Bet flop

AP, IMO & ime river is probably somewhat -EV to call, how much it is I can't say. In my years of online poker, which is similar to live poker in many aspects, just because it's online guys doesn't mean they are 100% different. A donk lead OTR esp by donks/regfish generally means they hit something, almost always the flush/straight

There's always the chance he plays a lower set like this, but it's not super likely. Also the fact that he 3-bet jams the river reduces the frequency he plays a set like this OTR significantly. We have trapped AA/KK/66/33 in our perceived range, some 54 that didn't bet flop. Even bad players should realize that a lower set is like 22/33 here is like the 7th nuts and isn't going to rip in 3-bet the river over our raise that often enough to make a call here +EV.

Also, since SB is Asian, I wouldn't be surprised if he shows up with 54o here as well at some good frequency & not just the suited 54.

I hate folding and I hardly ever comment on a thread to say "fold" but let this be perhaps the first or maybe 2nd time. Im having a hard time w/ spots like these vs loose passive villains who seemingly get to the river and just always have it when they bet/3bet.

If you ran into an opponent who had the stones to 3bet bluff the river, you'd know it unmistakably and you would have told us "this guy seems capable of 3bet bluffing a river bet because of X (or Y)" but you didnt tell us this or anything remotely close to that as a description so clearly its time to know when to fold them unfortunately.

Villain is an unknown 30-something Asian. OP was moved to a new table. As long as we're trading on stereotypes (like he shows up with 54o more than average), he's also more likely to play LAG than random players.

But to be clear I'm calling unless he's 80+ and white and it's the middle of the day.

I genuinely dont understand some of your logic, you clearly understand the game and often post some very valuble post-flop stuff, if a little nitty Imo....but limping kk up-top vs unknowns....... In my most humble if views this would be pretty much the worst pre-flop mistake you could make, if we expect a raise and feel we can l/rr then ok I follow the logic, personally it's a line I hate, but if we expect it to get limoed round we are taking kk to the mine.....
Any player who is profiting will be making probably ~50% of there profits with kk-aa we don't like to admit it, and feel like we play other hands better, but long term kk/aa is a huge chunk of the money we make, why would we try to make less, if we raise 5x and get 8callers it's still a +eV move......

I hate this play too. Limping KK+ was cutting edge a few decades ago, but now so many people do it nobody is really surprised if you show up with KK here. The goal is to limp-reraise it but that ridiculously narrows our range, even against relatively fishy players because everybody knows there's like 2, maybe 3 hands you limp-reraise. And if we end up 6 way to the flop that's a pretty ****ty result if we don't hit a set. Just raise your default raise amount or slightly more. I'd make it 12-20 depending what's closer to normal for me in that game, 20 if I can get away with it (like I haven't played enough hands for people to know my typical raise size). Raising to 20 with two callers (a typical result) gets an SPR of < 5, by the way, which is close to ideal.

I know some good players limp/raise KK so they're either making it work, or the losses from limping it vs raising it are small enough they don't notice, but I think it's gross. But whatever works I guess...

Kind of high jacking this thread, but I play up to 2.5 and I hate the limp reraise in all forms, but I can see a place for it, I think 'creative' plays like this might work a little better playing higher? You see plenty of pro's doing it, but I don't really get it tbh, I have yet to be convinced it's the optimal play in any situation....

I think everyone in this thread has decided "easy fold" or "easy call" so it's probably close to EV neutral, averaging across locations.

As for the limp-reraise, for it be useful you have to remove more hands from your raising range and use those in your limp-reraising range. And then you need a limp-calling range or your limp-reraising range is too strong. And probably you need to randomly raise some of these limp-reraising hands to avoid forking your range too much. I know some people make this work but it seems way too complicated. It inevitably forks your range even if you're trickier than most about it. For instance if you raise UTG on T64 you pretty much never have anything except 3 combos TT. And if you limp-reraise on the same board, you have an overpair. Maybe AK.

There are many examples where it's not this clear, particularly if you make more effort to balance the limping range (e.g., sometimes raise AA, sometimes limp it, sometimes raise 22, sometimes limp it), but you can still conclude "it's very unlikely he has anything on this board"

I think it might work in like 2/5 and 5/t games but seriously doubt it's optimal in these and probably not at all in high stakes games. But I know at least one guy way better than me who crushes 5/t and he limps a lot.

Just realized if we bet flop and turn, then he bets river for less than allin we can call and save money cause his range is stronger. Wow, this game is so easy.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

This is terrible advice, a byproduct of one basing their entire NL strategy around the concept of SPR I suppose. You've been playing NL for what... 6, 7, or 8+ years and you don't know the raise size that will likely thin the field? (This is a rhetorical question).

