So it's a polite way of saying "donking," then.

lol, nom

hi folks, I would like to join this thread as well. I bought the book several years back and I liked it. unfortunately I stopped playing poker all together and I've forgotten most of it. I would like to get back into it. I'll start to read it tonight. Please understand that I still consider myself a beginner and I might be asking some very basic questions. ( I know the rules and the basic play but not too much strategy & tactics). thanks in advance for your patience.

An hour to read, a lifetime to master.

I haven't read it in years although I still have it. The book was set up in a way that you could skip the math and still learn the important stuff. Personally I never thought it was that difficult, except for maybe the pot odds chapter that I quickly skimmed over. I actually had a much tougher time understanding WITHG when I first read it. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because I had a hard time understanding a book that talked about beating games that were much tougher than the super soft games I was used to play. At the time, much of the stuff in the book was very new to me. SSHE almost never talks about stuff like stealing the blinds, defending blinds, postflop play when heads up, etc. WITGH started to make a lot more sense to me when I started using Pokerstove. That helped me understand a lot of the recommendations in the book a lot better.

The book by Yao received great reviews when it first came out but I doubt many people would "highly" recommend it today. I think it's a pretty decent book but I wouldn't consider it a must read.

I thought one of the reasons for raising hands like 87s on the btn was to get 4 card flops more often when we wanted them. A lot of backdoor draws will greatly increase in value on the turn, and without our PF raise we'll be folding a lot of those hands on the flop when our opponents come out betting instead of just checking to the raiser.

I also think we would get at least a few more calls in a 4/8 game when we hit, or at least in the 4/8 games I've played in (and I've played in some games that actually were kind of tight-passive, but this depends so much on the table). Not only is the pot bigger, but opponents might put you on something like QQ or AK when the draw shows up on the board. If a straight draw hits then they will have a hard time putting you on that.

I didn't think it really mattered that much though. I certainly wouldn't cap with it in a 4/8 game.

Edit: Also raising PF sometimes puts the low limit regulars on tilt if they are the type that love to see a lot of cheap flops. I found that to be more common at 2/4 though, where people were the most passive players I've ever seen. But I'm sure it still annoys some of the 4/8 players because it ruins their goal of seeing the flop really cheap before deciding what they think of their hand.

This does happen. In the room where I play, there's a bad beat jackpot. I've heard complaints that all of my preflop raising diminished the chances of hitting the bad beat because it forced out hands that could hit it.

I like raising 87s+ after a bunch of limpers, but there have been times that I thought my position was better playing it for a limp instead of raising it, because there were aggressive players in the blinds. I wouldn't cap it in the situation described, nor would I cap it in 99.9% of situations.

Not really but it could be construed as donking. donking is usually referred to the action of betting into a in position Raiser of a previous street in no limit hold em. reversals are usually check calling then taking the lead on the next street. its a exploitative play that is often valid but has fallen out of favor mostly because it frustrates in position players when done properly and with proper balance but is disastrous if done improperly it is a awesome way to get 3 bets out of an overly aggressive opponents or exploiting those with with expanded k-m ranges and also for stopping the free card play. Its not as often correct in 4 bet games such as Hold em or OMAHA as it is an 7Stud or 7S8oB where its proper use can be devastating.

you guys don't mind if I never, ever use the term "Shania," do you? I'm on board with the concept, though.

I had a 7 way capped pot yesterday with KK. 20/40 btw

Fleeting thought:

When 3b-ing preflop, books suggest your range should be tighter than the opener's range. let's say CO raises with a 40% range, then we should be iso'ing OTB with a 30% range. I don't completely understand this. OTB, we have position on CO. This should allow us to raise wider - say with a 42% range. We also have the prospects of dead money from the blinds. In fact, many books suggest iso'ing with 33, 44 in this position, knowing we're a hot/cold equity underdog, but making it up with position and dead blinds. Why is it then that our whole range is still stronger?

I think you have to account for the possibility that one of the blinds wakes up with a hand. WITHG has an example where they say if you knew the blinds would both fold, you can 3b stuff like Q5s, since you'd be getting the blind money as an overlay.

