The problem I have with playing super-aggressive with weak suited connectors against a raise and a 3-bet (and no callers- with callers we are talking about a totally different situation) is that in reality, you often have no or almost no fold equity.

So all this talk of bluffing is often kind of silly. You are often up against someone's big pocket pair, that won't fold, and someone's big ace, which also isn't likely to fold. Or two big pocket pairs. Or two big aces. You are basically hoping for the very rare scenarios where your two opponents have hands with no showdown value at the bottom of their ranges.

Now, how would an expert GTO player handle this? I suspect they would end up in the same place. They would run their solver and the solver would tell them to cap the suited connectors 23 percent of the time, or whatever. And then, they would make exploitative adjustments against their opponents. What would the exploitative adjustment be? Well it would be to take into account that they aren't folding enough. And the adjustment would be to play a stronger range against them with fewer bluffs. And we would end up capping those suited connectors far less than 23 percent of the time.

Now, if your opponents' ranges are filled with hands that can't get to a showdown, that's very different. LAG opens HJ with a 50 percent range, maniac 3-bets CO with a 35 percent range, you are on the button? Be my guest. Indeed, you should probably exploitatively adjust in the other direction and cap more than the 23 percent of the time supplied by the solver.

And if your opponents love to make hero folds, again, be my guest.

But that doesn't describe very many limit games I have ever played in. Most of the time, in the games I play in, capping small suited connectors is lighting some money on fire.

Depends on the quality of your solver. I you wanted to spend a few fun tickets on a sim, I could recommend a few guys who set this up an run a strong solve on this spot. Maybe substitute a near perfect solve for GTO, and see how you feel? You probably need some PF range assumptions (maybe not?), and then the maths guys are going to have an opinion about the correct lines here.
Let's say this isn't most of the time. You have an 80 reg, a guy who did OK playing shorthanded and FR online for a good while, and a decent playing reg-ish dude from Canada, who at least talks like he knows poker. This isn't most of the time. The other 6 people in chairs could be your normal lineup, though this wasn't a great game. This exact hand is with people who likely win in tougher games. This isn't a "lol, don't bother about tough spots in tough games". There's a mountain of chips in the middle, and Captain R wants to play well to profit in the spot. That's smart. Learning something new in this spot might help in his normal game.

To be clear, I am all in favor of plugging into the solver and perhaps 4-betting light as long as you are going to have some opponents with wider ranges and some fold equity on the later streets. It sounds like you have that here.

At a typical 9 handed table with two decent tags to your left, your utg range shouldn’t be that. Wide.

Remembered this one from a couple of months ago.
$20/40 LHE, 9h
I just showed up. I post a $20 big blind in the CO.

All fold to the HJ who raises.
Complete unknown to me, middle aged male.

I have 92 so I ??????.

I would call 100% of the time.

I'm a nit TAG though and generally don't expand my ranges unless I get more idea of opponents or meta created between players at the table.

This is the case even as a CO post as BB in 1st hand for me personally.

Call. Any two cards here. (I have a generous raising range, but 92s doesn't make that cut.)

If the action had been folded to me, I would raise.

(But generally I avoid having to post; I'd rather just wait for my blind to come around, and use the time to get settled in and suss out the game and the players.)

I wouldn't call any two cards here. I think that overvalues position and underestimates the possibility that a person raising into a poster probably has a fairly strong range. There's probably a RIO problem if you hit a small pair.

Exactly how much you fold is debatable, but you should definitely be folding weaker hands.

The local 8/16 game has started playing with 16/32 Overs. Assuming that most pots will be in Overs after the flop, what kind of preflop strategic adjustments would you make?

Where is this, Palace Lakewood?

The biggest single adjustment is obvious: If people to my right don't have overs and people to my left have overs, there's no way in hell I'm taking an overs button. Obviously, if it's reversed then I can't get an overs button fast enough. The judgment calls in the middle are interesting and probably worth posting for discussion.




If you take the button, implied odds are sometimes much higher so the adjustments should be straightforward: Play more pairs, more SCs, fewer ATo/KQo kind of hands. I suppose there will be subtle strategic nuances like knocking out the last non-overs player with your hands that are solidly favored so you can collect bets at the higher stakes.

And yet I'm surprised by how many good players I see who don't consider this. "Higher stakes! I'm the shark! Awesome!"

I suppose in fixed-limit you could have overs players to your left who are so bad that you expect to win back what you give up in position. In something like 3-20 spread that seems fanciful but here it might be the case.