This is true. This is a very nutted line. Only very inexperienced droolers are playing a hand like A2 like this. Like you, I still call here..mostly because we are at the top of our range and lol live players do a lot of stupid things (live misclicks ftw) especially late at night.

Limp raising can work well in very aggressive games. It can work well in games with lots of scared money players (which is a huge percentage of live players, tbh). It can work well in games with big whales. It tends to be more common in bigger games but can certainly be applied quite effectively in low stakes as well.

Your logic is sound but none of these statements are entirely true.

Complicated? What does this even mean? If it's complicated for you to understand how do you think the mouth breathing droolers are going to be able to understand this strategy when you employ it at the poker table?

And others are going to know your range how?

Not sure exactly what you are saying here but my range is way different than this.

I'd like to meet him.

Absolutely agree that AA/KK make up a *huge* chunk of our profits, especially at the smaller stacked lower limit games.

Absolutely disagree that raising 5x and getting 8callers is an +EV move (especially at a readless table OOP where we have zero clue what anyone is doing postflop), unless we're all agreeing to check down the hand postflop / only started the hand with 5x. Also, see next response...


At an unknown table (all 9 opponents are unknown) and OOP (where we have literally zero clue who or how many are interested in playing this hand since we're first to act), you're absolutely right, I have *zero* clue what raise size I need here to thin the field. I could play for a million more years and I would still have zero clue in this spot.

Most of my strategy is based on attempting to setup as many easy-to-play situations (within reason) as possible. Some might argue this isn't the most +EV approach; they might be right, but they might not be (and even if they are right, I doubt my approach is as far off their +EV line as they make it out to be). I'm pretty confident in stating that most losing / struggling players would be far better off taking this approach of setting up easy-to-play spots.

"Terrible advice" to limp KK in EP? Lolz, hardly.

GcluelessraisesizenoobG

Terrible advice to default limping KK because the table is full of unknowns? Absolutely. This is an easy raise for value. Even if this goes multiway you should have an idea of how unknowns are likely to play certain hands/boards and it shouldn't be that difficult post flop.

People keep using this word "value" as if we're just handed the pot postflop. If we're just handed the pot postflop, everyone is ABC, fine, whatever.

Here we're OOP and have zero clue who are opponents are. Are we up against the nittiest of nits? The most maniacs of maniacs? We have zero clue. But hey, let's build up a pot OOP to them when we don't have a trivial commitment decision and yet have no clue what we're up against. BTW, if *you* want to do that (cuz you're supremely confident in your postflop abilities in non-trivial spots OOP to unknowns), hey, whatever, that's fine; to say that doing something otherwise is "horrible/terrible" is lolz. It simply isn't. I mean, look at this case: here OP flopped the stone called nuts and has the third nuts on the river, and yet he's *still* having problems playing it; how do you think he'll do when he actually encounters a non-trivial spot (all in the name of KK / value / all that)?

Gwe'renotgoingtoagreeonthisG

gg, even if you are just sitting down at a table for the first time, in a country you've never played in before you should have reads before playing your first hand. I've never been at a table against 8-9 unknowns.

You write so well, but your advice is usually poor. I especially think it's bad advice for *you* specifically. You're a very nitty player. That means we really, really have to extract most of our profits with our premium hands because we're not opening up our game much when game conditions would illicit this being profitable or just due to position.

Situations are "easy to play" because we have experience with them. If you're avoiding opening KK utg at a new table, it's only "difficult" because of your personal shortcomings as a player.

Again, I'll let you go back to the way OP played this hand postflop (including the question he is posing on the river), in a hand that is like the most trivial of hands to play postflop. My guess is that KK might actually be a losing hand for him OOP against unknowns (ok, that might be an overstatement), but the point remains: he should be setting up easier situations for himself, no?

You guys are giving expert advice that experts will do fine with.

Gknowyouraudience,imoG

I don't agree that he set himself up with a "tough situation." I don't agree that limping utg would create an easier situation.

How would having reads on all 8 of your villains change how you play a premium hand UTG? I assume you generally prefer to l/r at tables with more aggressive players in LP.

gg, you *kind of* remind me of one person I play with. He's not very good, at all, but certainly makes a small profit. He is face up the entire time, buys in for 100bb and basically limps 66-JJ;AQs and raises AKs, QQ, KK, AA to like $50-75. Now, this is obviously awful strategy. But it works at llsnl!
How he reminds me of you is he doesn't improve at all, only plays the top 10 hands but is fine making money. Obviously you're a better player and have improved, but you can't keep avoiding great spots because something might go wrong. It's fear induced paralysis as a strategy.

