raising yourself, the straight gains enormous deception because you look like a pair of some kind. Moreover, I've seen a lot of aggro opponents pretty consistently attacking my raises on raggedy boards--which just don't look like they could hit a raising hand. If I'm raising a lot of aces (as I do), then I can always have TPTK or something if the board is 7-high, but it's definitely less likely.

Anyhow, it seems to me like against tight opponents the connectors can give you a few extra small pots, and against aggro opponents, you can sometimes surprize them and call when they move in on a board of 854.

Yes, I know.

And really all of my experiences except one have been with HU tourney-style (as is the case with Ivey-d-Agostino and Harrington's analysis in general).

However, the only difference I can really see between a HU cash game and the early phase of a HU tourney (with high Ms) is the rake.

We did have a couple of others at the casino, but they were out of my comfort range in price, being for $5,000 buy-in each and more or less specially organized. First one, Slim got beat by a HU specialist after 36 hours. Then HU specialist played a visiting pro from AC for the same amount and lost after 2 days.

I don't know how those guys worked it exactly with the dealers and the house, but I'm pretty sure the house automatically charges $20/hour for the table, plus whatever you want to tip the dealers.

I didn't watch enough to see what these guys were doing, but HU specialist said something to me afterwards about raising any K or any A, which I thought was a littlb primitive although certainly not bad.

Anyone know how Phil Ivey played in that big cash HU not too long ago for $16 million?

Anyhow, I doubt there's really a completely "correct" or "incorrect" answer to this question, although I do think raising more from either position should make it easier to beat the rake, which I view as a major issue in HU cash games (and, I suppose, presumably essentially irrelevant if you're playing for $16 million, so that perhaps leaves us back at the beginning).