5/10/20 game

effective stacks about 3.5k villain has 12k+ and has loose aggro image. he check raised a guy all in with a gutter on the flop for over 5k in a hand early, among other aggressive plays



10 handed

Two folds I limp KJo UTG+2 (i have been limping my whole range this whole session). folds to sb who calls, villain in straddle raises to 80. i call, sb calls.

flop QT9 two clubs one spade. villain leads for 175. i raise to 500, sb folds, villiain thinks a bit and calls.

turn 8 clubs. villain checks, i check.

river brick. villian checks. i bet 850. villain thinks and jams for about 2k more...

thoughts?

An open limping strategy is fine-ish but I think UTG+2 KJo is probably close to an open fold already (I understand we get to limp slightly wider than RFI ranges) but it's definitely a fold vs the straddle raise I'd have to imagine. However, if SB/STR or both are weaker players then I'm never folding to the raise.

Raise flop slightly bigger.

Turn do we have Kc or Jc? I'd be mostly betting this turn with or without those cards.

River once again having the Kc or Jc is pretty relevant information to include in your post... but I don't think we get to fold KJ here at any frequency given the price. In practice most people are probably not bluffing enough. If we are going to fold any obviously fold the ones that don't have a club.

Thanks for the response.

I had no clubs, forgot to mention that. I agree that I should've raised flop a little bigger, was thinking about that as well.

The reason I checked turn is because I figured I would only get two streets on this runout, but thats probably wrong? Should I be betting for value/to deny equity and check back some rivers?

Pf just fold but it’s fineish if you are solid with a open limp strat but it’s tough to execute and I’d advise to just play a raise or fold strat @ 5/10 don’t think you’re gaining enough ev from this overall
Anyways definitely raise a lot more otf 675-875 ish
Ott just betting again for value /protection think you’re supposed to bet 1/3 this turn is actually much better for you than oop
Anyways on the river it sucks alot and you’re in a low ev spot either way. At equilibrium you’re definitely calling but it’s fine to exploit and find a fold if you’d like

I think your efforts to devise a preflop limp strategy would be better spent on other areas of your game. Many experts have attempted to come up with a preflop limping strategy and as far as I am aware, none have succeeded. The solvers don’t do it either.

On the turn, the club is an unfortunate card, so I don’t blame you for the check back, but that is where the hand got away from you when you cap your range.

The turn pot has 240 + 1000 = 1240

Your river bet makes pot 1240 + 850 = 2090

Villain riv raise 3500 – (80 + 500 + 850) = 3500 – 1430 = 2070

Your pot odds are 2070 / (2090 + 2070) = 2070 / 4160 = approximately 50%

You are close to indifferent to calling or folding on the river. Villain wins either way. There are three factors that allowed villain to do it.
1: Turn check back.
2: Not checking back river after turn check back.
3: Betting the perfect amount on river to let villain shove.

Thanks for all your input guys I do appreciate it

vs said villian and the way you play it I Hero river. Your range is viewed as capped for most. I think Villian can turn some AcX hand into bluffs.

Agree on not open limping. Even if there was a strategy where this was optimal it would likely be too complicated.

Turn could probably be bet or check, pick whatever you want.

On the river when villain checks I think we have to bet. I may size down though with all hands because my range won't be extremely strong here, nor should villain's. I think 1/3rd pot is better.

Given what we know about villain its rough once he jams. On one hand, we have no clubs so folding seems ok... but its possible this is one of the best hands you have here. If it is, you probably dont want to fold it to a guy thats known to be LAG. This goes back to the open limp .. would you ever open limp Axs? or even any suited hand? This is the kind of trouble you can get yourself in by doing that. Villain may know its unlikely flushes - let alone the nut flush - is in your range. And that also makes it hard for us (2p2) to give good advice.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to do here. If we had any club I would be fine calling. I guess fold.

Top of your range vs someone who could spaz/try and get you off a bare jack that he thinks is a chop = easy call imo

FWIW I think an open limping strategy (except for BTN/CO, those would be RFI) will perform better than a RFI strategy in almost all live games that I play in. The only reason I don't do it is because of how complicated it can get/lack of resources available for proper range construction.

No I don't think it's optimal but I think people play extremely poorly vs a limping strategy and they play extremely poorly in multiway pots.

That's interesting that u think an open limping strat would perform better than RFI (except for btn-co). It's certainly going to create more multiway pots and more action in general. I know you said you don't have the resources for the construction, but in general why do you think it would be beneficial? I play low stakes live, but I would love to find a way to increase action/more multiway pots without being transparent, having a capped range and it being overly detrimental. Plus the fact that we end up playing oop a lot and without initiative.

thanks for any response

^ you end up getting to l/rr A LOT vs ranges which are isoing you too wide; most regs won't adjust to your open limping range properly for a very long time, if ever. Additonally, because we get to limp slightly wider ranges than RFI we get to play more pots with the weaker players (who are going to be more inclined to over-limp). Generally, yes, we end up in a lot of multiway-oop spots which may end being a detriment to a lot of people; however, I feel I am very strong in oop mutliway spots, especially when compared to the player pool who is absolutely atrocious at these spots.

Overall, it's very complicated and not every game would a limping strategy out-perform an RFI strategy. For example, a nitty game with only 1 fish to your right, it wouldn't make too much sense to open limp with no fish remaining and such high value of stealing the blinds.

Lastly, it's dubious whether it would even be better than RFI as you won't be used to the limping situations yet (but neither will your opponents )

Jarretman what resources did you use to improve your multiway play?

Jman, thanks for response. Interesting topic.

As a general rule - for all streets multiway - the more multiway the hand is, the stronger the "value" portion of our range needs to be, and also the stronger the "bluff" portion of our range needs to be. Conversely, the more multiway, the stronger our "bluffcatchers" need to be; folding TPWK vs a single flop bet in a 5way pot is pretty reasonable. Another general rule is that the more multiway the hand is, the smaller your betsizes should become on average (this doesn't apply to certain textures/situations) - expressed as a function of the % of the pot. That being said, most people misplay the flop the worst (as this tends to be the most multiway because after flop action there will be less players on average, of course)

For the flop, a good start is to realize that even heads up as PFR vs an IP cold caller we are at a disadvantage (even regardless of his positional advantage) on most flops because despite our overpair/AQ+ advantage we have a more diffuse range that contains lots of air and weak hands, whereas the cold caller has (or should have) a very condensed range containing mostly high equity suited highcards or mid pairs. This compounded with their position advantage means we should be checking a lot more than most people do (an exception to this are when weaker players call with a super wide diffuse range preflop and are therefore more vulnerable to a cbet strategy).

Extrapolate this fact and add multiple condensed ranges vs our diffuse range and we should realize that there are very few boards where we should even have a cbetting range when multiway (vs good players).

This all gets really complicated and insanely messing when you start including exploitative adjustments vs multiple callers preflop who have very weak ranges; in this case, even multiway we can have some profitable cbet spots.

Lastly, realize where your value is coming from and sometimes make exploitative adjustments. Flop is 5 ways, 3 good regs, you, and 1 fish who loves to peel flops too wide, to your immediate left. Good reg bets, 2 regs fold, now it's on you with a very strong hand, perhaps we should consider having 0 raises.

Anyways, multiway play is quite the rabbit hole and may be the last bastion of poker where intuition and general "reads" play more of a role than simply knowing established theory (especially when a weaker player is involved).

Very interesting, thank you. So for example, suppose you open aqo no hearts utg, co, bu, bb call. Flop is 56qhh. Are you checking this 100% barring reads? We obvi have qq kk aa, but not much/no 55 or 66.