Quote:
Originally Posted by Avaritia
I agree that there is no problem in pots going 18 ways when we open pp and the dynamics of live play (high vpip, no 3bet) are great for pps.
Now my questions for you specifically:
1) do you open them 3x?
2) if so, do you open AA 3x? AKo 3x?
3) do you have an open limping game at all?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Avaritia
Thamel, one of what will likely be several follow ups.
Hypothetically speaking, if you knew that a table's calling ranges were totally inelastic to a range of 3x-5x raises (thus beginning to fold more at 6x), and that they did not associate your raise size with hand strength, and their 3bet frequency remained the same...what would you open AA, AKo, and 55 at? (Assume 60bb-150bb even mix starting stacks)
Because for me personally, in this scenario, it would be $25, $30, $15.
I've thought a ton about this, more than any single poker concept. A ton.
A bit of history:
I started my poker career with "maxing out" my open sizes with my value hands. If I thought I could get away with a $30 open I would (and often did) ((did meaning I'd still get 2-3 callers)). I'd open limp small pps. This first 1000 hours was the highest win rate of my poker career. (Alot of other factors and variance in here to be sure, but still something to be noted)
My next 1000 hours, I began learning more. I started opening all of my range and doing it smaller, mostly 4x. In this time I met the best live player I've ever seen, who opened 3x. Even at table where standard open was $40. I never truly understood what he was doing but please trust I'm not taken in lightly but this kid was amazing to watch.
I started opening 3x more often and sort of saw some of the benefits. However, I'm not sure ignoring a tables inelastic calling range makes up for post flop maneuverability (biggest advantage I see to 3x). I mean if you can announce to the table you have aces, raise $25, and get 6 calls, shouldn't you?
I've also seen a fairly large downswing in this second 1000 hour period.
Thoughts?
Quote:
Originally Posted by aoFrantic
Ava, the key is to be adaptable. Basically every question in this thread can be answered with "it depends."
OP, you can open 22 utg. You shouldn't always, but you definitely can. You should also never have "no reads." Even if I've traveled out of country, am playing in a place where I don't speak the native language I have reads before I play a hand.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Avaritia
I understand this. It's really hard to convey my thoughts in posts here but let me just say I think this is the single most important area of study regarding live poker and most gloss over it. I tried to give a toy game with dependent criteria. In a game where you can open $40 and get called by half the table with stacks ranging from $200-$600, what do you open AA/AKo/55.
And would you adopt a limping strategy.
And, why is the best player I've ever seen play poker opening $15 in this game.
First off, I don't post much here, so take this TL;DR post with a grain of salt. There are very few prolific posters on here that I tend to agree with. Avarita happens to be one of them for the most part. Not that the others aren't valid, just that they play a different game or in different games than me.
I am a MAWG rec player. I don't rely on poker for income, but I play a lot. I have played in 9 different casinos and untold underground games this year. What I am advocating here just doesn't work well at 1/2 and 1/3. Not because of the number of BB's but because of the percentage of our stack we must commit relative to the average stack size at the table.
For example: At 1/2 with 100 BB's - $200 effective stacks, if the standard open is ~$10-$12, we can't really have a wide opening range in EP because we have to commit too large of a percentage of our stack. Same thing at 1/3 when the standard open is ~$15=$18. If we try to 3X open from early position at a full ring table to $6 or $9 in these games, the relative bet size just isn't big enough to discourage a squeeze from later positions, and our stack depth is too shallow to make a call profitable.
In these games, big card value goes way up, so you sit around waiting for them and then figure out how to get the most money in preflop and the rest in on the flop or turn. No real secret here I don't think. Me personally, I would rather heat up a sewing needle with a cigarette lighter and slowly jab it into my eye than play in these games.
But when we move up to 2/5 with $500+ effective stacks, a 3X raise with our entire range pre-flop becomes much more enticing. This does 2 things.
1) It allows us to play a very wide range of hands in EP. And by EP, I mean 1st into the pot. 22+, AXs wheels, A10s+, SCs and middle suited 1 gappers. Odd by some standards, I don't like A6s-A9s as they generally only play post-flop for their flush value and don't like A10-AQ off or any other non-suited broadways. We are trying to hit flops that have the potential to make the NUTZ, not hands that have top pair or two pair value.
2) We expect and WANT these hands to go multi-way to the flop. One of my biggest peeves is 'raise big pre so you only get 1 or 2 callers.' Why? So you can get it HU and C-Bet the 70% of the time you miss the flop and get a fold and win a tiny pot? By that logic, when you flop big and value bet, they fold and you win a tiny pot as well. What do you do when you C-Bet air and get called? Is he floating? On a draw? Do we barrel turn? c/f? What if turn goes c/c? Do we barrel river? Beats the hell out of me, but all options seem bad, especially leveraging a good chunk of our stack against unknown fold equity.
The 3X Raise: Ideally we want to get to the flop with an SPR of 10+. When we raise to $15 and get 4 callers, the pot on the flop is $75 and we need the short stacks to be at least $500 and hopefully most of the table is closer to $1000. Weak/Tight play anyone? When we whiff the flop, 'most' of the time we simply c/f. Somebody hit that flop, it wasn't us, and you have little to no fold equity against multiple opponents.
