I usually base my decision off player statistics and table image. I dont mind limping in sb and re-evaluating based on his play. Just not a big fan of being agro out of position. Any thoughts?

I usually base my decisions off of how erect I am at the time and any interesting smells in the air.

Neverscared I've been watching you play for a while now, and you bless me with this great comment! tyty but I was being serious if you think I was trolling.

explains alot

Complete top 70% of hands but 2.8x w A6o-AKs.

I just found your statement funny. Like, what else are you going to base your decisions on? It's so general it doesn't say anything at all. I guess the most it says is that you're not trying to play GTO

GTO is to raise in SB not to limp

citation needed

Yeah for sure, give me some time I cant remember off hand where I read that.

I would be shocked if GTO was anything but limping our whole continuation range at some large number of BBs BVB.

wug gto sb continuation range at some large number of bbs bvb?

I like to 35x it 150 bb deep with AA and A5 spades and limp the rest vs most players, unless there are no antes then I 32x it

Live only, I generally complete any 2 until I see that BB will defend. Early levels, a BB raise generally means something better than top 25%. Later levels, GTO does come into play meaning that most live randoms do not play optimally early on.

I think it's probably exploitable to always do this with spades. Better before you look at your cards in the SB to pick a random suit. So one time you 35x with AA and A5diamonds.next time AA and A5 hearts (or diamonds again, it's random), etc etc. I mean if some schmuck exposed the 5 of spades utg, bb could exploitably fold KK vs you.

if u have a5 spades and aa in your range you can always fold kk vs that

thanks, Christopher. I was obviously being sarcastic.

there is some merit though in suit selection for randomization as a general concept (or as brian hastings suggests, you can decide whether to make a certain play with Ax depending on whether the Ace is the left card or right card when you look at your hole cards).

I haven't run the math but instinctively I'd say we're supposed to limp top 40-50% BVB and fold the bottom quarter of that to a 3x at, say, 300 BBs.

I really like you guys strategies and tactics

for the top three quarters of that, are we limp/calling everything or would we have a limp/3-betting range?

Limping the SB is actually an incredibly underrated play, esp in live poker where opponents aren't always math inclined. You are getting excellent odds to see a flop for .5bb. If the BB is a good player limping might be burning chips, but the vast majority of mtt players are not good heads up and can't resist the temptation to just check and see 3 cards for free. So just bet basically every flop and immediately profit as the same players who can't resist seeing a free flop will never call enough to stop you from betting ATC profitably.

Think about it, the entire reason most of them check the BB is to see if they hit the flop. Most flops miss most hands so you just win b/c they don't float or bluff raise enough and I'm assuming you will bet flop small enough that you will have a good risk reward ratio and it won't have to work often to profit.

Obviously sometimes you shouldn't limp and lead, sometimes you flop a decent draw where you would rather c/r and lead scary turns or ones where you hit your hand, but the point is the same that the people that just check their BB are usually just trying to hit and won't abuse you with position (which they should of course). If the player to your immediate left is good you should tighten up but limping can still be good sometimes since you don't want to build pots for him when he is likely to steal a fair amount of them in position.

i guess Lefort and sauce talk about pure limping strategies. the idea is that you're gonna want to play a lot of hands when its folded to you. in order to discourage the bb from def a bunch w/ position + cards, you would need to make it pretty big. putting in a ton of money could get costly w/ the the weaker part of your range if your opponent is aggressively 3b pf or def appropriately/playing well post flop w/ position. you're getting a great price, so its realistic to expect to realize enough eq w/ some fairly weak hands to make limping +EV.

if you're only limping weak-marginal hands and raising the top, then your limping range is obviously capped and bb should probably start applying a lot of pressure on ur lmp range pf. so, you can decide to limp everything and develop 3 ranges - l/f, l/c, l/rr.

in non-ante cash games, Gogol's Nose makes an argument for only having an open raising range cause he wants to maximize his profit w/ AA, and he thinks the way to do that is to start by raising his entire playable range. clearly, he'd be opening a tighter range.

in practice, i go mixed w/ the justification that i get to see how they play in more spots (even if it is an ext limited sample size). also, they might mischaracterize my range by thinking i'm pure one way or the other if they haven't seen me do both. i think it gives me more opportunities to get my opponent to make a mistake against my actual hand.

as a disclaimer, my limping range is basically never balanced.

clearly, one of the primary disadvantages to limping is that you allow bb to realize at least some eq w/ a reasonable # of hands that realize no eq when you open raise.

one of the advantages is that you maximize the number of +EV spots pf against defenders, although not nec the EV of each spot.

a pure open raise strategy would obv deny the most eq to over folders. i know a really good cash player who opens 4x from the sb 100 deep in non-ante games. i've never tried that strategy, but i imagine trying to balance some things that are contrary to the current meta could be profitable.

complex topic

first reply by ben is more relevant than it seems, dunno if i am reading too much into it and/or if it was intentional tho