But if the overs players are at all confident and to your left, I stand by the above.

If there ever comes a day where I shouldn’t have an Overs button 100% of the time at Palace it’s time to start looking for a job.

I guess there’s one player I’d rather not play Overs with if it’s just us and he has position (The Joker), but that’s it.

I don’t think it’s obvious and I think it could set a bad precedent making your Overs decisions based on who has position, etc. Makes it harder to get the whole game in Overs and other people might emulate you, neither of which is good for a winning player’s bottom line.

Playing pocket pairs seemed like the most obvious adjustment. If most are in Overs and the game is loose -

like this one:



- then you can start to make a case for open limping hands like 22 and cold calling first in with small pairs.

For some reason I said confident instead of competent but I grant that assumption may be violated here.

I suspect a "pretty good" LHE player has enough edge over an awful player to want to double the stakes OOP, especially if there are often multiway overs pots. OTOH I suspect an expert player wouldn't have enough edge over a pretty good player to want to double the stakes OOP. I'm not an expert though so very interested in the opinions of those who are.

If the game plays like a good loose small stakes game then I'm open-limping 22 UTG anyway. Cold calling is a bit more specific because it has to be rare that anyone's reraising behind but there are cases where that's OK even without overs. Overs would make that play more attractive, but how much more depends on the likelihood of multiple postflop rounds with overs.

I knew you meant competent. I think there are maybe five “pretty good” players that ever even walk into Palace.

I think being particular about the Overs is bad for the game and bad to get more Overs going. I always just sit down with an Overs button. Sometimes I’m the only person that has one the entire day... but it’s not uncommon for someone to ask about it and suddenly like five players have them.

[QUOTE=TheDarkKnight;54096146]I knew you meant competent. I think there are maybe five “pretty good” players that ever even walk into Palace.

I think being particular about the Overs is bad for the game and bad to get more Overs going. I always just sit down with an Overs button. Sometimes I’m the only person that has one the entire day... but it’s not uncommon for someone to ask about it and suddenly like five players have them.[/QUOTE

I imagine it is a lot like seat changing. Good in the moment, bad for the game overall.

I think that if you're in a spot where the stakes are only likely to double when you're OOP, it would be almost impossible to win. Like you play 20/40 any time you have position but the game goes to 40/80 when you're OOP, you just can't overcome that. So if you're in a game where the 2 people behind you have overs buttons and nobody else is going to take one, that just sucks.

Now TDK is basically assuming that by playing overs, he can get the entire game to double in stakes and he's crushing the game overall -- that has to be good. Even if he gets a fair proportion of IP and OOP hands vs bad players at higher stakes, sure. Go for it.
Could be that you're 100% correct here where setting up the dynamic of selective overs taking is just like seat hopping. Having the worst overs position is probably bad. If you take the worst of it in the long run, it has to suck. I think of all the mediocre HU players who played button games and made huge win rates. Getting screwed in overs position probably isn't that bad, but it has to be not good. I won't claim to be an expert in this situation, but position has to matter. Money flows around the table to the left. It is hard to crush people who have position on you.

I post kill in CO. H.J. opens. He is good but too wide preflop and misses value post. I have 93s.

Re: Short stacking at live 4-8 game
I post kill in CO. H.J. opens. He is good but too wide preflop and misses value post. I have 93s.

A read on the button seems critical. Without one here I assume that means she's not likely to three-bet appropriately and call.

The button is mediocre, doesn’t cold call a lot pre and plays ok when he is not on tilt. BB is the spot st the table and rarely folds preflop from the blinds

In my local mid-stakes game I am finding myself in a lot of spots where I am in late position or the blinds facing 3 to 4 bets and the pot is going to go off 3 to 4 ways, not including me. How inclined should I be to play small pairs and suited connectors?

1-chip/3-chip blinds, live straddle. One CC, folds to LAG button who 3! We are in SB with KQs

If there's 1-2 players that limped or coldcalled you can get away with playing some suited connectors from the button or blinds (especially big blind).
Small pairs should pretty much be folded for 3 bets unless you're in the big blind (and in the BB you should fold for 4).
4-bet>call and folding is terrible

1/3 in a kill pot (so 6/12)
all have large stacks
Tight reg, unimaginative PF opens UTG+1. I call QJo in MP. Button (new, unknown) 3bets. UTG +1 caps. Me?

Fold the first time and the second time.

If you never flat an EP raise with QJo ever, you'll be close to making the optimal play every time. First call is really not good