I'm a huge proponent of tossing in the 'sprinkle of gamble' every now and then w/ an emphasis on 'every now and then.' I look for spots like this and I wouldn't discount the value of showing a hand like this for future action simply bec it's a low limit game. Many of the players do notice.

Fine but my point is, the Sprinkle of Gamble can really be like a Hint of Gamble, maybe just a Soupçon of Essence of Gamble, not even a whole sprinkle.

You can do this much much much less than anything remotely GTO for a semibluffing range (which I doubt would include 65s anyway but hey, advertising). Really your goal is just to get classified as "He can have bad hands because once I saw him jam 65s preflop." Opponents' thinking is dichotomous. They don't know that this was your one time this year to overplay this hand. The fact that you could turn up with any hand is fine for getting action.

I mentioned a while back that I'd played 5-3o otb, won the hand, and heard that it'd been discussed amongst some players. And it's not as if 9-7 suited under the right circumstances is horrible. Every now and then, that's the key.

I know it’s not the OP. But someone said they would cap with hands like 65s or 97s

That’s wrong 100%


In the OP I’m folding. But it’s not terrible to call

T9s I’m sure most are calling.

What do you call a player that caps w/ 6-5ss?

I'm not sure who said that but I think I agree. Well maybe not so much capping 97s but then again maybe so.

Why is it not terrible to call but 100% wrong to cap?

I've made a heck of a lot more money playing poker since I've become more optimistic.

With a speculative hand you want to get in as multi-way and cheaply as possible.

I understand that. In this hand we are dealing with wider ranges than normal. This means it's more likely that we can take a free card if we want it. If we just call it could go bet then raise and we have to fold. It could literally be the difference between winning and not winning the pot. We also benefit from the deception and advertising aspects of playing this way. All for just one small bet.I wouldn't advocate a cap OOP.

Our hand has little high card value. Our hand is all about implied odds

By putting 4 bets in voluntarily we are making our return worse.

It’s 6-12 my man

You aren’t playing vs Phil Ivey here.

Exactly. I'm starting to wonder if the dominance of NLHE has warped thinking about implied odds preflop in LHE. You don't get to play for stacks if you hit, and you don't often get to overrep your hand and blow people off good hands postflop if you graze the flop.

I know everyone ITT is a LHE player and should know this but.... I wonder if NL has made itself felt here. Not that I'm 4! 97s cold in NL but I might 3! as a semibluff. The reasoning would be similar to what I'm seeing here, because misrepresenting my hand postflop has great value in NL.

Back to LHE, if you hit your hand and are lucky you might win 4.5 big bets each from however many see the pot through to the river, plus some flop and turn bets. People know how to identify three suited cards on the board; they're not going to put in 4 bets on the river to lose to a 9-high flush. So putting in 2 big bets is just destroying your denominator of your odds. Standard play should be to fold 97s to even a single "legit" raise unless there's a good reason to think it will be multiway and not reraised.

Yeah, but there's a difference between 97 suited and a small pocket pair (where the implied odds argument is much stronger).

With a small pocket pair, you are basically looking to flop a set, period. (Yes, there's an occasional straight draw, but really, not enough to matter.) So you are dealing with the 7 point something to 1 odds against flopping a set, which you have to increase somewhat because there's a possibility of flopping a set and losing which carries reverse implied odds. So let's say you are looking for 10 to 1 implied odds to justify your play. When you increase the size of your pre-flop bet, you increase the denominator, and now you are going to need 40 instead of 30 small bets in the pot to justify your play.

With suited connectors it is different. You are looking to flop draws (again, for the most part). When you flop draws, you are going to be putting in additional bets on the later streets, and when you don't, you won't. So if you are able to, say, cap in position, you will sometimes be able to put in an extra bet on your strongest draws where you are getting your fair share of equity (flush draws, 2 way straight draws) while at least some of the time being able to take a free turn card on your weakest draws (gutshots, backdoors).

So I think a cap in position is pretty good with at least stronger suited connectors (I am not really a fan of it with 65 suited, because we are usually not getting our fair share of equity) and something I wouldn't do with a small pocket pair.

Despite the fact that I disagree with your ultimate conclusion about 97 suited, I think there is a lot of truth to this.

