Been taking stabs at 2/5 in live games in South Florida. This was a hand from Saturday night. This table had been very active, raises pre pretty much every single hand.

Hero: 40ish male, aware of his tight image, assumes most of the table is aware of said image. I haven't played many hands lately EXCEPT the hand previous to this one where I 4-bet pre to $140 against Villain1, then shoved the flop and took it down. Hero has ~$500

Villain1: White male, possibly European, Farha-style cigarette hanging out of his mouth. This is his second hand at the table -- he lost $140 of his stack on the previous hand to me. He's the table short stack under $200.

Villain 2: 40-50 years old, seems like a grinder. Definitely has been involved in a bunch of hands, definitely plays with a wide range but I never saw him bluff or play out of line. Claims to play 5/10 when he's in Vegas but he's playing 2/5 in Florida. He has ~$800

UTG straddles. He's been raising every single straddle.

Hero UTG+1 has QdQc. I decide to limp knowing a raise will come and I can play to my image. Villain2 is to my direct left and he limps, Villain1 is two to Villain2's left and raises to $30. Folds to the straddler who calls $30. I continue to underrep and just call. Villain2 calls.

Flop is Jc8s5c

Straddler checks, I check, Villain2 bets $30, Villain1 is all-in for $90, straddler folds, I shove, which is counted out to $495. Villain2 tanks, then throws in a chip for the call.

Turn Kh, river 8s

Villain1 turns over AQhh, Villain2 turns over KJo for turned two pair and the win.

Feel free to flame me for underrepping, I understand why you'd think it's wrong. If I had raised pre I probably could have folded out both villains and taken down a small pot, but I knew what my image was and if I came out 4-betting again I wouldn't get much action. Only the newcomer Villain1 to the table was unaware of my image. MAYBE I could have induced a shove from him preflop, I just think it would have looked suspicious.

As it turned out, my flop shove must have looked suspicious to Villain2, hence the call. I know poker is all about getting it in with the best of it, but it sucks when the cards don't go your way.

Thanks for your comments.

You got your money in as a pretty massive fav against the guys KJ and AQ, so i dont see why youre looking to get flamed just cause he sucked out on you. This seems resultsoriented wich is not very constructive at all. The results doesent matter: all that matter is that you make good decisions and try to get your money in good. Getting your money in good doesent mean winning the pot 100 percent of the time though.

What is debateable is your limp-call preflop with QQ in what seems to be a good actiony game I would be limp-reraising here a healthy portion of the time, but the reasoning is not to get villains to fold pre. The purpose is to raise for value and building a bigger pot with a premium hand wich crushes their ranges.

Nothing you said about villain 2 makes me think he's a grinder. Most likely a reg fish tbh.

I think your limp is good but you have to limp/rr. You don't want to play this multiway and with your stack size we can most likely get HU with a super low SPR which is a perfect scenerio for you. Make it 110.

Limping and then limp/calling is so bad with this hand and lineup

Pretty much this. The fact that he is talking about playing 5/10 when he is in Vegas means absolutely nothing, and by my experience its only empty words/ a lie a bunch of the time. If anything, it tells me that he (for some reason) have the need to talk a big game.

Also playing too many hands is one of the most classic signs of a regfish or breakeven/losing player.

OK, so I think I have a leak of playing AA-JJ too passively when I feel like I'm already pegged as a tightwad at the table. It's as if I want to feed the image of me being tight. I tend to not even bother with this in a typical 1/2 game but in 2/5 I've found myself doing it too much. I need to either raise from the jump or do the re-raise.

So I've thought about how the hand would play out if I had limp/raised pre. Villain1 would have made it $30, straddler would have come along for $30 and I prob would have gone like $140. Would Villain2 have cold-called two raises with KJo? I doubt it. Would Villain1 have shoved his stack with AQhh? Yeah, probably. Straddler prob would have folded. Better result.

