Varying Opening Range and Size:



One thing that I think gets over looked, especially by a lot of mass multitabling players, and even a lot of coaches (who claim preflop is largely solved even at ssnl…lol) is just how dynamic your opening range preflop needs to be, especially from MP+. By simply playing a “standard range” and opening to a “standard size,” we make ourselves easy to play against, miss spots where we can get value from recreational players, and feed dead money to sser’s, lags and maniacs.




Early Position:

Tightening up: This should really only occur at tables that you’ll be leaving when the big blind gets to you anyways, as if there’s only regs left to act when you’re in EP, clearly you need to look at finding a better table. When this is the case hands like AQo and 55-88 can become –ev opens from EP. At this type of table, we are unlikely to get cold called wide (esp oop), unlikely to get paid off when we hit and likely to get 3bet and put in tough spots OOP.


Widening our Opening Range: From EP this is largely centered around the weak spots at the table and the likelyhood of us getting a multiway pot. Keep in mind that this is still fr, and we are still hand-cuffed by the 7-8 players left to act. Look to add hands like ATs, KQs, and 22-55 with weak players in the blinds. (You can widen even further depending on how weak, and who’s IP on you) Look to force multiway pots, with hands that play well in them at tables with multiple weak players, especially if they are to your direct left.

Sizing can also be varied depending on the type of situation we want to create. (note this is pretty much the only spot ill look to throw in a bit of balance occasionally.) Look at increasing your opening size when particularily big fish are in the blinds and we have strong hands. Consider min or 2.5x opens (and even sometime open limping depending the fish and stack depth) with speculative hands and an extremely weak player to you left*

*Note: Regs will have a hard time abusing this if you pick the right spots. They need legit hands as the big fish likely isnt folding. In the case you do feel abused, keep in mind we have now created a spot where we can get a typically solid abc regulars to make a huge mistake when we have a big hand.




Middle Postion:

Tightening up: This will occur most commonly when we have postion on the weak spot at the table. Once the fish folds, we now are essentially in a SH game with 5 regulars. Before opening, we look at who’s left to act (especially with postion on us) and base our range on that. Consider reducing opening size to 2.5x with your entire range if there are multiple Ssers left to act.


Things that should cause you to tighten your range:
-Aggressive 3bettors left to act, especially aggressive BTN and CO 3bettors
-Good lag with position on you, who will cold call a lot and abuse you.
-Bad reg with an IP cold calling leak, who will not fold to cbets.
-Multiple regs who you believe have a skill advantage over you, or are even of comparible skill, but have position. Be realistic.
-There are aggro SSer’s Left to act IP or OOP


Widening our Range: This is where we can really start to get away from the hand chart. From MP given the right conditions, most reasonable hands can become profitable. The idea is to create as many profitable spots as possible, (mostly through seeing a lot of flops IP with playable hands vs weak players.)
I tend not to vary my raise size much at all from this postion, but rather my opening range, but the same things as in EP apply.




Cut Off:

One of the biggest mistakes bad regs make is the treat the cutoff and button as essentially the same postion. The reality of the situation is, that this is far from the case, as we have a player left to act, who, if hes good, is in an ideal spot to exploit us. (IP playing vs a wide range with few players left to act)

One interesting thing to take note of is that, especially if the button is a thinking player, weak players in the blinds no longer necessarily widen your range. (As this makes the btn cold call a lot wider/3bet bluff wide/we cant expect to steal the blinds often.)

Tightening Up:
Look to tighten up your range if:
-button is a LAG reg, a competent TAG or a maniac.
-There are SSER’s left to act (also consider decreasing open size to limit dead money)
-There is a fish OTB who does not fold to cbets
-There are fish in the blinds (tighten to playable hands)

Widening our Range: What we’re looking to do here is to play as many hands profitably as possible, while keeping in mind that a lot of regs will having a tipping point where they start to play back a ton, and using that to our advantage. (Think, you should be fairly happy when an OOP opponent starts playing back whether by calling more or 3betting more with weak hands.)

There are two really obvious spots where widening our range is good:
-The players left to act fold to steals too often.
-The players left to act cold call too often and fold too much post flop.




Button:

Since I think the concept of stealing has more or less been beat to death, I’m going to focus on button open sizing.
I switch between 2x and 3x+ button open sizes very liberally, and throw in some open limps in the right spots depending on who is in the blinds and very strongly believe this is the most profitable strategy.

