Villain (MP): 30 ish brown guy, plays at least 2/3 of hands pre mostly limping, passive postflop ($400)
Hero (CO): late 20s Asian guy, TAG image, not that image really matters vs this guy (covers)

UTG limps, villain limps in MP. Hero makes it $20 in the CO with AJ. Both limpers call.

Flop: A94 ($61)

UTG checks. Villain leads $20. Hero raises to $40. UTG folds. Villain calls.

Turn: 8 ($141)

Villain leads $50. Hero calls.

River: 6 ($241)

Villain bets $100. Hero ???

Obviously pot odds, but this is close to a pure bluff catcher since I don't think villain does this with AT or worse. $100 to a fish is a big bet even though it's less than 1/2 pot.

Just call otf

Just over-limp pre-flop. You almost never win a big pot with this hand.'

And whatever you do win will be offset in the long term by all the times you own yourself against aces-up.....like now.

as much as I hate to

+1 in this rare instance

Dislike the flop raise a lot. We have a good but not amazing hand and are in position. Whatever nonsense he has that is leading out into us, we don't mind too much. Draws are nonexistent on this board and we can get a bet in on each street the times he checks.

Turn we can't do anything but call. I think your river inclination to fold is good, 100$ is a big bet to most of these guys. You're also probably near/at the bottom of your range, too.

I'm probably also raising preflop attempting to narrow the field against just two limpers. I don't keep track of stuff like this, but I'm guessing hands like AJ/KQ lose me more money than any other hand, and part of it may be because of raising with it preflop, so after more than a couple of limpers I'm now wondering if I should just be overlimping with it (even in LP). It's a work in progress for me.

SPR is about 6.5 on the flop, which is kinda smallish and means stacks can be played for over 3 streets. Do we want to play for stacks against most opponents with AJ on A high flops in a raised pot? I don't (which is now a big reason why I feel I should be overlimping it after many limpers, as a preflop raise gets me playing for stacks postflop which I almost never want to do). Anyhoo, with this in mind, I just flat the donk.

As played, I would lean to folding the turn. This guy is passive and he just donk/called a flop raise by the preflop raiser and then still donked the turn; this is super strong, imo, especially since our hand looks like minimum AK. What, we think he's doing this with AT?

I fold the river for the same reasons. When a passive guy wakes up (especially against our very strong preflop/flop plays), TPmehK doesn't cut it.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Yeah, this is kinda where my head is with AJ/KQ now, even in LP. I almost never want to be in a big pot with this hand, so why am I raising with it preflop? My argument up until this point is that I can steal lots of little pots preflop / on the flop with a cbet. But I'm thinking those pots don't nearly make up for the pots I lose when I lose a big pot (nor the money I lose by getting dominated Aces to fold preflop).

GcluelessNLnoobG

wait if you are overlimping hands as strong as AJ/KO in the cutoff what are we raising over two limpers?

my reasons for raising are simple AJ is a pretty good hand and we are certainly ahead of the limpers range. Every hand doesn't have to be played for stacks. We just have to be more careful with how we play them postflop but I certainly don't think it warrants an overlimp.

I just think you have to be willing to fold postflop and not shovel in your whole stack with top pair and you will make enough money from the small pots you can steal and from getting people to put a lot more money into the flop preflop with their loose preflop range.

Suited varieties of those hands.

Just some quick thoughts on above:

- being ahead of limpers range doesn't matter that much if they end up folding hands we don't want them to (such as dominated ones) or are left tightly limp/calling ones that do fine against our hand (such as dominating ones or hands that play well against weak TP type hands)
- even in this case with non-shortish stacks of 133 bbs we got a fairly small / handcuffing SPR of ~6 thanks to going just 3ways; imagine how small / handcuffing it gets if we go 4ways and/or are 100 bbs deep (or less), with regards to being able to get away from TP postflop
- but, we will be in position with initiative, so both fairly good reasons to see a raised flop too; and taking down 3.5 bbs preflop is a pretty good result against non brain dead opponents, or even with a raise-and-take-it-with-a-cbet-postflop (although do all those "little" pots make up for the big ones we lose)

Gjustaconsideration,imoG

LOL at people itt wanting to overlimp in this spot vs fish who plays 2/3 of all hands. So we are just gonna give him a cheap flop with his 64s or his 97o from which we can get value right now? And we are just gonna let the BTN and blinds in, further diminishing our equity in the pot, when we can possibly get HU in position vs this fish? And talking about reverse IO, villain has literally any Ax and lots of worse Jx. He is the one with RIO, and he's likely to pay off as well.


