I'm looking to get into decent shape to grind limit 6max on stars and i'm fairly sure i have a ton of leaks so in an effort to plug few of them i'm asking help of the forum.

So here is the first question. In a typical low limit 6 max table (so rake is an actual issue) what is the weakest hand i can defend my blinds with getting more than 5-1 either closing the action or calling from sb when bb is relatively passive?

When times were good and tables were a lot looser and generally less aggressive i think you could get away calling with 2 wheel cards or 3 high cards.
After a while when getting 7-1 was no longer the norm and the player pool made less mistakes post flop i adjusted to 2 wheel cards with a suit and 3 high cards with either a suited king or an adjacent middle card.
Now i'm thinking maybe i should tighten a bit more for my own sanity and to adjust to slightly tougher tables (and being out of shape).

So what are your thoughts. Where should i draw the line.

Oh and you can assume you're roughly the second or third best player at the table.

I don't play online, but this sounds way too tight to me. I think I defend about 90% in the BB to a single raise. I'm pretty confident this is about right in heads-up or 3-way pots, though I admit it might be a bit too loose with 4 or more players in the pot.

For me it's not really a matter of specific cards.

In the games in which I play, I generally defend my big blind, and doing that generally deters my normal opponents from trying to steal my big blind or playing overly aggressively against me on the first betting round when I have posted the big blind. If I find myself at a table where that tactic doesn't work well, then I ease up on defending my big blind. A lot depends on the skill of my opponents. And a lot depends on the position of the aggressor, on how the other opponents have responded, and whether or not my action closes out the betting.

I think play has generally improved over the last several years. But I don't think that necessarily suggests playing any tighter from the big blind.

Buzz

I agree defending HU much wider and that also ends up being much more opponent dependent. What i'm mostly interested in is general lines in multiway pots out of position (you might have relative position to action though).

Online play in general is tighter and more aggressive than b&m play (for a variety of reasons).

Playing in stars in the last 10 years we've lost more than half the player base over night twice. Online in general that and a few other things have made the play much tighter and aggressive. Also the player base on average makes much less fundamental post flop mistakes partly by accident (plays they would likely make in a looser environment or full ring is slightly less wrong in tighter 6 max games).

I also wouldn't mind lowering negative variance a bit, but what i'm mostly concerned is being able to realize enough of my preflop equity to overcome rake, weak position and some inherent weaknesses of hands that in general don't flop very strong and/or all that action heavy (2-3 high cards flop issue mostly).

I did some stove sims with the type of hands i mentioned and it would seem i'm fine if i can realize 2/3-4/5 of my preflop equity in 3-4 handed pots assuming i make less post flop mistakes than the opposition to cover the rake and turn these hands in to marginally positive.

I also found out (most likely again) that hands like 246J have less stove equity than 249J type of hands against most ranges in 3-4 way pots. I still assume you can make more money with 246J and i would be much more likely to fold 249J preflop but i might be wrong. Both hands btw are in the 84th percentile of hands assuming no suits in 3-way pots (according to pokerstove).

I think it's great advice that you don't want to do anything that will -encourage- opponents to attack you blinds in a limit game. So you don't want to establish a reputation of someone who folds their blind too easily.

Really the only time I will ever show a hand I am folding is in LHE and I am facing a heads-up raise in the BB with a -terrible- hand (e.g 52o). I will show this hand as I am folding it because I want to get it into my opponent's head that I am only folding the absolute bottom of my range, and defending even mediocre hands. I -will- fold some mediocre hands, but I certainly will not show them.

Heads-up, any hand with 3 low cards will have pretty decent equity even against a strong range because it will often make the only low when your opponent gets counterfeit. (And it will often make an emergency high 2-pair when your opponet makes nut low.)

But as the number of opponents increases, the chance of an emergency low holding up declines more rapidly than your pot odds improve.

Probably too loose? I can't tell myself to defend 54J9ss MW, just can't see any playability.

assuming we are good post-flop, i dont really think i can fold 459Jss to a single raise.

i'm also not sure why you find that hand unplayable.

it's kind of situational and not completely based on pot odds. a hand like 4678ss would be a steal on the btn (as long as the sb isn't cc'ing or 3betting too much), and a defend hu vs sb. but i would fold it getting 3:1, 5:1, or 7:1 oop. it's important to think of how hands can play post flop, and many of them (like this one) can't do much, but c/c which means they're loaded with rio issues. and you also need to base your defending range on what type of opponent you have. a hand like 62TT vs a loose btn open would be a snap defend for me, but if it was an open with a cold-call, i would fold it despite getting a better price.

i would defend 4678 hu if the loose opener is relatively passive post flop though.

