Hello,


Preflop: 9 max
There is a straddle to $4
Hero is MP2 with 88

UTG+1 limps (+$500 stack), MP1 ($230 stack) limps, Hero ($350) ???


UTG+1 is a very good player, makes excellent reads on players hands, knows when to bluff, when to extract max value. I have seen him limp/3! preflop but not that often.

UTG+2 is a calling station. worst player at the table.

The most agressive player at the table was UTG who folded. Behind there is a agressive player (MP3), a decent player (CO), a short stack rec player ($50 stack. A few hands before he opened UTG to $8 with 66 with a $70 stack), a very tight player on the SB and two calling stations on the BB and straddle.


Would you raise, limp or fold 88 here?

Raise to about twice what you normally would since the straddle halves the effective stacks. Personally with two limpers I probably bet $25 - $30. I'd like as few callers as possible, but if you get 5 - 8 calls it's no disaster--you just switch to set-mining and play straightforwardly postflop.

An argument can be made to limp as 88 is relatively difficult to play post-flop when you miss your set, but if you're limping 88, you're probably limping 22-99 also, in which case your raising range is mostly big pairs and big cards. I wouldn't recommend forking your range like this but if your post-flop play is poor you might want to.

You definitely don't want to fold it.

The straddle puts $15 in the pot already, you have multiple stations and effective stacks are not real deep. No real reason to raise. You should be able to build a big pot if you hit and you hand isn't strong if you don't.

$25

I'm raising 88. Hopefully you end heads up vs calling station, but I'm prepared to switch into set mode if too many callers.

Make it $25-30. Call jam from the short stack, fold to most 3bets that price you out of set mining.

Who straddled?


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Without the straddle, I'd put in a small raise to juice the pot if we bink and to give us some more ways to win if we can rep big cards. A RR would be disappointing, but not catastrophic.

With the straddle, I just call. The raise would be too large, so that we would probably have to fold to a RR and the hand is already going to play bigger so that we have a decent chance to get stacks in if we hit the set. If someone else raises, we should have a profitable call.

What is your image? If it's on the tighter side, raise to $25 - $30. If it's on the looser side and they'll all call you or 3bet light, call.

If they are going to 3bet light we can likely 4bet jam profitably.
So that's a good result.

True. I just don't want to play 88 from mid-position for a raise if the whole table is going to call. Not many flops help us. It also depends on how light they 3bet, but I'm happy to gii w/ the best hand

Nice spot for an overlimp in a straddled 1/2 pot. Raising is ok, but any 3bets are going to be less-light on average given the number of defenders, the pot size (early commitment), and all the diseased limp back-raise ranges that straddled pots elicit. You make a lot of money always seeing a flop in a slightly inflated limped pot with this hand for "2bb".

I'd say a limp is fine here considering the lineup that follows. Good chance one of them attacks the limpers then you can see how utg + 1 reacts and act accordingly.

If the whole table calls that's actually a good result. We've invested $25 to win a pot of $200 (+ our bet $225). We have 8:1 express odds in that spot and we'll hit a set often enough we can just check/fold when we don't (though there are other decent flops like 765tt or 976r where we don't want to check/fold). When we do hit a set, we often win a gigantic pot.

I'd rather have 1 or 2 callers but 7 or 8 is better than 4 IMO.

.

I like a raise here as a preventative measure. Sometimes you get 3bet but often you'll just get a bunch of calls. If you are the 3rd limp after a straddle usually someone's gonna make a huge raise and you'll have to fold b/c you don't know if it's 33 or KK or 76s or ATC.

And generally speaking I really love raising mid-pairs b/c you're either over-repped when you miss or under-repped when you flop a set. Makes it easier to play multi-way.

I want to play the games your in. Generally in the game I'm in someone will make a semi standard raise (4-5x the bb) to attack limpers that elicits atleast 1 caller giving us huge odds with this hand.

Limp is bad with the fish station still in the hand. Easy raise to 25-30 like most have said.