Where I have always observed it is with respect to good players "trading mistakes". "Trading mistakes" is a no limit strategy where you might play a hand that strict math says is not normally profitable pre-flop, because your playing that hand can induce an opponent to make a bigger mistake post-flop. So, let's say you 3-bet 53 suited because you can get away from it post-flop when it is behind but your opponent has no idea what you have when you are ahead and ends up losing a bunch of money to you.

"Trading mistakes" is a very good no limit strategy. But I see a ton of people I consider to be generally good players doing too much of it in limit-- i.e., just assuming they can play any two cards against a bad enough player. The problem is, the strategy really depends on the huge upside post-flop, and in limit, there's just not a huge upside post-flop.

Snap call.

This is why I like to cap 56s sometimes.

Player1 raise UTG2, Player2 3b MP, I 4b 5❤️6❤️ BTN, blinds fold, P1 call, P2 call

8❤️7❤️9♦️
Check to me, I bet, both call

4❤️
Check to me, P1 fold, P2 call

A❤️
P2 check, I bet, P2 call

I show my hand and he turns over
J❤️J♣️. I push my hand closer to him and say, “I have a straight flush.” He says, “Oh. That’s a good hand.”

So you put in 4 small bets pre-flop to make a profit of 15 1/2 small bets. Not bad! That's almost 4 to 1 odds.

Now do you actually have a 1 in 5 chance of doing that? Because most of the time you are going to flop 6 high with male genitalia in your hand.

It's different when you can win a 200bb stack after doing that in a NL game.

Well, right, but you can't assign a value of zero to the thrill of inadvertantly needling the fourth-nuts at showdown after the action goes check-bet-call. That's worth like almost another big bet right there

All I know is that whenever I try to pull off that kind of magic trick it doesn't work. Works for everyone else but not for me.

Post some of these hands. Maybe you just don't flop well!

I know when I try to make a play with a hand like 5h6h the flop comes AsKsQs and the first player to act donks. It's over in an instant!

Some people's 3 betting range can't bluff enough on most boards. Rodeo? He's balanced

Rodeo runs good.

I'm kind of on the fence about this explanation. I used to agree but now I think it's not about our bluffing range; now I think it's about not getting bluffed by being able to hit many textures.

Perhaps these qualities go hand in hand? Let's think about the ev of strategies with or without such hands included as preflop 3 bets:

I think the pot will be distributed like this:

Largest share goes to the button, maybe 40%?
MP gets slightly less, maybe 35%?
UTG gets the least, maybe 25%?

Now, how often do we actually flop a hand that wants action? Some may think it's quite often, but really the number of hands in our strategy that earn > (pot) when called is a small number. The rest of our hands are simply reducing the profitability of our opponents ranges when we bet. This means that our strategy as a whole will never approach an ev of (pot) unless we only bet the strongest of hands, which can't be correct imo; reducing the profitability of our opponent's bluffcatchers and draws is an important part of a betting strategy, particularly with medium strength hands that benefit from protection more than other stronger hands.

So what happens to the ev of our strategy if we add a few near 0ev preflop 4 bets? It doesn't really change much unless we add way too many of these hands; they represent a very small fraction of the preflop 4 betting range when included at low frequency. That is unless our opponents will then make big mistakes vs us because "he could have 65s." Vs good players? I don't think they will make these big mistakes. Vs bad players? I think they will make glaring mistakes, but not of the folding variety; they will most likely overplay value hands and continue more often with weak draws and bluffcatchers. Is this good for our strategy as a whole?

Remembering what I learned from "Theory of Poker": if someone is making money at the poker table, they are taking it from you. (with exceptions as always). If these opponents are making -ev calls with bluffcatchers and weak draws in response to our low frequency suited connector preflop 4 bet? This is good for our strategy, but this means that it's unnecessary and likely -ev to 4 bet 65s preflop anytime in the near future if they have already witnessed us making this play. On the other hand, if we 4 bet 65s at too high of a frequency preflop? We are actually making our opponents bluffcatching and drawing ranges MORE profitable as their adjustments are now correct.

The. "Fundamental. Theorem. Of. Poker." Is. Not. Valid. Multiway.

True, but if our opponents are making +ev calls with bluffcatchers and draws that means that they are digging into our ev is the point I was getting at.