GG, you are a nice guy that has a good amount of knowledge about the game. I find it quite unfortunate that every strat thread I enter I feel the need to blast you but I don't see any other choice here. I'm sure your intentions are pure but your conscious decision to allow your game to stagnate is not just hurting yourself but also the players on this forum who look to you for advice.

Raising KK from EP isn't an advanced play. It is completely standard (even the true OMCs of this forum would agree with that). I would argue that open limping is the far more advanced move. New players should really be playing a very tight range from EP and should be doing so with a raise. It really makes every subsequent street easier to play.

Whether you are playing in Florida, or Australia, or Canada or Vegas every beginner should be employing a value-oriented strategy if they want any chance of beating Live Low Stakes. This means betting when you have it and checking when you don't. Limping KK pre is just leaving tons and tons of value on the table. It's bad enough that you would employ this in this particular spot but it's even worse that you would advocate a beginner to do so.

GG, what you fail to recognize is that you are not a beginner. You have been playing this game for quite some time and are strong enough in certain aspects of the game that you are able to play a suboptimal strategy profitably. Most players are far less experienced than you and do not possess the same qualities as you. Not only are they unlikely to play such a strategy profitably but playing a strategy that is not fundamentally sound is likely to have long lasting negative effects on their game.

All I know is that by raising here my most common result is typically 3 or 4 ways to an SPR pot of ~6, OOP, having given each of them IO of ~23:1. This is an extremely difficult spot against known opponents (imo); against unknowns, it'll basically be pure guesswork postflop for stacks. I'll simply leave it up to OP whether he finds this a good spot or not.

The limp/reraise issue is obviously a fairly polarizing one, and we're unlikely to agree.

GgoodluckG

My response to you on this issue as well as your other post in the other thread about playing low pairs (to very small raises) in MP, is just to improve your game where it's not "an extremely difficult spot." If these are "extremely difficult spots," you should work to improve your game rather than avoiding these very profitable spots for winning players.

All tables are not painted in the same brush (although many people do that, "lol @ live 1/3 NL"). Regarding being the first to call a small raise with a small pocket pair, I don't find that a particular tough spot; it's just that my poker environment has changed over the years to the point where I doubt that it is *profitable* (the only thing that matters) at most tables I now play at. I could be wrong, but at best it is extremely marginal, with my guess being position is the only thing that swings it from a loser to a winner.

GimoG

I mean attempting to balance a limping range is unnecessarily complicated. Most players (I mean in general, not pros) don't even try. UTG they just limp something like 22-88, 54s-89s, 75s-T8s, AXs, and raise 99-AA, AJ+, KQ (A lot of popular books suggest ranges like this by the way). Then there's the ones thinking they're getting tricky limp-raising KK+. Players at 1/2 and 1/3 who limp-raise have KK+ way, way too often. If I see an unknown limping half the time and raising half the time, I have a pretty good idea how his range is forked, even if I don't see anything get showed down. He raises pre-flop on 873:heart. It's pretty easy to narrow down his range even before he's placed a bet. That's bad. Same thing if this guy limps and the flop comes KQ4 He has a set or nothing. Even on flops with high, middle, and low cards, I can narrow this guy's range way more easily than someone who would just raise all these hands.

I'm not saying balancing a limping range can't be done, or even that it's too hard for me, but it's unnecessarily complicated for low stakes live games and it's doubtful whether it adds any value.

Also, while most players are droolers, if I'm a regular I'm going to encounter other regulars. Regularly. I'm going to figure out pretty fast if these guys have forked their ranges in exploitable ways, and if they're any good, they will too.

How do I know another player's range? I watch when they limp vs. raise, note their raising amounts, and remember what cards they showed down (or didn't--not showing contains information for players who show selectively). It's not an exact science. Just knowing a player's limping range is rich with low pocket pairs and suited connectors (even if it occasionally has premium hands) gives me a large edge when hand-reading. For instance, if the way this player's been betting leads me to believe he has top pair, an overpair, or a draw, if he raised pre-flop, then I can heavily discount the draw combos, and if he limped, I can heavily discount the top pair and overpair combos, making my optimal decision much easier.

