Help me to think this through. I am attempting to be a winner at 3/6 limit and this has been a frustrating journey. Most material I have read suggests that playing a tight aggressive style should be enough to win at small stakes limit poker. However, I am starting to second guess this approach when playing at a no fold em type table. You know the one, there is a high hand promotion (or not) and people tend to play a very wide limping range with any two cards that could possible generate a high hand. 9 5 suited could hit a straight flush, so it gets played.

I repeatedly watch many hands go something like this. Limp. Limp. Limp. Raise from the button with AA. BB calls. The 3 limpers call. 5 (often more) to the flop with a pot of $30.

FLOP

Check. Check. Check. Check. Bottom bets $3 with AA. Now the players are each getting at least 11/1 to make the call... and if the player with AA is already behind to something like a set, then he is way behind. So then comes the bet we get something like Call, Fold, Call, Fold. 3 players to the turn and pot is $39 (not subtracting rakes).

Check. Check. Now the player with the AA, or any over pair is supposed to bet $6, where the first caller is getting 6/1 and the second could be getting 7/1. (Note: I understand that the board texture matters, but at this point there is often a flush and/or straight draw).

The runner runner heart shows up, or the inside straight scare card, and they turn over a flush with their 9h5h or hit their straight with 6 3!

I see this and other similar scenarios happen over and over again, and in general it seems as each of the loose limpers gets a "turn" to win that night as the others bleed through their stacks and rebuy. Playing tight aggressive just seems to lead to loosing slower.

There is also the possibility I am not playing well enough to be a winner. I have been a consistent winner at no limit micro stakes online as I build a bankroll for 1/2 live, but the 3/6 live is causing a whole lot of frustration. Does the game benefit playing more draw heavy hands, especially in raised pots because the pot odds will only be better? My 5d6d in the small blind should call that $6 raise because all the limpers and BB are calling anyway, and there is rarely a 3 bet? Please point out the flaws in my reasoning!

First, it's tough to make money at 3/6 with the rake.

Continue to get the money in with the best hand. Realize the more players in the pot the less chance you have to win. However, it's not about the number of pots you win, it's about the money you make overall. You should love the idea of a 9 way capped pot with AA. You will lose more pots than you win but you will make lots of money when you do win.

It's possible you are not protecting your hands well. Maybe your not getting value from draws. Maybe you're not raising for value enough pre flop. Are you making good value bets? Are you folding on the river too much?

I'd suggest moving up if you can. Either way, post some hands and get a different perspective from the community.

Good luck.

You're conflating pots won w/ $ won. This is bad. Don't do that.

The way you make money in hold em, like any poker game, is exploiting the mistakes of your opponents. If they limp along w/ garbage hands, then raise them up w/ good hands and print $. Sure, if you're taking flops 7 handed every time, you might lose w/ this strategy 80%. But the 20% of the times you do win will more than pay for the 80% you don't win.

And if you want to set 15% as the break even point of hand winning to "break even", then there's a 16% chance that over 40 times you get in this scenario, you'll win less than 15% (less than 6) of the hands. That means it'll happen quite a lot. And 40 hands w/ a 10% range, that's 400 hands. Probably 14 hours of play at a live 3/6 table. 2-3 whole sessions, depending on how long you grind. So it's easy to just run terrible in these situations over the short term.

BTW, don't play 3/6 to make money. Play 3/6 to learn good poker and maybe spin some rungood and work money savings into 8/16 FL or 1/2 NL (where you actually can make a little bit of $).

I would never play lower than 8/16 for money. Any session of 3/6 should be for entertainment/learning value so stop paying attention to the money part and focus on the play part. Not raising good hands when people are limping crap is bad play.

So you don't know where you stand with AA against 3 guys, but the guy with 95s knows exactly what he wants. Yeah, that's a problem.

OP: Here's a simple exercise.

Take a hand where 2 people limp, you raise AA BTN, blinds call and limpers call, you bet flop and somehow everyone folds but one. So a 6 big bet pot.

The board is 873-2. Thanks to digging, we see that the limper has 65 for a clean 8 out draw against AA. So w/ 44 unknown cards, 8 will give him the winner.

So what scenario gives him the most $? Calling a bet or having it check through?

EV(checks through) is simple. Take the pot size (6) and multiply it by 8/44. That's 1.1

EV(call a bet) is also simple. The pot size is now 7, but we have to take a bet away from his equity since he has to pay a bet to see the last card. His equity now is 0.27

A difference of nearly a full bet (0.83) shows that not betting here is a critical error.

Now, let's look from our perspective:

Taking the pot down is worth 6 bets. This is simple
Betting and getting called is worth our pot equity minus how much we put in . This works out to 8 * 36/44 - 1, or 5.55
Checking through is worth 6*36/44 = 4.9

So yes, when we bet in big pots, we'd really just prefer they fold more often than not. But that DOESN'T mean we don't make money by betting and getting called.

Now at low limits, there is an effect of fish schooling where everyone's collective error results in no one making a major error, which is what you're likely complaining about. But it doesn't matter nearly as much as you think, because in order to make those collectively unprofitable calls, they had to have made a critical error preflop, which is playing a terrible hand in order to chase down a superior range.

"Playing tight aggressive just seems to lead to loosing slower." lmao. Yea I've had plenty of those nights lol. But that's because I was running bad, not playing bad, don't confuse the two. You should read Izmet Fekali's stuff,especially the article about rammin and jammin preflop. Also, 3/6 limit can be beat DESPITE the rake! Obviously you wont be making millions, but you can grind a profit. Honestly, I'd rather let a field of passive fish try to catch me by river, then to be playing with knowledgeable tuff opponents who fold when you're good and put pressure on you when ur weak.