You people love trying to win 7 handed pots with medium hands.

Hello,

Thank you all by your opinions.

If I limp i am going to play 888 as set mining and could call a pre flop raise if I get a good price.

If I raise ($20/$25) I am gonna need to fold to a 3-bet almost always.

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In our table a raise from BTN, SB, BB or straddle to punish the limpers happens often enough.

My image is that I am a nitty and people that know me will respect my open bets but, that day, a couple of guys that never played with me, 3-bet me 70% of the time I opened.

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The good players at the table have seen me shove 88+ to their 3-bet as they were 3-betting light

blablabla
a hand is either a raise from a certain position or it is not.
we have a top 6% hand on a 9 handed table.
we are ahead of their ranges. I really don´t care about images and stuff like that, we have a raising hand, so raise.

for all that esotheric stuff on how we are proceeding against x amount of callers with an y aggression factor on every z flop, I worry about that once I get there.

If they're really 3-betting you that light then 4-bet shove if it comes to it. There should be a ton of dead money in the pot and you're usually flipping. Even if you get snapped off with a big pair it's not a complete disaster as these players should be 3-betting you less knowing you're willing to 4-bet somewhat light.

This may be reasonable advice for new players, or for players who just want a moderately winning strategy they can use while socializing or watching sports, but it's bad advice if you're working to maximize your winrate and even worse for hands like 88, which are strongly affected by table dynamics and other player tendencies.

this refers to the blablablabla

standard play is to raise it up here, and we need to have damn good reasons to deviate from standard play.

against a few likely pretty bad players who have probably not much of an idea what they are doing and limping a likely way too wide range anyway, I´m even more inclined to raise 88, and I´d need something like a known AA L/raiser was the first to limp in to change it.
Some aggrodonks behind me who MIGHT 3bet won´t influence my decision with 88 at all.

I think to know which hands to raise in which positions because they are ahead of x amount of ATC ranges behind us is a pretty useful knowledge, not only to new players, but also to a lot of posters here who construct their ranges on the fly due to some arbitrary reasons like a non-quantifyable aggression factor or 3bet% or difficulty of players or however you wanna call it in contrast to mathematically sound value ranges.

If I raise 88 in this spot, I make a profitable play. And there need to be pretty rare circumstances for me to consider limping it, play it weaktight, miss my set and clap myself on the shoulder for losing the minimum.

I wasn't particularly talking about this hand specifically. (FWIW, I think raising 88 here is perfectly reasonable).

I'm commenting on the statement, "a hand is either a raise from a certain position or it is not." Obviously, purely as written, it's a trivial statement; I read it as suggesting that raising ranges should not be modified based on table conditions. If that's not what you meant, my apologies. (And what did you mean?)

I think suggesting raising ranges should not be modified based on table conditions and specific V tendencies is terrible advice if one is UTG and gets even worse the later one's position.

Raising can be used to accomplish much, much more than getting more money in with a likely equity advantage (pot size manipulation, deception, bluffing, isolation, just to name some).

Indeed, OTB, raising ranges can often be determined almost exclusively by table conditions and specific V's in the hand. That's about as far from what I understood you said as it's possible to be.

no, that´s pretty much what I meant

and of course ranges should be modified, but if one hasn´t really got a clue which hands to raise in the first place, and hasn´t really got a clue about oneselfs ranges, plans tend to come up on the fly, which more often than not lead to spew imo. it´s a repeating leak on this forum imo that players don´t know the standard play at all and play purely based on some assumptions about villains. more often than not, this leads to sticky spot which could be avoided if you know what your range is in certain spots.

I very much agree with this.

However, I also believe that 'standard play' allows for overlimping 88 at some frequency in any LFR game because you are extremely unlikely to win the dead money in the pot with so many to act behind and two limpers in front. Moreso here, because eff stacks are sliced in half and 88 behaves a lot like 22 postflop when it goes 3+ ways. It really is a pretty big deal being less likely to secure position/win the blinds/utilize FE when you're comparing the EV of raising to flatting.