4 players limp, laggy CO raises. He's raising any pair, mid suited connectors, QJo+ etc.
he is c betting close to 100% even MW.
The blinds are fairly loose.

I'm on the button. What should I do with these hands...KJo, ATo, 56s, A2s.

I'd call them all.

mongdig do you mind if I ask why you're throwing out 4 or 5 specific hands instead of thinking in terms of entire ranges of hands you would and wouldn't play there? Just curious.

In your scenario you're going to have NUT position a 7-way bloated pot - if you hit your hand you're going to get RICH. That expands the number of hands you can call with because it expands your implied odds. You'd prefer not to have a 3-bet from the blinds or a limp-3-bet from the limpers but on the button it won't be the end of the world.

I would SNAP CALL:

• A suited ace or a suited king
• Suited broadways
• Suited connectors down to 78s
• suited one-gappers down to T8s
• any pocket pair 22-TT

I would 3-bet AJs+, KQs AQo+and of course JJ+

I would probably call with KQo, QJo and JTo but wouldn't be thrilled about it.
I would probably also call with 97s, 86s, 54s and 65s but would be nervous about making an expensive second-best hand with them in a 7-way pot.

Calling with any other offsuit broadways is probably fine but I'm not experienced enough to be comfortable that I could let it go when it's obviously no good in a bloated pot.

How about other offsuit connectors like T9o, 98o, 87o, J9o, T8o? With the POSSIBLE exception of T9o I think they're all folds.

Being first to act after the likely bettor isn't the nut position....it's the worst relative position at the table.

Here's one that I thought was kinda close at the time:

10 handed 4 bet cap:

standard tag raises utg at a loose and wild table, everyone calls and I'm on the button with QJs.

I'd three bet and be careful against UTG with one pair.

I would 3 bet KQs for sure. I suppose 3b QJs seems reasonable in this spot.

3betting with 54s is totally fine in this spot, let alone QJs.

If by "totally fine" you mean "profitable," then I'd agree, but I don't think it's the most profitable way to play baby suited connectors. I think the threshold between calling and 3 betting in this spot is somewhere between QJs and 98s. I could go either way with T9s and JTs.

By "fine" I mean: it is unclear which is more profitable between calling and 3betting. I.E. it's close between those two lines.

I'm certainly open to the argument that "calling with a hand like 54s is clearly better than 3betting", however, I would need more than expert intuition to be convinced.

I'd agree with ILP's assessment on 54s in that spot. Either way, playing the hand beats not playing it.

I'd probably consider three betting it if I had a nitty image, in the hope of showing it down.

^ because you want to lose a profitable image??

Having a nitty image is good in limit holdem, it can allow you to steal entire pots.

So you're going to take a guy who naturally calls to much, then use your image to tighten him up a bit? You realize the first few notches he tightens up actually make him play better, right? Then you tighten him up some more, and now he's playing exactly as much too tight as he was too lose before. Then, you work that image even more and get him to make larger folding mistakes. That's a plan. If you don't get all the way there, you accidentally make him an expert who folds just the right amount.

Sure, bad folds can cost pots and bad calls only cost bets. That's only if you ignore that it is usually fractions either way.

Having a nitty image in LHE is terrible. It makes people play more correctly against you, in particular. Against everyone else, they play too many hands and spew value. Since they're likely incapable of folding too much, you're not going to get them to play unprofitably nitty against you. Then you add in the fact that you've passed up a ton of value to gain this image.

Contrast this with the 0EV spew (or even slightly +EV spew) that ILP, Bob, and jdr0317 are talking about. In that case, you're not actually losing (and may be making) money in a multiway pot. You still get to be an expert and push edges. You're playing more pots with bad players. And, you're reinforcing their natural tendencies, so they're actually playing worse against you.

Of course, it could be that half the villains in your 10/20 or 15/30 game are unaware of your image. The two images they care about are the drink server and the sports on the TV. Makes me think some (Mike Caro?) talking about how "my advertising budget is $0". Again playing nitty tight to make people respect you is expensive, imo. Jamming close EV spots is either free or slightly profitable.

