So basically K's and A's and fold the rest?

KTs is definately a loser.

Well, show us your take on a "tighter than this in early" range.

I'll open up w AJs, KQs, 66 UTG+2, otherwise raising AK,AQ,77+, occasionally limping in early.

Skalanky recommended folding KJ UTG in HFAP in all but perfect games. In really loose passive games I'll limp much wider, all PP's, and perhaps even suited connectors. For the most part, AJ,KQ in early are losers.

Occasionally throw in a raise w a suited connector to throw them off a little.

It probably is when you have AA in your specialized LRR range.

Only sometimes, rarely really. KTs is a dead loser though, which is why I folded it just now, then the button passes, pick a target and rarely re steal.

I'm not sure what expert games you're playing in, but KTs is a fine raise in soft games. Given the range of hands people call raises with, KTs stands to dominate more often than not. HPFAP ranges are very dated and nitty and don't fully exploit the mistakes made by opponents. Moreover, the data I've looked at says KTs is making money in tougher online games. Also, assuming you play a simple raise or fold preflop strategy, your range is still strong enough to avoid being mucked with.

You can feel free to fold KTs in rake trap games, but I can't imagine not playing it in an action packed mid stakes game where people will give me action with JTo, K8s, and other hands that KTs have crushed way more often than the inverse.

To be clear, I also raise less than 10% UTG especially at a 10-handed table, and I don't feel compelled to raise more. Tight is right in EP, absolutely. And I also think KTs is wide and QTs is too wide.

But that's not the main point.

The main point is that if you take a narrow range, and then take out the best hands to limp-reraise, your raising range is both narrow and weak, and that's horrible.

Plus, if you're limp-reraising to cover up the fact that you're open-limping ****ty hands, that's just putting lipstick on a pig. Stop open-limping.

Throw them off what?

Mistakes are mistakes, whether you're doing it ironically or whether you just don't know any better.

Good strategy is not so obvious that if you just played ABC poker, all your opponents would read you like an open book.

My games are 9 handed, and I'll think about it. Thanks for comments.

If they give you that much action when you raise, just think of how many even worse dominated hands will call if you just limp!

I do it because I'm playing MLH, and I can occasionally steal the blinds from early, and not be bluffed off every time there are babies on board, and have AK. I learned this from Bob Ciaffone book. This is somewhat standard among better players.

One of the regs I play with loves to announce to the table that my AK can't have hit the board as he donks/check raises me on nearly every low board when I raise early in.

Do you think of yourself as one of the better players?

If so, bluntly, are you a gimmick?

The Ciaffone book leaves a lot to be desired. The Intelligent Poker Player has a very good discussion about the raise first in strat and why its the best choice for LHE and why EP limping might be better in a game line Omaha 8.

FWIW OP could be one of the best players in his pool and do stuff like this. We underestimate how bad some people truly are at poker.

Yes, and what's a gimmick?

I'm probably the most manipulative.

This. Keep it simple. Pick the most profitable play and do that 100% of the time.

fyp to get a more specific answer because....well, I find myself questioning almost every premise I have about HE after reading a leavesofliberty post. Nice to have someone post contrarian viewpoints but for a noob like myself, very difficult to separate the wheat from the chafe.

I am not a noob here on 2+2,,, just with the HE game. So it is helpful to see differing ideas and have the established playahs drill down deep enough to get the "real" truth. I hope both sides keep at it....

A gimmick is someone who creates a fake account, like one whose initials may spell out LOL, and then posts trolly things to try to get people to respond.

As someone pointed out, you may be right that the bettER players (that is, the less worse ones) mix it up by randomly raising suited connectors. But good players don't do it at all or do it for specific, exploitative reasons. Your assertion that it's standard for better players to do it is super questionable.

So here's a more general exposition.

In LHE, the blinds are very large relative to the action. Being able to take down the blinds uncontested is very valuable (1 extra blind steal per hour equals 0.75 BB/hr, which is a solid win rate). As a result, you always want to enter for a raise, and raise much wider in late position than early.

When you make random plays to mix it up, you suffer some sort of immediate loss (raising a hand you shouldn't or limping a hand you shouldn't) and hope that immediate loss is offset by a future gain (people think you play bad and misplay you). Do it too much and you actually play bad and they play you correctly. Do it too little and ... for the most part it doesn't matter.

Why it doesn't matter is because of the first paragraph. Most people at small stakes simply aren't aware of how your range should look like to begin with - they see you open-raising from the BTN with J7s and don't realize that when you open-raise from UTG you don't have J7s in your range. It's like employing camoflage against a blind opponent.

Now, what's semi-true is that at higher stakes, you may want some surprises in your game. Not like "haha I 4-bet 72o to make you think i had aces" surprises, but "i made a marginal raise in a marginal fold spot" that costs little but makes it difficult for very observant opponents to pin someone on an exact preflop range. So if you'd normally raise 88+ AJo+ ATs+, you're not doing well on two-toned middle-middle-middle flops and maybe you want to show up with JTs or 77 often enough that they can't immediately tell whether you hit that flop. But the further down you go, the more that deception costs you, so the good players may be playing some slightly EV- hands but neither grossly EV- or frequently.

Now, returning to small stakes, my book-based advice is probably to open EP and EMP according to Winning in Tough Hold'Em Games (WITHG) by Stoxtrader, and play LMP and LP according to Small Stakes Hold'Em (SSHE) by Ed Miller. Never open-limp, never coldcall first in against a raise. But if a bunch of people are in the pot, it matters less what you do.

Most of all, don't overestimate your opponents. Playing a rigid tight-aggressive preflop strategy and solidly value betting good flops gets you pretty far - probably a moderate winner at 20/40-ish stakes. So anyone who has figured out a decent preflop strategy and doesn't butcher postflop moves up fairly quickly, and doesn't play hundreds of hours of rake trap games.

Wondered about this, as well. LOL has the radar going.

+1 on this idea. One thing that kind of bugs me with recent posting (from lots of people) about mixing it up is that it let's people post two or three different answers to a hand and then expect credit for being right if any proposed action is correct. We know super-strong players who use mixed strategies for well thought out reasons. We know folks who quote "Bot X or Y does this 57% of the time" which might or might not be possible for a human to correctly implement. We know folks who do stuff at random due to tilt/feelings/whatevs. Hard to tell on a given hand. It seems to me that the best discussion would be "I make this play because it is the best play I know".

FWIW, I think leavesofliberty's randomized LRR strategy is much worse than just playing good ranges, in almost every case. There's one difference I can think of -- if there's a true maniac at the table, I'd potentially adjust by LRR in spots where it is just clearly profitable to limp, get half the table to limp behind, let the maniac raise, and then "collude" with the maniac's tendencies to trap all of them for a cap. At that point we'd have 7 way action for a bazillion bets and I wouldn't care about turning my hand faceup.

This is akin to limping bad aces from EP when there's a maniac left to act that will drive action.

Standard 2/5 PLO spot at 500 stacks, a limp, you limp bad aces, guy raises to 30, 3 cold calls behind, SB calls, BB calls, first limper calls, and now you jam to 270. Of course this is a collective exploitation of how no one can fold to single raises, but then overfold to 3 bets given prices.

I'm on board with this with two criteria:

1. The maniac has to raise wide enough that we can open-limp our ENTIRE raising range and 3-bet profitably (or else our raising range ends up being narrow and weak), and

2. The game has to be loose enough that we can justifiably have a open-limping range (or else we just open-limp what we'd otherwise raise and that's no good).