@GG--I don't want to pile on, but what the hell are you raising UTG if not KK? I mean would you be happier raising TT or AQ and getting 4 callers? As for the hand in the OP, it's not really a tough decision, but the correct advice to make the decision easier is basically the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. Raise larger pre-flop, bet the flop, bet more on the turn. He's 100BB deep. If you're that scared of a bad SPR make it $24 pre-flop, you get two callers, and you have an SPR of 3.83. Tadah.

Where do you play anyway? It sounds sometimes like your games are both abnormally passive and abnormally aggressive. You think maybe the player should fold here, which would be true in abnormally passive games. On the other hand, he should limp KK because he could get a bad SPR? The main reason a high SPR is bad for KK is because tricky aggressive players can float you until the river and then shove, and you pretty much have to fold. But do the players in your games really play like this? If they're playing their hands straightforwardly, we shouldn't care that much about SPR. Unless your villains are likely to launch huge multi-street bluffs when they put you on an overpair, you shouldn't worry about it that much.

Yeah, KK UTG against 9 unknowns is not ideal, but raising is still solidly +EV. And how does limping help anyway? If it gets limped around that's a horrible result. Now your hand is next to worthless if you missed the set, and your SPR is still like 7. What's the plan when it gets limped around? Just limp/fold KK if we don't hit the set? And what if we limp-raise and it gets re-raised? It's an unknown. Maybe he just 4-bets AA.

I think you're seeing monsters under the bed, sir.

If your claim is that opening KK utg against unknowns is only for experts, I'm gonna have to disagree.

Well a lot of people will lol @ balancing in live low stakes although there is merit to not being completely face up. That being said I don't think one's actual range is as important as one's perceived range in live low stakes. For instance, you say:

I'm pretty sure everyone that has played a decent amount of Live Low Stakes knows that the limp re-raise means Aces. So, if a random player limp-raises then you are going to assume that he has a monster. His actual range is completely insignificant. This player may have never limp-raised with KK+ in his life. There is absolutely no way for you to know this. He could show a bluff the first time he limp raises and the next time you will still include KK+ in his range (actually, the fact that he showed a bluff makes it more likely he does this for value next time). This player's range may look polarized to you but in reality it is not all. It's completely weak but because of population tendencies it looks quite strong and/or polarized.

Of course, if you know this player's range is weak then you are going to adjust accordingly. However, that doesn't mean that the average live low stakes villain will adjust. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "I know you are full of crap but..."

Yes of course but my point is really that the sample size you play with anyone is quite insignificant. We're talking 30 hands per hour, about 3hands from each position an hour. If they are not a huge fish many of these EP hands will be folded pre. Many of the hands will not go to showdown. At 1/2 and 1/3 there are so many players that you and another player could play full time at a casino and still rarely play at the same table. (and one's range is not necessarily static..ie one can adjust the way they play certain hands from year to year, month to month, session to session, or even hand to hand).

My guess is that TT is a limp (try to hit a set) and AQ is a fold.




He is a slightly better version of all the terrible rec players that want to avoid variance at all cost. In this instance he wants to limp with KK because it's just "one pair" when in fact at our decision point it is the 2nd strongest hand possible and not going for value is criminal.

As I've mentioned in other threads regarding my preflop raising range: when stacks get deep and players are non-ABC, I have a 0% raising range in EP. I typically play at very loose (to even "big" raises, and can even get lol action on face-up limp/reraises), decently aggro tables, where not everyone is a face-up ABC non-bluffer. Limp-reraising is printing money at these types of tables (especially compared to opening). Obviously if stacks/players/conditions etc. change, then I lean to more ABC.

GimoG

Without wanting to dig up old discussions, but this kk thing really reminds me of the old tournament question,if it's first hand on your bb, and 8players go all in before it gets to you, should you call with AA? The answer is a resounding yes from an equity point of view, but the argument was always about skill against the field....blah blah blah......
Raising kk in EP is ALWAYS, unquestionably ALWAYS +eV.... If your getting 8 callers always then you should raise more....if your still getting 8 callers you should just go all in.....it might be high variance but it is ALWAYS +eV....
Regardless of the subsequent action raising kk is always profitable, you are well ahead of all continuing ranges and will have the largest % of equity vs any selection of random hands that does not include aa.... In the simplest terms in poker raise when your ahead fold when your behind..... Obviously what is discussed on this site is the grey areas were you just don't know.....kk pre-flop you do know more than 99% of the time you are ahead,

Limping kk without the express assumption you will be raised and can then 4! Is awful play.... Sorry, it just is and is some of the worst advice that could be given to a new player.

As I say, we're not going to agree on this.

All we can do is state our viewpoints and then leave it up to the OP to take from it what they will.

GgoodluckG