Since Six Plus Hold’em is usually played in such a different format, beginners can often make the mistakes of using their opening sizes of a regular NLH game in 6+. A solid strategy for raise sizes isn’t too apparent. How big should you raise first-in or when 3-betting? When to limp/shove?

Lets look at some of these question in a more detailed way.

Example: $10 ante + $10 BB

In a 6-handed 6+ game, after everyone posts the ante and the button posts  their ante and  1 button blind (BB), there is a pre-flop pot size of $70 in total ($60 ante + 1 BB). What size should your open raise be?

As a general approach I would add 1 BB to the pot size, so in this case I would open raise to 80$. For every limper, I think you should go times two, meaning in our example we would raise to 100$ ($70 + $10 limp + two times ante of $20) . Players rarely limp fold, so when holding a premium hand, you want to protect your hand, as well as get money in while you are ahead of their range.

Which hands should you limp and why?

As always in poker you should try to balance your ranges. When stacks are more shallow (50BB or less) you should limp a lot more often in early position, which will give you a good chance of either seeing a flop without risking too too much pre-flop, or winning the pot pre-flop with dead money, if you decide to jam over someones isolation raise and then fold to your all-in.

So basically I would like to limp with hands that have a lot of postflop playability. Hands like A9o, K8, Q7,T6 can just go in the muck. Hands we would like to play are QT, 89, 9T, JT, suited or off-suited. Those hands will make a straight a very large percentage of the time. The premium hands are obviously still as strong as they are in No-Limit Hold’em and should always be played. For instance, AK has 44% against KK, and JT is a coin-flip (50/50) against AK. Those close equity’s will make the game have a lot more variance than a regular NLH Game.

For 3-bet sizes I take a 4x approach. If you have an open raise of 80$, a raise to 320$ with your 3-betting range is a good size to go with, but don’t expect many folds pre-flop, when you put in a 3-bet, hence don’t 3-bet too wide.