But your equity just gets wrecked when another player comes along, so you can't take it too far.

Time for some stoving. Give both blinds calling and fourbetting ranges, find the three-betting range that gives us an overlay.

For extra credit, work the problem for different scenarios of blind tendencies.

Because your hand selection is based on the equity of your marginal hands, not the aggregate equity of the entire range above it.

That is, if your opponent is raising A2+, you shouldn't be 3-betting A2, because your specific hand loses to every hand in your opponent's range. Instead, you should be 3-betting A7+ or A8+.

Please have a quick look at this thread from the Micro Stakes Limit forum where I had A9o after 2 limpers:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/35...stion-1426142/

I was in a somewhat similar situation at a live table last night:

I had been sitting at this table for about 3 hours and I could count on my fingers the number of hands where there was a preflop raise. Most of the hands were 4 to 6 people paying one bet to see the flop.

I'm in the HJ with ?? after UTG+2 and MP limps (both loose passive players preflop, one is loose passive postflop the other is tight passive postflop).

There's ONE villain on my immediate left who's tricky and aggressive, everyone else is passive and straightforward after the flop unless they have a monster. It's not uncommon to see 4 people to a flop and have it check all the way around.

If I use the tight game recommendation from the book (6 was a common number of players seeing the flop but an absolute maximum, it was usually 4 or 5), the range from MP when not facing a raise is Axs, KQs-K9s, QJs-Q9s, JTs-J9s, T9s, 98s, pocket pairs, ATo+ and KJo+. I assume we are only raising the strongest of these, limping along with the rest.

Here's the first question: Under what table conditions could you expand the limpalong range from the HJ here? I.e. since we have a table that's typically soooo passive could we add hands like Kxs, Q7s, Q8s, 67s, 78s, T8s, 97s?

Here's the second question: I've kind of asked this before but it continues to frustrate me: Suppose we limp along here with 98s (I know some people would raise 98s here, but since this is the SSHE thread we'll assume we're following their advice), get a rare raise from the BB that gets called around and flop a fourflush but no straight draws, and the betting suddenly gets very aggressive postflop?

I have to admit that I'm asking this question from emotion as much from logic because it tilts the (*$@#(#@ out of me when the action comes back to me for 1 big bet time after time after time, and each individual time I have CLEAR pot odds to call, and then either I miss my flush and piss away all those chips or someone makes a bigger flush and I piss away even more chips.

Do I just have to accept that sometimes you can play a hand totally correctly and still lose money?

Now I'm not telling you to raise all the bold hands, but I would raise all of them except for the baby pairs. I'd also raise 87s, T8s+, 97s+, but I'm very comfortable raising limpers with these hands, which you may not be yet.

I also have a junky limping range here, which I have been told to tighten up by some good players, but I see the bad players come in for a limp and I just can't help myself; I want to play hands with the bad players. Put some good players behind me and I'll tighten up my limping range, but without that read I'm assuming that they suck and I can play a lot of hands here. You might not be ready to limp T7s here. You might never be ready if you don't put the time in with stove. So I'll recommend that you should be looking for spots to loosen up with both raises and limps, but to do so with some caution. This is the opposite of the way that I learned how to play limit holdem. I raised first and asked questions later. I was a maniac out of the gate. Then Holdem Poker for Advanced Players tried to turn me into a nit, but I wouldn't have it that way. I learned a lot playing this way, and at the micro stakes I was rarely punished for playing so many hands. It wasn't until I tried to move up to 2/4 where I was now facing 3 bets from experienced players and I had to tighten up significantly.

Now I still look for spots to play as many hands as profitably as possible against bad players. I'm always looking for an angle. Some call this "trading mistakes" where you take a preflop hit in the hopes of making up the loss postflop. I guess that's an appropriate description of overly loose preflop play, but the conclusion that trading mistakes isn't appropriate in limit holdem is wrong by my estimation. If I find an opponent who's really bad, I'm willing to take a hit preflop in the hopes of making it up later. Hi Lawdude .