Reasons for 2xing:
-You get a better price on our steals
-Villians will over adjust and call OOP too often. (and basically never be able to get to showdown OOP when we don’t want them to, as we can rep literally anything)
-Villians 3bet a lot vs steals/will make sizing error vs min-opens. (You force him to either A) change his strategy vs steals which he will be uncomfortable with, B) play weak hands OOP in bloated pots or C) Use a sizing that makes it so we basically never have to play back.)
-SSERs in blinds. I cant stress this enough. SSER’s win b/c you create too much dead money for them. If you betsize correctly 40bb’s is acctually a really terrible stack size to play. Any time you are sizing your bets vs a 40bb stack pre or post flop keep in mind that a much smaller bet has the same leverage as your normal sizing would vs a full stack.
-You have a hand that plays better with smaller SPR (and you already vary your button opens alot based on opponents)

Reasons for 3x+:
-You want to create dead money now, as your opponent will call and fold later too often.
-You have a strong hand vs a fish, and wish to set up to get stacks in later.
-Your opponent will be 3b/fing a lot and you want his sizing to be larger.
-Your opponent is 3bet bluffing and barreling a lot, and you want his sizing pre and post flop to be larger.

Reasons for Open Limping the Btn:
-Despite stealing being extremely +ev in most spots there are some (somewhat rare perhaps) situations where I think mixing in limping is the most profitable play
-There is one big fish, (specifically if the whale is BB and SB is an overly aggro 3better) or two somewhat weak opponents in the blinds. They will not fold much pre or postflop so the creation of dead money, and increased pot size is not an advantage with speculative hands.
-You have a hand that plays better with a higher SPR.
-The higher the SPR, the greater your abilty to abuse position and skill advantage.
-You are facing an over aggressive opponent who will raise limps with a wider range than he will call.
-You are facing an opponent who plays very 3bet or fold from the blinds and you want to force them to play pots oop vs certain parts of your range.
-Even if we have an unbalanced range, we have position to offset our hand being somewhat face-up.


Let me know what you guys think, I’ll be back with some HH to discuss later.

Good stuff. These are the kind of +EV adjustments that those of us playing a masstable, cookie-cutter game are missing out on.

I'm guessing your last point is the one that's going to generate the most discussion. I'd be interested to see a couple of HHs where you open limped OTB, and why you thought it was a better idea than stealing.

on merge 100nl 2.24xing the btn and 2.49xing the sb keeps the pot at 4.98 by the flop if just the bb calls, saving 50c on bbj rake for each flop you take down with a c-bet

haha i've thought about doing this before

It something I do very rarely, but included it as I think its worth thinking about all your options in any spot, and it would be interesting to discuss the pros and cons in certain spots.


Here's one where I might consider it:

UTG+2: $88.00
MP1: $76.20
MP2: $101.50
CO: $133.65
Hero (BTN): $100.68[/b]
SB: $35.00
BB: $181.31
UTG: $51.70
UTG+1: $108.50

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with 9spade: 8club:
6 folds, [color=red]Hero?


Sb is 25% 3bet losing SSing monkey. BB is 70/5 whale.

Folding: 0EV
2x: most likely slightly -EV (gives SB chance to drive the whale out of the pot/deny us odds to play a pot with a whale IP)

Open Limping: ____________ <----will depend on indepth reads, not going to fill in all the blanks right away but what might make it okay?


Keep in mind that a fish like this is going to get stacked very quickly, any course of action we cant afford to pass on even those most marginal spots where we may win a stack.

Example/Question 1:

Range in Each of These Spots and Why?

$3/$6 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players

BB: $515.85 35/6 Fish, Low Fold to Cbet
Hero (UTG): $675.70
CO: $780.60 22/18/7 Winning Lag, no history
BTN: $832.50 15/12/5 Solid Tag
SB: $770.15 16/13/4 Tag

Pre Flop: ($9.00) Hero is UTG with XX

Hero raises to $18


Vs:

$3/$6 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players

BB: $515.85 50/6 Whale, Fit or Fold Post Flop
Hero (UTG): $675.70
CO: $780.60 12/10/3 Bumhunting Nit
BTN: $832.50 15/12/5 Competent Tag
SB: $770.15 20/9/4 Regfish

Pre Flop: ($9.00) Hero is UTG with XX
Hero raises to $18

Great post. I've already incorporated doing between 2 and 3.5x on the button depending on the opponent. I don't know if this is the right idea but if its a good reg in the blinds ill be more apt to go towards 2x to 2.5x with just about all my range. If its a spazzy reg Ill intentionally min raise and they seem to spazz more often, even 4bet me back w garbage. If its a fish who I can value to death and i dont anticipate the blinds really 3betting back light at me I go more of a 3.5x. If its against players who fold to steal at an extremely high margin but also do their share of 3betting I also go 2.25x or something because the amount of my raise doesn't matter much. I've definitely noticed a better wr from the button as a result

nice posts, i'll take a guess

openraising range might be something like: [22+,A9s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,ATo+,KJo+]
planning to 4b vs a competent 3b with: [QQ+,A9s+,AJo+]
and planning to call a 5b with: [QQ+,AKs,AKo]

idk about stuff like QTo,TJo etc, arguable i guess, if we go wider on our OR range we have to widen our 4b and stack ranges slightly too, since we are likely to get 3b light by the competent opponents behind us since we are opening vs a whale in the BB and so our range should be wider and weaker than a vanilla range from this spot?

