Reason to raise pre-flop

In this post, I will describe the reasons to raise pre-flop:

1º Gain position for the rest of the hand
Acting last in a hand on all post-flop streets is an advantage that’s worth your investment. By Raising, you may put out the late position players and, this way, gain position on the hand.

2º Make opponents play more predictably
Poker is all about the deductive course of determining what hole cards your opponent is most likely to hold. When you just limp, you lower the risk of your opponents to enter the hand. By raising it becomes more difficult for most opponents to disguise their hands.

3º Build pots
The larger pots get, the more likely bad opponents are to make mistakes, especially if they’re already committed to the pot.

4º Narrow the field
There are certainly situations where you prefer to play multi-way pots, but the general rule is that the fewer opponents you have, the greater the chance that you are going to win the pot.

5º Frustrate opponents
When you raise preflop, you opponents will have to fold some hands that they would have played if they were allowed to limp. Eventually, most players will get annoyed and try to go over you (but this time you could have the nuts (or close to it)).

6º Take the initiative
In heads up pots, your opponents miss the flop more than they hit. The same is true for you. Whoever takes the lead in the betting pre-flop is likely to win the pot where neither player flops anything. Raising pre-flop creates the presumption that you have something, and when your opponent misses (or flops weak), it dramatically increases the chance that you’ll be able to win the pot with a bet on the flop.
It is this sort of thinking on "raising" that stops your aggression from being pointless and instead develops it into a tool for increasing both your control over the game and your wining rate.

7º For value
Raise strong hands because you make money when people call with worse.

8º To isolate
When a fish limps in, you can often get it heads up with the fish, and outplay them after the flop even when you dont have a good hand.

9º To steal the blinds
Blind stealing is immediately profitable and should be attempted a lot of the time you get the opportunity.