Yeah I walked out of the casino feeling good about getting it in as a 75% fav. That's all you can do, right?

Amusing the way OP spends several paragraphs talking about how there's no way he can possibly ever get paid because the table is so keenly aware of his tight image, then he jams 400 into a dry side pot and gets snapped off by TP2K.

You're being results oriented in a different way though, what actually happened is that you let other players see a flop cheaply and got bailed out by hitting one of the best possible flops for your hand and having another player decide to get it in with top pair decent kicker. If the flop had been Axx or Kxx or a player had had 88 or 55 you would be right now deciding you had misplayed the hand.

If you think your image is overly tight the answer is not to meekly dial back your play with QQ, but to ramp up your aggression with lesser hands because everyone is going to fold. Except you don't bluff 3b and 4b, because you know in reality they're loose and will call. Right? My guess is this problem with your image only exists in your head.

You are still focusing on the result, wich may be another leak you have. Think about ranges overall, not how this particular hand would have played out of you had reraised pre. You dont know if he would have folded KJ pre (and of course you dont want him to fold KJ pre even though he binked a 5 outer on you for stacks this time), he stacked off with it postflop with a one pair hand in single raised pot for like 100 beebers so who knows what else he is capable of right?

I also would encourage you to work on the flawed logic about your tight image and that people wont call you with worse. Majority of my hours comes from actiony loose gambooly games- where as a result of that my adjustment is to tighten up my prefloprange and abuse these guys with a big rangeadvantage. I am used to having a rocktight image- still i got paid off when i have the nutz over and over and over again.

Let me tell you one thing: i cant count how many times i havent played a hand for 2 hours, guy raises with 99 or AQ and gets 2 calls- i pick up KK/AA in late position and bomb 3 bets pre seing villain instacall my raise and losing his whole stack on fav flops for my hand.

1) People generally hate folding, abuse that leak like its the last thing you do on this planet

2) People are generally most focused on themself and their own cards looking to see a flop, the vast majority will give you action anyway regardless of your nitty image. Majority of the playerpool at these stakes dont notice your nitty image, and the ones that do notice often arent capable of doing anything about it. I find it to be the oposite actually. The few that are talking about my nitty image at the table are the guys that pays me off the most money long term in big pots.

3) Many players also level themself thinking that you can be out of line or limp/reraise with hands like KQ or 66-77 type of hands.

4) Just give your opponents a chance to make a massive mistake. If you dont limp/reraise, you dont give them that chance. Sometimes you dont know who wants to go for a ride before you start the car right.

Bingo.

Yeah I think you guys might be right. Should I just not give a damn about my own image anymore?

If every hand is going to showdown and your opponents are chasing and being stations then you just wait for the value hands and bet them big.

In games like this, it's obvious your opponents aren't paying attention to image and are just playing their cards. Super profitable game.

I woudnt take it that far. Image matters in a lot of spots and in different ways. But its important to sort out in wich spots/situations it matters, as well as were it dont matter.

My suggestion is that you dont overadjust to something that most likely really isnt there. Sure, to keep us on track with this limp/reraise scenario: IF and WHEN people start folding to you repeatedly not giving you action, then you can start working on some counterstrategies/new adjustments.

But until that happen, my two cents to you is that youre not trying to overadjust by trying to fix a problem that may not excist.

A million times this.

Also why did you post this hh? Were you looking for input on your preflop decision?

Your first limp was ok, but limp/calling is attrocious.

Yeah it was more about the act of slowplaying QQ on three separate occasions than anything else. And maybe to get some input on the flop shove.

It's interesting that you're so worried about your tight image, yet you think villain1 would have shoved on you with AQs after you limp-reraised to $140. If your tight image scares your opponents so much then wouldn't that villain fold?

But that's why a tight image doesn't mean as much as you think. Other players might tighten up a little against you, but people tend to fall in love with their hand and not want to fold.