I'm not saying that you should play like me. I'm not that good, and playing a lot of hands puts you in a position to make more mistakes than you're already making. I'm saying that you should look for the angles, and with enough study you'll notice spots to play hands that you would think are too weak as of right now.

It's a game ldo, if you're trying to play by rote then you're going to miss profitable spots because so many of your opponents are playing it as a game because it is a game. I don't like the cliche "no limit holdem is an art, while limit holdem is a science." because where's the fun in that? It's a mind game that we play with our hands. If you're not getting into your opponent's heads then you're doing it wrong imo.

If you never saw a preflop chart, how would you feel about raising with T9s against two limpers? What about KJo? ATo?

If you see a guy who's reading a newspaper while limping in 80%, yet folding without top pair+ on the flop, how do you feel about J7s?

Don't just think about these questions, they're not rhetorical.

The best help for a marginal hand is position. You want the BTN. You'd like to have the aggressive players acting before you. Sometimes we give advice for people to loosen up in the bb, but they're likely better off playing more hands in position like you describe here. You learn the other side of the same lessons, with the bonus of position and initiative. Once you have the steal/loose play thing learned from the aggressor side, you can focus on not being exploitably tight in the blinds.

Playing around learning NL, and there are just spots I don't recognize. Hand is good enough to play, but do I want to build a big pot? Maybe just call and see. Keep it cheap. I think new players tend to loose and passive for the reason. We see this from dtxcf in these threads. Especially in lhe, the decent intermediate player can get some benefit out of just being aggressive. You should go through a phase where you want to raise every pot you play. I think eventually learning hu play will make you more willing to induce. However, early on I'm suggesting he show be suspicious of the call button outside the bb.

FWIW, I think a lot of experienced/good players (myself included, and while I don't think I'm at the level of a Bob/Doug/BBB/etc, I think I'm good enough to win in most live lineups) start off way too loose, then become complete empty seats as they get experience, and then loosen up again.

I know when I first started playing, I would do crap like limp UTG, cold call raises, and generally play too many hands passively (and play fit or fold post). After I realized the glaring errors, I morphed into an ubernit (UTG = 99+, AJs+, AKo. Even my button open range was like top 20-25%). Now it's almost a running joke that whoever has the two seats to my left are never chopping with me on the button (not entirely true, but I'll look down at some junk and open OTB).

Obviously your starting hand is of the utmost importance w/r/t winning money. It's common sense that my button open w/ AA has a better EV than it does w/ K2o or 65s. But position and talent level also makes a difference. Can you find value bets/raises when the opposition can't? Can you find folds when the opposition can't? And with position, you can also think about how many bets you want to enter the pot, and adjust (ex: we want 2 bets on the late streets, most of the time, w/ AJ on A98-6 5 ways OTB, and we can safely fold if we're faced with a decision to put more than this in).

That's just the thing though Doug. It's not early on for Dal anymore. He's read the books. He's probably played a bunch of hands. If he's not ready to play hands with the bad players for a single bet in this spot he brought up then when? How's he going to learn to play the marginal hands with these training wheels that are basically welded onto his game?

You brought up no limit, which reminds me of a quote from one of Sklansky's books, which I'll probably butcher in trying to word it correctly, whatever, here goes:

"If you ever saw a great no limit player playing against bad players, you'll notice that they play a lot of hands, and they're limping in almost a third of the pots."

This might be the single most important piece of poker wisdom I ever read. "Play em like you got em" has won a lot of pots for me, but the above quote really stuck. When I see an open limper, I'm genuinely sad when I look at my cards to find junk. I want to play pots with them. If there are aggressive players behind me and I hold an otherwise playable hand, I feel like I'm losing money by having to fold. This is the opportunity cost of folding preflop for whatever reason. The money flows clockwise around the table. If you're not actively trying to intercept that wealth then you're just going to be an abc tag forever. You might win a little bit over the long haul, but you're losing money as I see it.