kind of want to say ATC? and to raise bigger too? only thing stopping me thinking that's right is "15/12/5 Competent Tag," how likely do we think he is to 3bet us in this spot, any reads?

edit: i guess if we are at all worried about this, we can go for a ~30% range something like [22+,A2s+,K2s+,QTs+,JTs,A2o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo] planning to 4b a ~10% range and felt say TT+/AQ+ if the TAG 3b/5b's us??

all imho as usual btw

um, factors i can think of could be, like if the SB habitually sizes his initial raises very small, or plays in a very readable fashion postflop so we think we can take the pot away sometimes, same goes for whale, or if whale never ever folds anything we can just try to hit something better than his range and go to valuetown, or if they both betsize badly postflop that means we can draw cheaply when we hit a draw; whereas if we OR then SB can 3b a lot, and BB is more likely to fold; villains are generally closer to good preflop than postflop so if they are bad enough postflop then it becomes more important to get them there than to lock up a preflop profit, i guess?... probably other factors too but that's what occurs to me right now?

some seriously good stuff in here

i think limping the btn is a highly underused but really solid stragety in alot of select spots. i think this is the case for most anti-2p2 mantras, like min-raising or donking, where because people don't use it often/don't understand the why behind it, it gets insta-labelled as "bad". i think this one is alot harder to put into practice tho as it probably comes up the least often and can get you into some uncomfortable spots if your post-flop skills leave a little to be desired.

one spot where i think it's useful is vs. bad/overaggro regs who are gonna be much more likely to spew and go ape-$hit or station post vs. your limp. if you limped hands like KTs, J9s vs these guys where you wanna play vs. them but can't really continue vs. a 3bet i think it's a useful but rarely used play

I disagree with BTN limping. I mean if there's an aggro maniac in the blinds, why not exploit him? You open, he 3b, 4b/call any more decent hand. I've never seen anyone who has a resteal of some 15% to be good postflop.
You offer to limp such cards as KTs J9s? Well but you wont always have a good hand to play vs him and he may notice that. I mean if I ever saw any reg limping the BTN I would make a note instantly on his possible range (assuming I went to showdown).
One more thing, do you really think that aggro regs are going to be that aggressive OOP? I mean you limp without any reason (if I understood correctly you propose limping the btn EVEN if there's no limpers behind you) so if I'm raising, I'm only raising decent hands and to some 4BB cause I'm OOP.

i think you can probably do both; whatever cut-off you define as being the worst hand you are prepared to stack pre, below that there will probably be some hands you'd be prepared to see a flop with if you only have to put in 1 bet pre, but if you raise the aggromonkey will 3b you like always and you don't necessarilly want to put in 2 bets pre with stuff like 98s, 22 etc; especially against someone overly aggro, seeing the flop with SPR of 10-13 is probably best with speculative hands imho, we win same amount when we hit and lose less when we miss

i think openlimping button will always be an exploitive strategy tailored to a villain's specific weaknesses; the thought process you describe here is moving more towards describing game-theoretically optimal strategies, which are better vs good players

i mean i'm sure you could win never ever openlimping buttons (fwiw i can't ever remember doing it of the top of my head?) but that doesn't mean we should never do it, exploiting bad players leads us to do all sorts of wierd-looking stuff which is far from GTO, but which is maximally xploitive vs current villain's specific weaknesses

all imho tho

I'm just saying that this tendency to see flop with middle SC can be easily exploited once it got noticed.
Yes I would rather see flop with less money in it with some middle SC, BUT why not include them in your bluff range? I mean if he's 3beting a lot, you can 4b a lot or just flat and make him fold on flop - which will give u a ton of profit.
If we're talking about some guy who 3b a lot and shoves pre 88+ when it comes to blind stealing n restealing then we're practically talking about a huge fish against who u can shove pre a lot and just give him some pots to take pre by folding to 3b. This way you're balancing your image by not being aggro all the time and making him give more credits to your bluff 4b.

Not going to jump in quite yet, but thought I'd try to redirect this a bit. You need to keep in mind that nothing is obvious to a fish, and they dont adjust, at least not logically.

You dont need to "give him some pots," for balance or w/e, thats just burning money. He's not going to take notes on past showdowns or learn to range more effectively based on them or anything either.

When you limp pre, he still thinks you can have AA b/c lol, he plays it like that sometimes.


Note: Keep in mind that Im in no way advocating this as a default line with a certain part of our range. My main point is just that you should consider every option in every spot. Not just in terms of range, but also raise size, even pre-flop.