This isn't to hate on you at all and I'm guessing here, but based on your passive play in this hand, I suspect that one reason having a tight image bothers you so much is you're probably too passive in other spots when you shouldn't be. As a result, when you do make an aggressive play and other players react to it, it bothers you because their opinion that "You must have it" when you make an aggressive move is right.

I wouldn't go that far... there's a few interrelated points here:

Image only matters against thinking players who adjust. Against a ton of players your image won't matter at all. It might be different if you played into a stereotype, ie you were 80 rather than 40.

Image should only matter as a marginal factor. If it's the major reason you're playing a certain way, then you're probably playing badly. In the unlikely event your image is really so bad that it justifies huge alterations in your play, then you should already have been correcting it (see point 4).

Your image probably isn't as bad as you think. Frequently players use "but my image" as an excuse for MUBSy thinking and the fear that other players will know what they have. Typically when they have a value hand it's "but I can't bet and raise aggressively, I never do that so they'll know what I have" and when you suggest bluffing it's "I'm not going to bluff raise, are you crazy, these guys are all super loose!". Sound familiar? In this hand in particular, a guy called a massive raise from you with TP2K in a dry side pot, this is good evidence that your image is not a factor.

You pretty much can't compensate for a tight image when you have a good hand. There are old nits where I play who actually do have serious image problems. They only raise AA and KK preflop and always have the goods when betting postflop. The thing is, if you drop me into their shoes just as they get dealt AA, there's not a lot I can do. When I start trying to get value everyone will suspect me of having a good hand and I do. The way I can take advantage of and correct their image is by bluffing when I actually don't have a hand.

That villain was playing his second hand at the table. He had no idea about how I was.


One of my biggest problems has been being aggressive. I can do it easily when I have a big hand of course, and I can do it when I know I'm playing against a confirmed weak player. Doing so on a regular basis, particularly at the 2/5 level, has been tough. One reason: the money means more to me.

After a few losing sessions at 2/5, I've decided to gear back down to 1/2 and try to apply some of the lessons learned at 2/5 to that game. At 1/2 I don't have to sweat my own table image, I can focus on the players there and the bets are at a price I'm more comfortable with. Once I can book a few strong wins at 1/2 and prove to myself that I can be aggressive in all situations, I'll give 2/5 another shot.

Limping is fine when you expect someone else to raise, but you should be reraising in this spot pretty much every time. The original preflop raiser is short stacked so you should be happy to go all in preflop with him, the straddler you describe as loose so he has a very wide range, V2 merely over limped so he is likely wide as well. QQ is a vulnerable hand, if you want to slowplay in a spot like this, you're better off doing it with AA.

On the flop, QQ (and AJ) is probably the weakest hand a tight player would pot size shove vs a raise and an all in, so you aren't really underepped at this point. People just get sticky sometimes and call down light. People care more about their cards than your image, V2's call here proves it.

This.

you got your money in as a big favorite, but the fundamentals of this hand are wrong. You don't want to limp call QQ - you want to raise for value. You generally should never limp - unless you are in the like the CO or BTN and the whole table limps and you look down at something like pocket 2's.

I have limped UTG with hands like 44 and 55 - but only if the table is super passive, and rarely anyone will raise behind - other wise I just fold them.

Raising pre makes you much harder to play against. The KJ guy is pretty bad, and your read on him is off - he looks like a fish. Just reload and keep trying. This table looks like a gold mine.

I tend to do the same thing with QQ preflop for whatever reason worrying that people wont call or i'm being tricky setting them up, and I've learned pretty quickly that once QQ goes into a multi-way pot it seems to always become a set mining experience.

Puts you in a bad spot on the majority of flops and even if its a mostly good flop like this one you're never far ahead and sometimes very far behind.

whoever thinks limping this preflop is good is entirely wrong ... if you know a raise is coming, then the only acceptable thing to do is to limp/reraise to isolate the raiser.

this hand was awful on every street.