Postflop is well played imo. Calling otf is ok also but he donkbets 1/3 pot, this is gonna be a bad Ax or 9x a lot. I'd probably make it 60ish, whatever i think he might call with those hands.

AP, river is a sigh call. You'll lose to A8 or 98 a bunch but he's clearly just clicking buttons, he'll be clicking the wrong one often enough for us to profitably call here.

Would you raise ATo?

A9o?

A8o?

Where's the line? And why is the line where it is?

Count me in the camp of not liking overlimp pre. Bad players don't like to fold to squeezes unless they're too large. There's a reason they put money into the hand in the first place. Squeeze to $20 pre looks good. It's difficult enough making money at 1/2 and 1/3, I have a hard time understanding why we don't want to build a pot with a hand that flops well when we're 133+ BBs deep and we have position with a premium hand. Squeeze for value. Who cares about the variance? If he barrels the turn and then barrels a paired 4 on the river and we call him down all three streets and he shows AQ, then good for him. In the long run we're printing money, though.

OTF I'm not raising a loose-passive player. If I flat and he checks the turn, I'll immediately take initiative, otherwise I'm just calling down his barrels. If he triple barrels and I don't improve then I'll consider whether I think he's capable of tripling a worse hand than AJ when it happens.

I like the exploitative flop click against a weak/passive, actually. $40 is probably near the size of our planned CBet anyway. AT/A8/Axs, T9/9xs all bet/call here, plus of course stuff we lose to like AQ/A9/A4s/99/44, but it's clearly +EV to get more money in the pot, as long as we're not bloating the pot out of proportion to our hand's value and/or contorting villain's range severely w/ a raise.

Turn call is standard given sizing, but any bigger and it's a fold. On river, as Thamel mentions, this 40% "underbet" is actually rather large sizing from a passive player who bet significantly smaller on the prior street, so this is probably a fold too.

I'm raising A10o+ and folding A9o- because those hands have the higher card equity and additional equity from flopping a straight. Or if you want to look at it from a range perspective I want to raise 20% of my hands here so I construct a range of 20% of hands that are strong with good board coverage and A9o is just weak enough to not make the cut.

As for the hand. I'm voting for calling the flop and betting if checked to on the turn and river.

I think you can get 20% of hands, and good board coverage, without using any offsuit hands lower than AQ

I think there is some merit to an iso-raise pre-flop and taking it down with a c-bet. The effort/EV ratio is really favorable, and that's the kind of play we should be making in these kind of situations quite a bit.

Because of that, we don't need to do it every time. I think the play is monumentally better with a suited hand. That shouldn't even be a question. I'd literally rather have A5s or JTs here. You could even play Q9s, 97s, or T8s here with a raise.

I think it benefits us if we can show up with strong 1 pair hands in limped pots. And I think it hurts us to bloat the pot with a hand that's easily dominated.

I think it's a mistake to focus just on the described villain here. There is also another limper in the hand, as well as three other folks. One of them will have position on us. Two of them have already invested money in the pot. And all three of them have uncapped ranges.

Yes they have uncapped ranges but do you know what they also have? Super wide ranges. Not just super wide literally the widest possible range you can have which is A2C. If they have a hand that has us dominated they are likely to raise if we limp anyways so I'm not too worried about running into the small super strong portion of their range. All the other times they have some garbage which has like 35-40% equity against us. By raising up we force them to pay the play and also buy the button very often.

Furthermore we miss the opportunity to get the passive fish to put in 17$ more preflop with a range that is much weaker than ours. Isoing this fish is a lot more valuable than being worried about 3 random hands

The line is determined by how often we get called by worse hands, how good/bad our intended iso target is, how often we get called/3bet behind us, stackdepth and overall playability of our hand.

The EP limper probably tightens my range a bit here actually. However AJo is well above the line in like 90% percent of situations and probably somewhere in the middle/top of my range in this particular spot.