NL is a much better game if you want to force people to make folds. Even in NL, the fun players call too much and you have to be aware of your own tendencies to try to win pots.

I didn't suggest deliberately trying to cultivate a nitty image. But if that is what you have, it can be very profitable. When was the last time you were in a limit holdem game where the biggest problem you had was not getting enough action on your big hands? Oh, and when was the last time that happened in a game where a tight player raises UTG and gets 7 cold callers?

Anyway, it is extremely rare I have ever been in a game where I am not getting enough action on my big hands, despite generally playing very tightly. But when it happens, it is very easy to take advantage of: start making profitable bluffs.

I don't think one should be deliberately passing up value. But if you are not getting action from weak hands when you bet or raise, you are just losing a fraction of that bet you would made if it is before the river (as it is unlikely your opponent was drawing dead), or one bet if it is on the river. If you can get one bad fold a night in a decent sized pot, that can easily be more profitable than all those bets you missed added together.

lol I see what you did there.

I think the first question deserves a tangent on preflop action in tough games:

Luckily, I don't have a lot of experience in tough games, but I can say that preflop checkups are necessary probably for everyone.

Tag utg raises and gets 7 coldcallers? Depends on how many bad players there are and where they're seated. Utg+1 probably has KJs+ in his hand.

How bout this though: assume tough game blinds, which implies that there's a bad player or two to our right or else we (I) shouldn't be playing cus I'm the fish in that case. On to the hand:

Tag utg raises and we're utg+1?

Tag utg raises and it folds to us on the button?

I have a guess:

utg+1: 3 bet TT+, AQs+, AK.

button: 3 bet 99+, AJs+, AQ.

Having a fair bit of experience in tough games, I think you're underestimating the collective chance of the field to wake up with a big hand. HU in position vs a big UTG hand isn't a wonderful spot, but it is far better than being sandwiched between a big hand and a monster behind.
TAG is a start. If we're playing tough-game hands, we're also looking at his post-flop skills. His hand reading. His WTSD%. And most especially how face-up he plays his hands.

I'd think that you'd have more gap between your UTG+1 range and your BTN range.

That said, most of my experience in tough full-ring games was online. As a shorthanded player, it could be kind of a treat to sit full-ring with SNE-chasing nits playing 12/10, (sharing cards with each other), who played tight/predictable/faceup poker. I don't think you find games like that live.

I never liked full ring online and I have never seen such a game live. I probably have <10k hands full ring lifetime lol. Live poker is slow.

<7 handed I'm a pig in **** tho.

I wonder how a good tag would respond to a really tight table preflop. I'd probably add suited connectors first since they'd retain more equity when 3 bet by a tough player. Janda has a thread about his bvb preflop play in the magazine forum, and while that's about no limit, he talks about "robust" equity. Would you rather have JTs utg, ATo, or KTs? I think ATo sucks in that spot because its equity diminishes significantly when someone 3 bets. KTs is ok because it has blockers to AK and KK, but still the equity probably diminishes a lot when someone 3 bets. JTs seems better to me to open raise with utg than the other two because of its nut hand potential.

The genius of FR online was that you could start tables and people who didn't know shorthanded poker would play with you. Then, you'd be in this game where you luck into a good seat, and just keep playing. The advanced version of this requires playing in a way to get more buttons, but being an idiot about that at the time, I failed at that.

I'm not even sure FR poker exists online as a thing you could specialize in. If it did, I'd recommend working on 6m, then studying HUHU, and then selecting across all three forms. If all of the 6m geniuses had unclicked FR on the table selector, good FR games might accidentally happen. I know there are plenty of micros people who complain even they can't find full FR tables, so you might be 3-4 years late if you thought about it.

He'd become a LAGTAG or sLAG. You see BigBadBabar in those games crushing while playing like 23/20, ten handed.

