A freind of mine finally convinced me I call too much with my baby pairs from the blinds vs ATS.
I think calling with baby pairs from the BB is super standard vs LP raise for most players but this is how it was explained to me, and i'm finally on board.

What do we want when we set mine?
Implied odds.
How do we get them?
healthy SPR, spewey/sticky opponent, and opponent having a strong PF range.
My thought was always something like "I has pocket pair, you no steal my blind".
But that maybe isn't the right way to think.
When you have 22-44(mabye 55) and face a button raise what do you expect to hapen when you call?
You will have the best hand a good portion of the time preflop and most of the time post flop. If you make it to the river your hand should hold up about half the time (assuming you were ahead to begin with) but how do you make it to showdown??
Basically you have to fold to c-bet so often with a baby pair that your burning money accept for the set mine. But your opponent raised from LP so how profitable is your set mine really gonna be? In order to set mine you have to be able to stack the raiser a good amount of the time in order to make it profitable overalll, you need to do better than 8 to 1ish just to break, right? So how do i do that when my opponent can have almost ATC? I really can't. My opponent is not going to stack himself with his A7s, KJ, 77 stuff very often.
OK, so I'm sold. I'm not just mindlessly calling button raises with 22. But it still seems a shame to fold what is probably the best hand against a whide range.

So, I haven't really had many chances to test this theory out, but I think it might make sense to 3 bet from blinds when facing LP open with 22-55.
If my opponent has a jank hand it does me little good to flat, and i'd rather just take it down preflop. If my opponent calls me then he probably has something good enough to stack him a fair amount when I flop my set. And if he raises, then my theory breaks down and i would have been better off calling or folding, but there's always a downside right?

Thoughts?

opponent dependent

everything is
so lets talk about some opponents(assume we call with small PP vs LP open)

TAG; will have whide range, will cbet high percent OTF, wont go broke often when we set, lets not flat with 22
LAG: will have whide range, will cbet high percent, wont go broke often agains set, lets not flat
Passive Fish; will have tighter range(if he raised), maybe cbets, might go broke often enough, will let us showdown a lot when we miss for cheap/free, maybe flat

Aggro Fish; will have whide range, will cbet alot, will barell alot, may bust himself when we set., maybe flat

Tha'ts how I see it.

Assume we raise vs LP open and we raise;
TAG; will fold/raise or call with tight range that gives us good implied odds=lets raise him
LAG; will fold most junk, raise with some junk some good stuff, and call with mediocre 22-TTish,ATs+,KQsish stuff. Will raise us too often when we resteal and will not have a big big hand when he calls.=lets not raise him.
PFISH; doesnt fold too much, doesnt have a big hand when calling, prolly only 4 bets AK,JJ+, will still let us show down cheap/pay us when we set=may as well just call
Aggro Fish; will 4 bet too much, will have a whide range even calling, will rarely let us see cheap show down and will only sometimes go bust=may as well not raise him.

SO; if one of these archetypical players opens bttn;
TAG;OK to raise, prolly not OK to call
LAG;cant call, cant raise=FOLD small pair to raise from LP
AGGRO FISH: maybe call, dont raise
PFISH;maybe call, dont raise


I should have been more specific, but notice (if you agree with me), we are only really flatting open raises against Passive Fish and Aggro Fish. My friend actually makes a good case for not even flatting 22-55 vs them.
Thoughts?

vs min open, flatting vs most regs is ok (requires good post-flop game still). obviously vs nittier ones this is still a leak. vs 3x, not so ok. vs fish, just peel and see what happens.

the word is wide.

i meant ur strategy of 3 betting 22-55. that is opponent dependent. think ur second post is flawed in a few aspects, but just did a quick glance.

to me, the only person to put 22-55 in 3 bet range is a 4 bet happy lag or tag. in which i ship 22-55 like its the nuts. 22-55 is like one of the worse hands to see postflop in a blind battle oop. u are not 3 betting it thinking implied odds or trying to outplay ur oop against any oop type.


against minraisers u can call. against fish u can call as well.

call against almost everybody

3betting [KK+/AK 22-55] isn't a bad strat from the blinds vs certain opponents. someone with a high 4b% is one example.

tuma its 2012 yo. QQ is the nuts. JJ mine as well be.

since we don't see much 3x-ing from CO/BTN these days so flatting 22-55 works better than it used to do. obviously I'll just muck the bottom 95% of my range oop against someone like j rock haf

There isn't a lot of MRing on Cake. Maybe on exactly the bttn but from LP seems everyone seems to use the 2/3 pot open raise bttn cause its handy.

Maybe I should have seen if there's a clear consensus on not flatting with baby pairs vs 3X or 2.5X LP raises before talking about 3 betting.

I used to flat all small pairs from BB vs steal. I mean, as recently as like two months ago. I have a pro friend who is very good at explaining things to me and has helped me out A LOT lately. One thing I fought him tooth and nail on was his advice to not flat call LP raises with baby pairs.
I was always like "i usually have the best hand, i'll usually have best hand on the flop, my opponent is often bluffing/weak, so why would i fold a wired pair? It seems like folding a pair HU vs a bttn raise to me"

Finally he drilled it into my head that there's no way to make money in the long run with small pairs OOP vs a whide range. 7/8 of the time we just check and fold and the 1/8 of the time we flop set (forgive me if the numbers are off by a couple percent please).. the great once in a while we do flop a set we just x/r and he folds or we x/c and maybe get two bets out of our set, three small streets on rare occassions. Our opponent just doesnt flop top pair top kicker and overpairs with his LP open range. So we just BLEED money set mining against weak range out of position.

So, before we talk about specific players you maybe can set mine against in these spots and who we can or cannot 3 bet against. Does everyone agree with this logic of not set mining vs ATS with small pairs??
I HATE folding 55 vs CO with ATS 70% but what my friend, Antony, finally got thru my head is that we want to set mine against strong hands, not weak hands.
My thought was just that maybe we can 3 bet our small pairs against players who open whide because; a) they'll have the biggest gap between open range and continue range=we get a lot of folds, and b) when they actually do flat call a 3 bet we can figure them to have strong hands that might actually make it worth our time to set mine against;
But for right now I just want to know if most everyone here agrees that it is not a good idea to flat call 2.5X or 3X LP raises with small pairs from the blinds???
I know a lot depends on the player but lets just talk default for now. Like NO info on villain or he's just a super standard reg.

ffs there is no h in wide.

donovan,

if you want to get better
stop posting trainwreck threads
and post a video of yourself playing a few tables for an hour or so.
you will still get trolled
but you will have hope
of improving using this forum.

yeah i know it is...just an old habit. Can you maybe just let that go? I'd love to tell you i'll stop making sp mistakes but it'd be a lie. I am fully dependant on spell x and my computer doesnt have word so i don't have an auto spell check going on while i type. Its poker, not english class after all. Maybe we can move on??

I am getting better thanks to input from the regs on this thread.
I really don't think i'm getting trolled that much.
But thanks for the concern. And i don't think i'd "still get trolled" if i posted myself playing. Where do you get that?


Why is this so hard to answer anyway? Do we flat call ATS from BB with small pairs? vs loose players, vs TAGs, vs MANIACS, PFish?

general pro consensus is "not we usually don't set mine against W(no H)ide ranges" correct or not correct?
simple question,no?