OP i think you might be better served by posting a list of hands you have had in BB where the decision isn't obvious and seeing what other posters would recommend

for me the weakest hands i would typically play from BB to one raise and a call from the SB would be something like

JT7[2-5]
679T
689Jss
J876ss
J985
88[99-JJ]
QJ87ss

note: i wouldn't always defend with these hands, nor am i recommending it as a common practice, but these are the kind of hands
you should expect LAG players to defend with occaisonally

the profitability of these type of hands depends greatly on strong post-flop decision making and individual table dynamics

folding 459Jss is generally ok, you don't really need to defend with it regularly unless its 4-handed or smaller

except in BB vs SB headsup when folding would be a huge mistake


i don't disagree that its playable, i just feel folding it to a good player is reasonable because the cost of its playability issues OOP can easily exceed the equity we forfeit to defend

I'm mostly looking for a GTOesque line for defending blinds in multiway pots that i could adjust as needed. I do usually defend with about the half the hands in your list.

I have no idea how to say this without sounding like a dick, but there are infinitely less situations when you just answer the question in the OP. It's not all directed at you and obv all posts are appreciated. But the original question from OP...

...In a typical low limit 6 max table (so rake is an actual issue) what is the weakest hand i can defend my blinds with getting more than 5-1 either closing the action or calling from sb when bb is relatively passive?

...kinda cuts out all of the HU hands from the equation.

This seems like an easy defense to me head-up.

You will only rarely get scooped if the board is low; you will either make two-pair or a straight for high, or you will make an emergency low when a couple A/2/3's hit and you opponent gets counterfeit.

You obviously have almost no equity on high board, but this you can either get away from cheaply, or potentially bluff at depending on what range your opponent tends to open with.

I can appreciate your desire to refocus attention on the question in your OP, but your question isn't as precisely specified as you seem to think.

Taking the question about a minimum literally, I'd need a situation like the following to make my range as wide as possible: Button (loose crazy player, would open any four without trips here, terrible postflop) open-raises; SB (loose agg player, would play any four without trips here and 3-bet top 50%, so range of 51% to 95%) calls. Now I'd defend almost everything, at least as weak as J982. I figure top two, occasionally even top pair, is often going to win high; my opponents sometimes won't have low cards even when low makes; and I can play even a terrible flush or straight as though it's the second-nuts.

I'd fold J982 because I'm still OOP with a hand that has the same weaknesses as before but can't make any flush. Even bad flush draws are good in this spot because they give me a reason to stay in and catch other stuff like emergency lows or running two pair.

Not sure about QJ92. Now I can't make even a terrible low, which is a huge loss against two folks who might not have low or might counterfeit easily. But I think the QJ9 straights might make it playable even with a dangler.

QJ92? Eh.... not sure. I don't think I'm missing much to let myself get robbed here.

Of note: The loose SB here will help me "play sheriff" and keep the button from profitably robbing me blind. Of course, the button's not going to stop anyway given the read so that's more a theoretical issue than a practical one.

There are a million other hand shapes and I've only answered for one I made up. That's another imprecision with the OP, but I suspect you know that.

Yea i prolly should have though about this for a minimal amount of time and used a word like "typical" in the OP. Oh yea i did.

Point taken about "typical" players. I don't know how typical players play in these games.

Meanwhile, you've missed at least part of the point: THERE IS NO USEFUL MEANING OF "TYPICAL" PREFLOP ACTION. Sometimes it folds to to the button who opens. Sometimes UTG opens. In a tight game, the former might be strictly typical (i.e., the mode of the distribution), but so what? They're totally different situations.

You'll get better answers in the future if you work on being less hostile when people try to give you a constructive answer. (I've found that reflecting on why things that bother me bother me has been a great help to my game, let alone other areas of life.) I wish you well in finding people both able and willing to produce answers up to your standard. Good day.

yeah, i'd also defend it against a just plain wide opening range too. i do think defending this hand against a tight open (like a 6max utg open from a competent player) is a mistake though.

Playing against opponents who are about as skilled as you, I don't think you can overcome rake over the long haul. Of course you're going to have some lucky sessions where you do manage to show a profit from the blinds, but overall, since you're out of position and since you're playing many hands you wouldn't voluntarily play, I think you're destined to show a loss when you post the blinds.

Interesting.

I haven't used Poker Stove and don't know much about it. I think both 246J and 249J are poor starting hands, but I like 246J better than 249J.

As I recall, that's about how ProPokerTools rates the rainbow versions too.