If we are, and we should be, playing a max stack of $1000, we can do this 10 times in a row, committing a paltry 1.5% of our stack pre, and only dwindling our stack by 15%. This is obviously a generalization and rarely happens in game. I think a lot of people who simply fold these hands pre will be surprised at how often they connect with the flop and you can continue.
What do we do when we connect with the flop. Well a lot depends on the players in the hand. (More on this later) Play accordingly. If they are mostly calling stations, bet for value when we have a made hand, and c/call when we have a drawing hand. Most of the hands we are going to play don't start to really shine until the turn or river. Remember, we don't really semi-bluff because we are up against multiple opponents and have little fold equity.
And that is a good thing. By having little fold equity, when we get to later streets in the hand, a lot of opponents feel committed. YES! You can get paid when the front door flush comes in. YES! You can get paid when the obvious straight hits. Why? Because we raised pre from early position. Most players still are going to put you on big cards or LOL AK and are going to look you up.
What happens when and if players begin to adjust and fold? Ahhhh... remember our Weak/Tight flop strategy? Shift gears and c/call favorable boards and bet them off of their hand on the turn or river. Again, this is player dependent. If we find that players are playing fit or fold against us, then it's bombs away. Remember, one of our biggest weapons is that we are deep stacked and we can put our opponents stack at risk at anytime. Even if it means over betting the current pot size. Relative bet size and 'oh crap how much of my stack am I going to lose if I make this call and I am wrong' are HUGE in our opponents mind.
Our image is also very, very, very important. Typically since we are playing so many pots, our image is going to be bad lag, weak or just plain bad early on. But when big money starts going in on later streets and we show up with the winning hand over and over, and we now have a large stack, people start staying out of our way and we can open up our post-flop game.
'That's all well and good you idiot, but what do we do with this range in late position?' That is one of the other side benefits of this strategy. A lot of times and I mean a lot, the table will adjust and start betting smaller pre, BUT only with hands they may have otherwise limped. They can't help themselves and still bet the top of their range with a more standard bet size. Do you realize how insanely easy this is to play against? 'Hey dude, thanks for telling me you have JJ+, AKs. Really appreciate it.' I fold.
What about the times we 3X with our premiums in EP and have to c/f the flop? Aren't we giving up to much EV? Yes, we are is the simple answer. I have no hard numbers to back this up, but I think we more than make up for that when we get premiums in LP. When the table is 3X with multiple callers, when we get premiums we can 3bet larger. The original raiseer usually isn't good enough to fold because that is weak, and we get the pot HU or at most 3-way with a huge equity advantage. Even if one or both opponents fold on the flop, we still make more in dead money than we do when we raise big from EP.
With the rest of our range, we simply call and play the pot in position. If we can play these hands well in EP, it should be a no-brainer how to play them in LP.
Blind Play: Here is where I am still fiddling around about what to do. Right now I fold everything except premiums and raise that range. Occasionally I will call with AXs but don't feel like this is all that good. Raising and getting paid from EP and calling and trying to get paid out of the blinds are 2 very different things. The old 'big blind special huh?' comes into play too often. Doesn't really bother me to just fold most of my range and move on.
Reads at the Table: Another one of my biggest peeves. When a thread starts with 'Just sat down, so no reads, how do I play XY hand?' I have no clue and I doubt anyone else does either. Even worse is 'Only been at the table for about an hour, so no real reads.' Put down your phone, turn off the i-pad and jerk the buds out of your ears and start paying attention!
Luckily I play in a lot of games where I have history with most of the players. I know their game. They think they know mine. They play mostly the same game. I like to think I play a different game against them based on what my image at the time is. For the most part it's easy game.
In an unknown game with a 200 BB buy in, I get $2000 at the cage. $300 green and the rest in black. When I sit down I put the greens and 2 blacks in play for a total of $500. I call this my test balloon. Don't really care if I lose it, but would obviously like to run it up. But my first half-hour to hour at the table is mostly spent FOLDING. Listen to the table talk, what is the average pre-flop sizing, how many callers, what range are they playing, how many pots are they playing, are they calling down light or playing fit or fold? etc..... Why in hell anyone would sit down and start playing 'their' game without knowing anything about the other players is beyond me.
Once we get a feel for the table, we can begin to put our stack to work. See if our reads on the other players are correct. Put them to the test based on our reads. And most importantly we can see how the table is going to react to our $15 raises. Hopefully they go multi-way and the only time they get 3-bet is when they have premiums and we can exploitively fold. Once we feel comfortable, we can top up to the max at the table and have some fun.
I'm sure that I here, 'Hey, come try that BS at my table and I'll 3-Bet you with impunity.' Well good for you, but in my experience it just doesn't happen that often. And when it does, I'll start 4-Betting you with impunity.
And no, we aren't playing bingo in a bloated pot. There are tons of hands we are still folding. Early on, maybe, but once the game progresses we can make more imaginative plays. We are generally raising pre-flop and still have initiative in the hand, especially when we start draining our opponents stacks our fold equity grows accordingly.
Just my two cents and hopefully someone else might get something out of this style of play. It won't work short stacked or short handed or in most 1/2 or 1/3 games. But, I have had great results with it at 2/5 deep stacked games. YMMV