Well as well all know, the " STANDARD " raise is usually 3 or 4 times BB... online it works fine for me, but I played in my first LIVE tourney this weekend... anyways I'll skip the details but you often run into alot of fishies early on... ALOT of limpers will just flat out call you're standard premium hand raise... so I was switching things up to 6/7xBB on strong phs to make those annoying Q4 fishies flopping boats... it worked well for me early on... but is this something I should avoid... can it hurt me in the long run or it's a good adjustment if you see they limp in alot and call you alot?

any input appreaciated,

Kind regards,
Jason Piper L.

I don't think you can make any generalizations. Every table plays differently, and you have to adjust how you bet to achieve the results you want based on your observations of how your table is playing. It's sounds like that is exactly what you did here, and it's what you will have to do every time you play. Good job, too, because a lot players won't adjust, but just get frustrated that no one is playing "correctly."

there are a couple of articles on this topic at cardplayer.com

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_mag...4426&m_id=65551

http://cardplayer.com/poker_magazin..._id=402&m_id=15

basicly i think the main idea is to make the raise a size that most players will fold to. i.e. some players will fold to narrow the field and you can put the callers on a range of hands.

k ill make sure to check that out, good input guys :P

I've started to raise bigger with big hands when at a table full of fish as well. I'd much rather be in heads-up pots then in five way ones.

There's also that if they're playing weak hands that aren't likely to hit anything, I'd rather them put more money in preflop... since they often won't call a bet after the flop.