I'm probably raising 77+/any broadway combo/any Axs/ATo+/SC from 98s upwards here.
Without the EP limper and assuming tightish BTN/blinds i'd add some more SC's/gappers and maybe some more Axo.

We want to play hands with this guy, and we want the pot to bigger and preferably HU when we do. Limping and/or tightening up achieves the opposite of that.

This is just bad logic. You'd prefer to raise hands like T8s vs a wide limping range (which is fine imo) but you think AJo is somehow MORE easily dominated/does worse than those hands?
If Q9s, 97s, or T8s are in your raising range, then AJo should definitely be also.

And yes, strong 1 pair hands do well in limped pots. However they do exponentially better in single raised pots vs less opponents, for the simple reason that there is more $ already in the pot and less equity to dodge.



Also, +1 on Megamen70's posts.

I agree with the bolded, and most of the last paragraph. However, I disagree with how you're constructing your range.

We can still open a high % of hands, but we want stuff that's gonna flop more equity that we can leverage when bluffing, since that is going to be our primary source of income here. (Him hitting a 2nd best hand and paying off is not that likely).

So definitely go lower on suited connectors than 98. I'd go all the way down to 45. I'm also playing a ton of suited Kx, quite a few Suited gappers, Q9s, J9s, and all the pairs.

It's just really hard to hit a flop with AJoff. If your c-bet bluff doesn't get through, usually you've got almost no equity. Whereas hands with more suitedness and connectedness will have enough equity to continue betting.

And finally, I don't think the cliche 'raise or fold' works at LLSNL. You need a limping range. And if you're going to have a limping range, you'll want some strong-ish hands in there.

You can often get two strong streets of value in a multi-way limped pot when you hit with AJ.

No, this is not how you should be thinking about your ranges.

Your raising frequency has a ceiling. At some point, if you raise too much, you can just get 3-bet and slow-played into oblivion. So there are only so many hands you can open.

If your plan is to iso, c-bet, and take it down (a fine plan), then you should be doing it with hands that flop lots of equity even when they miss. AJo isn't one of those hands. If you whiff, you're just left there with your dick in your hand.

Q9s, 97s, and T8s are all superior hands for this purpose. Vastly superior.

Anyway, like I said, you can only raise so often. And if you're doing it with Q9s, 97s, and T8s (like you should be), then you're probably raising enough, and you can limp other hands that are too strong to fold, but don't play well on missed flops.

Your limping range needs some good hands too.

I think vs fish, big broadway hands that flop top pair are way more valuable than lower suited cards. The value of a hand like 98s is not only in it's potential to make a big hand but also it's fold equity. There is very little fold equity here. So gimme ATo vs 98s any day here.

Raging, this is 1/3. There's rarely gonna be an aggressive enough player behind that will punish us with 3 bets for iso raising too wide. I've deliberately sat in some known OMC games just to run them over for fun. It's fun. Because you can get away with it. They mostly just shake their heads and fold, and maybe call you a little lighter than normal. But what they're never doing is 3 betting 87s vs you. Also, you don't ever NEED a limping range at all. It's optional especially in tables like this one with fish who don't fold. But it's never required.

I'm definitely raising AJo vs a 66% VPIP passive player. I would raise from the CO with probably any suited aces, ATo+, KJo+, QTs+, 77+ until I start getting played back at.

Flop raise doesn't accomplish anything imo.

River is pretty gross, what are we hoping he has? AT, A7? He probably wouldn't lead twice into you given you did raise the flop. I'd probably let it go, if he owned me on this weird line he will lose it back in plenty of other facets of his game if this line is good to him.

I think you're making a mistake here. Those hands are easily dominated by hands that these "fish" would often play passively. What makes them fish is their indefensible pre-flop calling ranges that fold way too often when missing the flop.

No. Fold equity comes from your villain's range, not yours. You have more fold equity when he plays wider ranges. You can leverage fold equity more often when your bets are backed up by traditional equity. 98s does that way more often than ATo

They don't have to 3b to "punish" us. They just have to call to ruin our post-flop bluffing potential. In terms of value potential, this hand, like all hands, sucks multi-way

If you're going to limp, ever, then you need a limping range. Otherwise you become super exploitable (yes even against min-stakes players) because you will never have strong hands in a limped pot.

If you dont' want to limp, then fine. That's a viable strategy. I'm not dismissing that. But it means you fold AJo