Degrees of freedom in no-limit poker

[Holgininho]

I just came to think about this in the gym, I hope it makes some sense:

In fixed limit poker you always have three actions to choose from: either check, fold, or bet; or call, fold, or raise.

In no-limit poker there are more different actions you can take, because you can vary your bet sizes. Therefore you have 101 (I think) different actions to choose from, when you decide if you want to open the pot preflop in a typical online no-limit game: fold, call or raise (to 2-100 bb). But in practice most of the 99 different possibilities to raise don't matter. For instance it shouldn't make a difference if you raise to 98 bb or simply open-shove all-in. Your opponents will think you're a madman either way. In contrast to this it surely does make a difference, if you raise to 3 bb or to 4bb. I'm not sure at what point the size of your raise doesn't make a difference anymore, and the number is probably different from game to game anyway.

But I think it's interesting to try to answer the question: How many distinct actions can you take that actually make a difference in the outcome of the hand, when you open a pot?

I guess there are at least:
- fold
- call
- min-raise
- raise to 3 BB
- raise to 4 BB
- raise to 5 BB
- raise to 6 BB
- ?
- push

How does the situation change after the flop is dealt, if you raise (say, to 4 BB), and get called by one opponent, who has position on you?

Is this interesting to anyone besides myself?

[kissan4]

If we look at no limit holdem from this point of view, it's like chess. You have a couple of ways to open and then a couple of ways to continue, and the possible situations always multiply. The difference is, you can never plan your actions since you might have no idea what your opponent has and how he would answer to any actions you take.

Though your categories make sense, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of possible combinations even if we only examine preflop situations, since raising to 4 BB might be a distinct action, but this one distinct action doesn't have the same value in different positions, against different number of limpers, and against different individuals!!!

For example there are people who will always fold their hands against a normal raise, but there are some, who will raise you with whatever they have just to see if you are man enough. So, from this point of view, I wouldn't call raising to 4 BBs preflop a "distinct action"

[taz115]

If you are talking about the ways you can play a hand that influence the way your opponents will play you can never really have an answer because you are trying to account for someone else's actions. Who is to say that if you raise 98BB out of your 100BB stack that someone wont see that as a weak tell and call you but may have not called if you pushed all-in.

If your talking about influencing the way you play the hand... you cuold look at it from a point of view that a certain raise or call size will commit you to the pot. Once you reach this threshold you have decided that you will push, or call off the rest fo chips no matter what. Then your action is starting to limit how the rest of the hand may turn out.

In NL your action should largely be guided by the size of the pot... so it is tough to say that there is not a difference between raise or bet sizes because slightly bigger bets on one street usually lead to bigger bets on subsequent streets.

[Holgininho]