This might seem way out in left field, but I have been experimenting with a strategy where instead of open raising the sb I always open-complete and never limp-reraise. I will fold like the bottom 10% of my range, but thats it. Flame away.

I have very little input, however I would be very interested in hearing how this goes for you.

Personally, I think it could be correct against some BBs, but is horribly bad against others.

Yea that strategy maybe good against tough aggressive players. Obviously against fit or fold flop players, players who fold the BB sometimes preflop, or simply bad players, is not that good.

It keeps your range totally hidden, the only problem being you let the BB choose if he wants to play a 2SB pot or a 4SB pot, so you lose value with a lot of your hands, especially the premium ones where you can never play a 6SB or 8SB pot...

And it's dependant too on your flop strategy. I suppose you have some "donk" bets, because if not you lose even more value against observant opponents who check behind flop.

Neat! I was just thinking about this earlier.

Playing the SB with a tough BB sucks. I also like not limp reraising preflop and instead opting to k/r a ton of flops.

Should at least give fits to the guys who just pound away.

I think this has a lot more merit in 15/30 than 1/2 structures. It's interesting against guys who pound away, I don't think it's good against more passive players. I'm pretty sure it's still correct for the BB to raise a ton of hands, since even with some better hands in your range you will still miss the flop a lot and be a bunch of tough spots postflop.

I wonder if you cant stay balanced if you still LRR some.

Vs bad players and tight players I think its awful btw. But i am pretty sure you meant vs good players only

I've been doing this in the Stars 15 for like a year (if I ever play), I feel pretty good about it. CDC and Heisenberg autoraise the BB when I do this which I also feel pretty good about

fwiw I open complete a fair amount vs strong players. I checked my db and the sample size isnt anywhere near enough. But my win rate when open completing is slightly better than when open raising. Which is remarkable as I open complete a worse range and I have better villains in BB when I open complete than when I open raise.

I hope its variance

OMG U OPEN COMPLET?!?! I RAIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiii U , RAAAAAAWWWWWRRRR .

I don't like this strategy.
Against pretty much everyone, the value of initiative is just too powerful to give up.

I dunno about you, but I play much better with initiative than without it.
The ability to bluff at a flop for 1 bet, instead of 2 has a lot of value when the ranges are very wide.

There are certain players where this strategy is probabily the best one (intensely agro players who 3-bet you with like 40% of their range, and showdown way too often, but can hand read very well).

But even then, I have been in 100000 situations where I get 3-bet, so I have a pretty good feel for how to play in those situations. Whereas if I adopted a strange limping strategy, id feel like a fish out of water, and I'd probabily give up on way too many flops.

But, if youre able to implement this strategy effectivly , the more power to you and I wish you luck.

Intuitivly it does seem wrong that you should be raising so much OOP with the same range as your opponent. To counteract that, I fold a little more than most people on the SB against good players, so technically I am declaring when I raise "I have a stronger range than you".
But I can't figure out which strategy is better, so ill just adopt my dinosaur strategy and save myself the headache of "does a limping strategy or a raising strategy suit best vs this opponent?" and just auto raise the top 65%, putting a thought in about the bottom 35%.

Actually the best thing about this strategy, is people will have little idea how to deal with it. They probabily have some preconcieved notion about what your limping range is, and therefore are more likely to adjust to you poorly.
But I still refuse to give up the initative.

I tried doing this against valesco and st1ckman at 1/2 because I was sick of opening and being 3bet but I found myself losing even more doing this even though I was playing smaller pots. It's a viable strategy in HULHE but I feel like you're going to be giving up a lot without the initiative or position bvb. This sounds simple but it's really the main argument against doing it.

are you sure you feel good about it? your oop against a good aggressive opponent who has the initiative in a smallish pot. seems to me hes going to win more than his fair share of these pots and it would be hard for you to convince me otherwise.

-brad

Yeah, I just dont get that many awfuls or tight-foldy's on my left at 30 and I just started trying a couple days ago. The idea came to me when I misclicked called w/ Aces against a tough player in the bb and I ended up winning a pretty sizeable pot. I was thinking of all the times I opened 78o in that exact spot and how I bloated up the pot oop against a semi-decent opponent who had all variety of options at his disposal to own me postflop. Obviously, I cant be folding and open-completing some and raising some makes me easy to play against and an lrr strategy just brings back the playing marginal hands oop problem.

So the thing I like about the strategy so far is that is keeps the pot small in spots where you aren't going to war, but bloats it up necessarily against aggressive opposition and it is much harder for them to give you a range. The value of initiative is obviously negated somewhat by the value of position, but I think by keeping the pot small when they have position and have little equity and then bloating it up when my equity grows, which also exploits their tendency to barrel relentlessly on peelable flops I will be seeing more flops n the spot for 1sb in the longrun.

i've also briefly experimented with open completing against very strong opponents, but I've stopped doing that largely due to the simple observation that its uncommon to see my very strong opponents doing it.

Imo the best counterstrategy to compulsive BB 3-bettors is to open a little tighter and cap a little lighter

Ok "feel good about it" might have been a bit much but lets compare and contrast. Let's say I use a raise/fold strategy, I'm probably folding like the bottom 10% in the 2/3 structure, then raising 90% of hands? Are you advocating no limping at all? I know for a fact that you used to balance open completing in this spot because we discussed it at Commerce one time. So if I always open raise I can assume the villains in question never fold and often 3 bet. Let's say they 3 bet around 40% of the time and call 60%, you can even argue they fold their bottom 10% I don't think it changes much.

Now if I open complete (and either LRR balanced or don't) I have exactly the same range I was opening with before, but now they are raising literally their full range, so would I rather put in 2 sb's each with my 90% vs their 100% or sometimes 2 sb's and sometimes 3 sb's where they get to choose when to bloat the pot and they are never folding anyway. Seems like you and heisenberg are arguing that the "initiative" of being the raiser preflop is what matters here but I think that's a copout, our ranges are just as wide no matter how the money went in.

Finally, and this is a bit of hand waving but the math guys love to use this concept, think about an overall strategy for your game, wouldn't you rather play larger pots when in position and smaller pots out of position if you aren't giving anything else up? The fact that the pot is small on the flop is not a disadvantage for me, I'm OOP and your argument that he's going to win "more than his fair share" of pots is true regardless of whether I open raise preflop or open limp and let him raise me, unless he is making some ridiculously bad adjustments postflop simply due to who had the "initiative". By keeping the pot smaller I think I actually minimize the fact that he will win more than his share of pots due to superior position.