I'm embarrassed to ask such a basic question (who cares, I'm anon, right?), and admittedly I need to mess around with calculators more, but is raising 87s, 97s, T9s, T8s, J9s, etc, "standard" with 5-6 or whatever limpers?

I tend to play those drawing-type hands cheaply because they have questionable SD value in no-fold'em games.

What's your limping PP cutoff? 55-?

With 5+ limpers, I'm raising all of those hands. With only two limpers, I could go either way with T8s, 97s, 87s. If it's likely to be 3 bet behind me, then I'd probably limp, but I'm raising J9s+, T9s, 98s 100% regardless of the players behind me.

Raising 66+, and calling 55- seems about right to me against two limpers from the HJ readless. Add a third limper and I tighten up to 88+ for raising and I limp the rest.

My favorite result though is when my opponents start to think I'm horrible for raising these hands. I've been 3 bet by some very questionable hands in the past by players who think that they need to play back at me because of my wide range. This benefits the top of my range greatly.

All that said, I don't think you're losing much money by limping those hands. I just find the resulting image of "bingo player" to be very beneficial. It can help turn a tight passive table into a loose gambling table, which is more fun and more importantly, profitable. As Howard would say, "non action packed low limit holdem games are not worth playing."

He's also played a bunch of NL and some PLO. As long as the basic concepts confuse a person, the training wheels are a good thing. Your (Bob's) natural inclination in a hand is to embrace your inner LAG and enjoy the image that it brings. Thus if you see a spot to limp, it goes against your natural inclination to 0EV spew and you can trust it. His (dtxcf's) natural inclination is to keep pots cheap and maybe see some flops (to likely play fit/fold). As a loose/passive player, he has to be suspicious of urges in these spots. Hence the beginner advice for r or f.

Also playing online, you don't really need to develop expert overlimping. The game conditions are rarely right. In those spots, it isn't that big a mistake just to raise anyway. Sure, a real expert might add a few more hands as an overlimp. However, looking at posts I just see that the r/f philosophy for a while couldn't hurt.

The only thing I would add to Bob's reply (and he's a much better player than I am) is that you REALLY want to raise those particular hands after 3 or even only 2 limpers (though 6+ is fine as well) on the BUTTON, or if you think it will BUY you the button (i.e. if you think CO and BTN will fold if you raise, raise from the HJ and it "buys you the button").

Why?

Because the most likely outcome is everyone will check to the PFR (you) and you'll have the option to take a 4-card flop.

Of course if you do flop a fourflush or an OESD (or a monster hand!) and there are 5 passive players in the pot you want to bet because you have 30%+ equity in the pot. (An aggressive player may check-raise you which isn't horrible unless it's the player directly on your left - now, suddenly, your beautiful MW pot is heads up because nobody wants to call 2 bets cold).

I'll let the better players comment on other situations where the pot is at least 3-way and you wouldn't want to take the free card. I'll bet there aren't many.

And, of course, if you *do* hit your monster, in last position you have total control over the hand.

Thanks for the replies.

It makes sense to raise with 87s when it's 2-3 passive players but less obvious when it's 5+ less so to me. Even passive players will bet out to see where they're at or simply because they have something, anything. So the "4-card flop" is less likely to happen with more players.

But I can see if the preflop raise is (around) even money when you run the cards out, that a raise could be profitable if players make improper adjustments and give your value hands a boost, like bob said.

Start here, before anything else. Do you have a hot/cold equity edge with the hand? I know, 4-7 ways preflop is a long way from showdown, and you'll have to modify the actual value of the hand vs. what equilab tells you. Still, get a feeling for their ranges vs the hand you hold. You many not get a 4 card flop because some of them may donk hands they hit -- that's even better for you because they're telling you "I have a pair or better" or "I missed completely". Remember to remove the hands they would raise from their ranges, so they don't get to have premiums. If your hand isn't getting at least its fair share, wonder if it is an implied odds hand or some other reason you're playing it (lean to not). You'll be surprised how many hands do OK to amazingly well.