It highlights the whole issue of picking a preflop style -- it is backwards. You're sitting at a table full of people who don't play many hands, they don't defend their blinds, and post flop are not sticky. If you then say "as a conservative TAG, how would you adjust?" You wouldn't be a tight TAG. As a thinking player, your PF strategy would become something else.

You sit at the table, relax, and see what's going on. Based on what you see, you pick a style that you think is most profitable. You don't come to the casino knowing "I'm going to really LAG it up today". I think it was in the I Haz a Pear series in the video that DeathDonkey played, he's in some ~30/60 online game and the entire table is fired up and going nuts. Each sLAG is trying to outdo the other, not even sure a rec player is in the game. DD makes a comment like "at this point I could probably just nit it up and make good money in this game, these guys are going to give me action I don't deserve". Poker is more like RPS than something where there is a supreme ultimate style. If they do X, Y probably works well for you.

Right, a good tag would adjust, but how much? If you're kinda tight with your utg range: 99+ AQo+, AJs+, then you shouldn't go overboard adding suited hands down through JTs because you'll probably be preflop bluff heavy if there is such a term. The cost of running into better hands is too great to really make a significant adjustment. So you add KJs+ and QJs but you stop there to be safe. That's a 10% adjustment on an already rare occurance such as having a hand worth opening utg in a game that's supposedly tight preflop and tough postflop. Yeah, I remember now that's the game that Sklansky said, "leave that game to the world champions." or something like that.

Now compare how much you should adjust utg to on the button with tight blinds. I'm increasing from my default standards by about 40%. I'm not a fan of going over 70% from the button except against the tightest players.

You're right about the last part, but the subterfuge only lasts until I post in the cutoff and raise whatever junk I'm dealt. Then, in their eyes I'm a lag forever at the cost of (1 small bet preflop - equity realized).

It depends on your opponents. Let's say they just never pay you off in any reasonable way. They're raise or fold types, and in limit you can't fold for a single raise. You might start adding non-dominated hands to their 3 betting range, instead of gently expanding your value range.

TBH, I never looked at UTG as a place to add hands. The weight of all those players behind makes UTG a sad place to have a hand if you get action.

It has been a long time since I thought about those games. They seemed really profitable at the time. It could have been another 40K hands of rungood, though. Any time you feel you've solved some aspect of poker, that's probably just been happening.

I agree for tough games.

Contrast that with a game with lots of coldcallers that are bad postflop. They slowplay a lot in dumb multiway spots and they miss lots of preflop 3 betting value. Preflop 3 bets are a rarity. How low can you go here? 98s? Any suited broadway? 22+ which is getting good odds to setmine regularly thanks to 7 or 8 players to most flops for two bets? These players don't care what your position is, they came to play cards. If to them coldcalling 74s first in preflop after my raise is fun to them, then I want to play lots of pots with them.

Doug, are you saying you'd 3-bet a TAG UTG open wider than that on the button? This doesn't seem right to me.

I thought he meant that he wouldn't 3 bet TT and AQs.

You know, I was thinking about that as I was posting and decided not to go full tl;dr. I think Bob's UTG+1 range is too wide in certain situations. It depends on your nit or tight TAG UTG. On the button, you have this strong range vs. your position. If he's bad post flop in good ways, evil creeps into my mind. If he's not, you're spotting him the nuts when you open your range.

There used to be some guys on Stars who capped big PP hands OOP, but only called the 3 bet with unsuited cards. My observation was that their range was exactly 50% of each -- thus I knew their hand was either a big A or a PP once I three bet them. Not sure if this is correct, but I was pretty willing to get out of line 3 betting them. They were also 24 tabling, so taking liberties seemed good.

TAG opens UTG..two avg regs call, they are both on the passive side so they could have big Aces in their range. They will also call with any pair, suited Ace, mid suited connector, good Broadway's etc.....I am next in HJ with A9s...the players to my left are all tightish.

What if I had A2s?