No, not for a single raise. You're right.

So you're saying that you've seen a lone player that straddles (not as part of an agreed round of straddles) and then folds merely to 2 raises.

Yes. Also, the limper folded and the button called. We went heads up to the flop with a bunch of dead money.

If you told me that this happened regularly in your games, I'd believe people who claimed 2BB/HR.

Reminds me of one of my favorite hands of all time:

2 limps, I raise KK, two calls, small blind 3 bets, big blind folds, one limper folds, one limper calls, I cap, coldcallers fold, small blind folds, limper calls and we go heads up to the flop investing 1/4 of the money.

4 players limp...one tight passve EP..the rest are loose passive.

You are on the button with 56s, A2s, ATo, do you raise?

No, maybe depending on ranges and postflop play, yes

If they were very loose and always checking to the raiser then yes?

How many PIPs up are you looking to raise in general? I'd think AJ for sure. I did a stove and interestingly 65s has 21% equity. That being said, I think we have too few other hands in our overlimping range that adding 56s and other similar connectors to this range makes sense. Plus the playability of 56s isn't the best post compared to a hand like 9Ts.

Let's say the blinds are loose passive. 3 loose players limp, we are next to act on the button. How low do you go here..my cut off right now is...A8o, K9o, Q9o, J9o, T9o, 35s, Q7s,

Is this too loose? Not loose enough? What would you do different?

Live 20/40...9 handed

TAG UTG opens, LAG 3 bets next in, LAG in HJ WTF caps(he has something reasonably playable but not necessarily cap worthy), loose passive CO calls, and I am next on the button. The blinds are tight regs.

What would you do with..JTs, 56s, 88's

Fold, fold, and fold

I'm going to feel bewildered and as though I know even less than I thought I did if anyone wants to play these hands for a cap.

I would call all of those hands.

i would 3bet all of those hands.

yes.

56s and A2s can limp along. ATo can raise.

Bury all three of them deep into the muck, and if it is anything like my 20/40 game, watch the flop get checked around.

56s: No.
A2s: No.
ATo: Yes.

JTs surprisingly does the worst out of those 3 hands:

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
15%	22.97%	131,416	14,069
25%	19.71%	112,143	13,489
25%	19.57%	111,255	13,555
40%	17.18%	97,632	12,103
6s5s	20.56%	121,793	3,967

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
15%	23.70%	134,760	16,473
25%	20.09%	112,977	16,698
25%	19.99%	112,506	16,499
40%	17.76%	100,254	14,104
JsTs	18.46%	103,426	15,850

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
15%	22.70%	129,908	13,708
25%	19.06%	108,379	13,119
25%	19.10%	108,586	13,113
40%	16.52%	93,881	11,550
88	22.62%	133,905	4,355

That's why I included 56s. I would instinctively feel like JTs does way better. Maybe the fish know something I don't.

JTs has domination issues vs. the stronger ranges -- it can be in a spot where never dominating and always dominated. The flip side is that you're making combo draws and all your straights are to the nuts. Vs wide ranges, not vs non-nut straights are more profitable than hot/cold would tell you.

Specifically think of 65s if you play it -- it makes the ignorant end of a straight shared with JT. You're also voluntarily playing 6 high vs an UTG open in a 4 bet pot, with the additional equity of a 6 high flush draw and dominating a wheel draw vs. ranges that likely don't have much on the ignorant end.

My thinking is that maybe as the most expert at the table, your equity could be OK to play it. However if you're playing 65s, you're playing a lot of hands. I'd question my read that both the 3 bet and the 4 bet are lol, and double check my equity if they're people who play nutty for 1 or 2 but mean it for 3 or more. If I'm sure, then whatevs. I'd also then wonder if I really can play profitably with hands in a 50% range OTB for all the bets preflop. We're not playing the whole top 50%, but once we're down to 65s we'll have a lot of hands.

Great points Doug!

I think the more agro the game plays post flop , the less we should get involved with a hand like 56s.

A good thing about playing 56s here, especially if you have a tight image, is that those times you flop well other players might misread your hand and give you extra action. I opened the other day in EP with 89s(I saw some telegraphed folds) flopped the straight and had a guy go to the felt with his flopped set.

My only issue is the
tilt loves to tell all of us that we have a tight/good image. Heck, we "haven't played one hand" in like an hour... ok, maybe 20-4 minutes, so 20 hands? Nobody noticed us folding. We remember it more than we should. Totally understand that some people are exactly and correctly aware of their table image, but I suspect my own skills here at game time. sounds like this was totally correct, but people remember that for months. Unlike the folding, the "he could open anything at any time" gets remembered.

At some point, there are so many possible hands like this to have in our distribution that if we play all or many of them we play a lot of hands -- we're not tight at that point. Then, we're planning on people incorrectly remembering that we're tight. True that if we have a tight image, the equity could be decent and we're playing against image. It is just that we're on the part of the map labeled "there be monsters here". Get to be a little bit wrong and suddenly there's one more bad LAG at the table.

Not saying it is wrong to play this stuff, but it is either barely correct or on the path to really wrong. Error bands.

I can't really think of a game I wouldn't open 89s from every position.

This thread seemed as good a place as any to ask a question about pre-flop capping ranges. I have the feeling that I'm missing the boat on what I should typically expect out of my opponents in various spots, and what I should be thinking about in my own play (in terms of balance, value, deception), and avoid exploitation in having a very narrowly defined capping range. (The moral of the story here, is I wondering just how much I should be mixing up things like flatting KK and jacking up T9s.)

Let's assume we are observing the very first hand of a nine-player 20/40 game, in which the players have had no previous history with one another.

Scenario A: UTG+1 opens, MP calls, BTN 3!, folded to BB.

Q1: What should we typically expect for a flatting range out of BB?

Q2: What should we typically expect for a capping range out of BB?

Scenario B: UTG opens, CO 3!, BB flats.

Q1: If UTG flats, what would we typically expect to see as his range?

Q2: If UTG caps, what would we typically expect to see as his range?

Thanks in advance for shining a light on this with me.