Poker is frustrating in many forms. 3/6 is beatable though. However it sounds like since you're coming from a NL background your expectations might be different. Its a lot harder to deny proper odds in LHE and its a common complaint of players. "Why raise?, they're just going to call anyways" is often heard at the table. You're probably going to get sucked out on way more in limit poker and its something that you just have to get used to. It doesn't mean you shouldn't keep pushing edges that you have by raising with the best hand. In fact raising when you have the best hand often separates you from the other players.


As said above its harder to price people out of draws in LHE, but that goes both ways. People can't price you out of draws as easily either. Regarding 5d6d, it would probably depend on the exact preflop action but if there is a sufficient number of limpers I would call that raise.

I don’t think about punishment when I play poker. It’s all about profitability. As the opposition plays more and more hands, it follows that more hands receive the most profit by raising preflop.

grunch

Out of curiosity OP have you read Small-Stakes Hold'Em by Sklansky, Miller and Malmuth? If not, buy it, read it, read it again, and leave it on the toilet so you can review it every time you're... you get the idea.

Do you have a utility like Pokerstove that will let you compute hand vs. range equities, i.e. AA vs. 5 random hands or AA vs. 5 players who are playing any pair, any suited, any 2 broadways and any ace? If not, get one.

To help you understand what small-stakes no-fold-'em hold-'em is like, consider a hand like AKo against 4 players who are playing any pair, any suited, any 2 broadways and any ace. AKo will make the best hand by the river 25% of the time. That means it WON'T make the best hand by the river 75% of the time. But the 25 times it wins you sextuple your preflop investment (netting a profit of 5x your bet). I know this is oversimplified math, but it means you win $125 for every $75 you lose. Sounds good to me.

You will go through stretches where you lose with a hand like AKo 6, 8 or 10 times in a row, but you have to understand that you made the correct DECISION and just got unlucky.

The better you get at playing postflop, the more you'll be able to maximize the size of the pots you win when you do win. That takes study and practice.

Hope all this helped - I'll stop here before it turns into a tl;dr

You're probably suffering from cognitive biases that make you see the negatives more often than you see the positives. In a 4-way pot, if all is equal you will only win 25% of the time. This means that if you win 30% of the time, you're "winning" against the opposition. With a hand like AA in a 4-way pot, you're probably winning the pot 2/3 of the time. This means that you'll see one out of three times that you don't win. And the human brain isn't really good at tracking this effectively over long spans of time. Winning 2/3 of the time can feel like winning less than half the time. (You don't see AA often enough that you can keep a clear mental tally of it, and you will remember your bad beats way more often than the hands that play out bet-bet-bet-win.)

You are definitely facing an uphill battle at 3/6 because of the rake, and I'd encourage you to move up or take a shot at the next level if you can. If you can't afford it, start setting money aside to make the move if you're serious.

I should add one amendment to my comment. The beatability of a game can vary depending on the size of the rake.

Yup. You're not raising because "f*** this guy and his limp", you're raising because it makes the most $.

A common situation once you move up will be: weak, fit or fold type player limps in, and you raise him with a wide range. He isn't feeling "punished" by your action, because this is kind of what he suspects will happen: someone will raise and he can see a flop for 2 bets instead of 3. Then when he misses, he check folds.

If someone is check folding > 50% of flops routinely, then you have an easy exploit and can punish their overall strategy. OTOH if the guy is getting to the river with hands as weak as a bare overcard to the board, then you may wanna save your "punishment" for someone else when they limp in and you have 87s.

In your games, your raises are pure value. And since you have position, you can also decide if you want to build a bigger pot if you flop a good hand or a strong draw (or occasionally, a board so dry that it's hard for your opponents to continue without a strong range, like Q33r).

Remember that beating poker isn't just playing good cards, it's taking advantage of your opposition's mistakes.

Note that the converse is also true:

as the opposition plays less and less hands, it follows that less hands receive the most profit by raising preflop.

This was an important realization for me because preflop tightness does not necessarily equate to postflop tightness. In the past, I would see a tight preflop player limp in and think, "I'm gonna raise this guy with a wide range because he's a nit." However, this fell right into some of my opponents' gameplans. The preflop nit that shows down hands at a decent rate is not one to be messed with when you hold a mediocre preflop hand.

So now, I need to have a solid POSTFLOP read that the guy or lady likes to limp in preflop and fold a lot postflop if he or she doesn't hit anything decent. Without that read, it goes back to what jdr says here:

I can for sure think of a few regs at 20/40 that play this way. Limp in the AQs or 88 and see you at showdown. Before laughing at the ridiculousness of this EP strategy, remember that you're the one who willingly put 2.5-3.5 big bets into the pot w/ your KJo or T9s when you would've just folded it had they raised. Maybe they aren't thinking of exploiting specifically you when they do this, but you did get yourself exploited by their strategy.

Sometimes the way to exploit them is to fold. Sucks but what can ya do?

I don't think it sucks at all. If they had raised, you would have folded. And while we say and may even think of it as "folding to a raise," we are actually folding to a range. If they don't raise hands they should, we are still folding to that range. That range hasn't changed.

Disappointment is all about setting expectations. To quote the immortal Jesse, "You don't get to win every hand."

The Izmet mentioned previously may be found here. Mods might correct the link found in the library.

Yeah, playing aces can be frustrating sometimes, and you may more vividly remember getting them handed to you as Aaron mentioned. But folding could be the real dilemma.

Does anybody know where to find the five(?) levels of being a poker player? I think it was a Ray Zee post.

I glanced at his thread history, but didn't find anything resembling that. Maybe you should ask him in the lounge, where he hangs out often.

It was probably from around 12 years ago

Evolution of a poker player Ray Zee

There it is.