Buzz

This thread was in a no-win scenario for me few posts ago where i either accept it's mostly noise or i piss off someone in an effort to get some signal out of it. If i had more time i could have explained more thoroughly that when only the table is described broadly without specifying any of the individual player characteristics it is safe to assume they are unknown and that alone cuts out the possible scenarios from a "million" to about a 100. Out of those 100 situations about 20 will result in ranges that differ enough to be worth mentioned (for example all the raised 5 way pots where you're on the BB are roughly the same) and about 10 of those differ enough to be hitting a break point that causes a need for adjustment in our minimum calling range.

There are a lot of questions where the correct answer is it depends but this wasn't one of them. It's a broad question obv. but all of the variables are "known" (guestimates at best but still equitable). A month ago you wondered in a 2-4 thread regarding some middling wrap hand what is the amount of preflop equity you can burn while out of position playing a hand with RIO issues and still show profit with the hand. Well this thread is mostly about the same. All of the the hands discussed would be trivial calls if you could get all-in preflop but when you can't it becomes an issue of how much equity you can burn and still show a profit.

I mentioned rake previously because it does effect GTO lines when moving from low limits to mid and high limits. In practice the ability to better exploit opponents at the lower limits is likely to cover difference in relative rake (using exploitative lines) though i'm not all that sure you can induce all that many mistakes from laggy opponents while playing weak hands from out off position (bottom of our call range is still more likely to be dominated than to dominate and we still have to fold quite a bit of our equity).

Monikrazy brought up the traditional poster children of the hands with RIO issues, the mid oriented wraps that are quite playable HU (blind vs blind) and some of them likely have enough value to play in 3-way pots before they start heavily declining. I have no idea where to draw the line with them against unknown opponents, but i do assume you can still call with some of the dbl suited versions of the hands even in 4-way pots.

This isn't likely to make you less pissed off, but in the OP only the game is described as typical and that in no way equates to typical preflop action (because such thing neither exists nor have i ever claimed such thing). Even the players are not claimed to be typical, merely the composition of the table. In an effort to make a broad subject more manageable you cut out the extremes of the spectrum. Since none of the the player characteristics are specified they are generally assumed unknown, but regardless of that we can still assume that players widen their ranges as their position improves (fairly safe assumption) and that creates a few additional situations in different 3 way pots and to a lesser degree in 4 way pots.

Since the game is described as typical in the question it simply cuts out games that are tighter/looser and/or more passive/aggressive than a typical game relative to the limit.

Showing a profit from decision point. When you count the the cost of blinds as a voluntary action were just trying to lose the least amount of money. And it's also safe to assume that i simply won't ever sit in table where i'm just slowly losing to rake for extended periods of the time. Non bum hunting courtesy of the past will have me starting or keeping a game going for a short while even though there is no immediate reason for me sit in that game, but in general it's safe to assume that there is profit related reason for me to sit in any game.

With a hand like 4678 you can still call even against tight ranges.

This is what you're roughly getting...

ProPokerTools Omaha Hi/Lo Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Scoops	Wins Hi	Ties Hi	Wins Lo	Ties Lo
4c 6d 7h 8h	42.58%	151,383	276,916	1,747	131,883	3,679
10%	57.42%	239,422	321,337	1,747	181,368	3,679

...and you're getting 3,5-1 to call so you're only in trouble if you end burning more than 40% of your pf equity and that's fairly hard to do with this hand since...

ProPokerTools Omaha Hi/Lo Simulation

14,104,000 trials (Exhaustive)

board: 2 5 K

Hand	Pot equity	Scoops	Wins Hi	Ties Hi	Wins Lo	Ties Lo
4c 6d 7h 8h	33.32%	1,964,676	4,480,910	55,216	4,859,681	61,159
10%	66.68%	6,613,304	9,567,874	55,216	4,737,226	61,159

...is roughly the worst low oriented flop and...

ProPokerTools Omaha Hi/Lo Simulation

14,850,200 trials (Exhaustive)

board: Q 4 K

Hand	Pot equity	Scoops	Wins Hi	Ties Hi	Wins Lo	Ties Lo
4c 6d 7h 8h	34.39%	3,791,090	5,401,100	20,651	1,379,412	3,348
10%	65.61%	8,424,305	9,428,449	20,651	2,383,976	3,348

...the worst high oriented flop where you would have some trouble making the right play (and where the turn play is not completely automatic). Rest of the flops you either hit so hard that you will see the hand till the end (either bluffing after missing a 20 outer or calling with a weak hand that had enough equity to be on the river through out the hand) or you wiff the flop so hard that you have no trouble folding knowing that you're giving up almost no equity since you're very close to the bottom of your range regarding high card strength (or you can use some part of those hands for bluffs)...

...how you exactly play the hand depends on your opponent and to a degree how you play the rest of your range, but i doubt there is anything your opponent can unilaterally do that would make the hand unprofitable to play.