For limping to be good you must have bad players behind. If you have regular tags behind usually I play raise or fold after 1 limper. And from the button, you have position and you may make the blinds fold with an isolation raise. Sometimes limping is better after 1 limper than both raising or folding but usually it's raise or fold.

cool, that is pretty sound logic, but I would caution you about taking a raise-or-fold strategy based only on having a poor player behind you... rather you should focus on how likely it is that you're successful in getting position and creating dead money from the blinds. In todays games many good players play very loose, so trying to raise them out by iso-ing a limper will often not succeed.

limping along, esp in HJ, should be considered since you'll be encouraging a big multi-way pot with a good IO hand, regardless of whether CO and BTN are good or bad.

Yes, I said sometimes limping is better. But usually I think it's a raise or fold. Other opinions about limping after only 1 limper? This chart is good except the limping range after 1 limper (also I would raise looser when I am in SB and all folded to me, but this depends on who is BB).

I've found a mistake in the downloadable chart. Facing a raise and a cold caller- in BB it says to call with A5+ and K5+, but in the first post it says to call with A7+ and K9+ from BB after a raise and a cold caller.

Leader,

Thanks. Wish there was a way I could pay you back.

One question about this quote of yours: "Big blind defense is critical to your success in short-handed limit hold'em. You will play more hands in the big blind then in any other position. These hands will mostly be in small pots were you will be OOP. It's critical that you play them right."

If one is capable of playing these hands properly postflop, what should they consider as a respectable BB won/Hand?

I know that it will be negative, however, in Nick's & Geoff's book, they show (pg 101) a (.20) for the high stakes guys and (.30) for the mid stakes and grinders.

Would you consider losses of only .20 BB pr hand in the BB, playing 1/2, as acceptable/satisfactory/good/very good/exceptional/excellent?

Or has the game changed so much since the introduction of so much info about playing 6-handed, that -.20 is a poor stat, found to be achieved by only those who have failed to keep up with the times?

Responses from all are more than welcome.

wow, amazing thread

The thread is in the sticky with essential reading.

Notice there are some grey areas in his charts. For instance, when facing a raise from EP, he folds QTo in the BB, however, he calls when the raise comes from LP. He also calls EP raise in the BB with QJo.

The chart for calling raise from LP only includes Button, SB & BB. Leader is identifying both UTG/HJ as EP. So, if the raise comes from CO/BU/SB, you call, if it comes from UTG/HJ, you fold.

In addition, Leader has recently stated that the charts are outdated, as he believes optimal play involves seeing about 35% of the flops on avg when in games of 5-6 players, and the charts only get you about 25% if I remember his statement accurately.

Even if they are outdated, they are very thought provoking.

(.20) is certainly not excellent at 1/2. i don't think it's bleeding money necessarily, but there's definitely room for improvement. mine's at (.18) which i think is decent, (.16) is probably about as low as you can go.

how much do you defend your BB? obviously postflop is huge for your WR but over or under-defending could be a problem.

I'm at .19 and I like it here. I think my BB play is pretty darn good.

.19 in not too aggressive games is not good.

You should def be able to get it below .15.

In really aggro games anything below .2 is good. And when I say aggro I talk about games where you rarely get a walk and limped pots a few and far between. Basically a bunch of 30/20, 40/30 guys and one fish.

If you routinely play in games with 2 or more passive fish and the regs tend to have ATSB below 40 and 3bet percentages below 12 then you should be able to get your winrate well below .15


Its really important to realize that a good BB WR in a 1/2 game is way different than a good BB WR in a 30/60 game

.15! Holy crap. Maybe I'm a little too loose then. I call most suited cards to a pfr, and 87o+ and K8+ and stuff like that. I'll try to work on it. I don't want to fold my BB all the time though. =\

I don't know how to answer this. You'd need to do some empirical study on a large database. I'm losing .17 from the BB FWIW.

I have some nasty leaks in the blinds too, but I'm at 0.1 from the SB and 0.15 from the BB at PS and FTP 1/2 over 15k trials each.

I studied these before switching from fr to 6m and although I don't play from the charts, I do compare my play to them whenever I wonder about a decision I made in a marginal spot.

As far as I can tell based on that experience, my play is almost exactly in line with the recommendations and I end up playing 23/15.

This is mostly at the micros (nanos) and FWIW is a crushing strategy in those games.

On the topic of blind defense, I'm losing -0.15 bb and -0.05 sb (my games definitely fall into the "not too aggressive" category described by Oink).

Finally, I've been aware of this thread for some time now and have linked to it more than once in the MSL forum. Kind of cool to actually have an excuse to post in it.

Thanks. Between you, Oink and the others, it's obvious my rate in the BB is not nearly good enough. .03 difference saves/costs you a lot of money over 10k hands.

[QUOTE=Oink;10812169].19 in not too aggressive games is not good.

{You should def be able to get it below .15.

In really aggro games anything below .2 is good. And when I say aggro I talk about games where you rarely get a walk and limped pots a few and far between. Basically a bunch of 30/20, 40/30 guys and one fish.

If you routinely play in games with 2 or more passive fish and the regs tend to have ATSB below 40 and 3bet percentages below 12 then you should be able to get your winrate well below .15}



Oink are you sure about this? I checked my db which is pretty extensive and could not find a player who I had a large sample on who had a winrate better than -.15 from BB? This was a 2-4 database. Just about all of the players I play against have 3bet % below 12 and ATSB below 40.

I have a question concerning fold BB to steal: I'm actually having a 29/21/1.8 stat. But my fold BB to steal is way lower than the normal 40-45, I'm at 30. Since I follow the Stox BB defense range, how can I defend that much of my blind?

Different trackers use different metrics for fold bb to steal.

PT3 and PT2 arent the same as an example. In PT2 I was about 35 and in PT3 I am around 22 or so iirc

PT3 includes when you call/fold vs sb open iirc

So ****ing misleading this ****

great thread!!!

Hello!



Here are the charts from Leader in a Excel-Sheet with a search field.
It helps me reviewing and comparing my hands with Leaders advice and maybe it helps a beginner one tabling.

Type your Hand (e.g. A8s) in the blue field, and its show the whole chart content from this hand in one row.



Easy to change



FI = First in
1L = one Limper
2L = two Limper
RfE = Facing a Raise from Early Position
RfL = Facing a Raise from Late Position
R1C = Raiser and one cold Caller
3B = Facing a 3 Bet


http://www.fileuploadx.de/580713


Greeting

Thanks BB and leader this is extremely useful stuff that will
help any beginner or even a reg practise their play. i have just started playing
6 max after playing a lot of FR and have been trying to see how i
could improve my play from a nitty 22/16 style and this will be helpful.

Redbad

Tried the chart for 175 hands on a couple different tables and ended up
with stats of 15.8/11.1 and down 26.00 playing on 1/2 and following it to the letter.
Someone at PS needs to turn off the doomswitch.

Redbad

Down, may someone reup this?