Ok, this is hopefully a philosophical post about bet sizing pre-flop with high pocket pairs... We've seen a few posts lately about pocket pairs and how to play them against overpair flops, etc... but I'm working on some of the basics again to be sure I have them right.

Let's start with a simple example... KK preflop, and lets assume 9-handed table, with minimal reads on any of the players, so discount the reads a bit.

From what I've learned/read, I think the hand would play out this way, or should be played out this way...

With no calls or limps ahead, bet is pretty much 3-5xBB standard, all the way to Button. In SB, with no limpers ahead, raise to 3-5xBB or more, depending on aggression of the BB.

WIth limpers ahead you add in a BB per limper... with a bet ahead, you raise to 4x bet or depending on stack size, a shove might be in order...

So that all seems sensible, correct?

Now... if we assume all of that is sensible, what is our purpose of the bet/raise?

If we have limpers ahead, how does that affect our purpose?

If we have a better ahead, how does that affect our purpose of our bet?

What I'm getting at is, does our purpose include or exclude 'getting action', does our purpose include or exclude 'forcing folds', does our purpose include or exclude 'defining our hand'? I'd like to hear some more experienced players describe their 'purpose for betting/raising' in these situations and how they hope/desire the villians to respond.

Something that might also prove valuable in this point of pupose is to explain the overall goal, which is obviously to emerge from the hand with the best outcome (I won't say 'win the hand' because that is too vague)... so please get into what you expect the best outcome to be also...

I know, it is asking a lot but I want to delve deeper into why we do the things we do, not just because they are the right action...