They've done studies, you know. 100% of the time it works, every time.

I have to respectively disagree with this. Its much easier to get all in with confidence when I flop a big hand with 98s than it is when I have an over pair or TPTK. Where I play its very rare to get 100 BBs in with AQ vs KQ on a Q high board. At least during the daytime when I play most of my hours.

We get AQ in a lot easier if we 3! first. I don't know about your room, where I play they routinely make it 5bb pre and call too wide to raises. So we can make it 15bb, they'll call with KQo OOP, pot is 30bb OTF, now they're not folding top pair. 'Where was I going with that?!' they say. 'Nowhere, you played it fine', you say.

I was going to post these same thoughts as a question, then, I eventually realized, there's another more important question: how are we in a spot in a 3bet pot, IP, with a hand that finds a near nut flop against a face up range, but there are no clear value bets available?

I didn't realize the stacks were so short I only read hero had $850. Yeah It's definitely an overlimp in this spot.

@MikeStarr that bolded part is correct.

You seem like a sharp guy, but I have to tell you that Johnny is giving you Gold in his simplicity. You don't need to bluff, ever. This hand is a bluff both PF and otf here, which is why this hand is posted here to begin with.

I cant get in too much detail atm, but there is a cognitive bias in play comparing 98s to an OP/TPTK. I know you're not debating their raw value, but rather the ease with which you stack off with dynamic vs static equity.
However, if you summed your profits from the flop forward of all your TPTK/OPs vs that of SCs, you already know which is more. So, while you'll be able to more "confidently" get in more straights, trips, and non-nut flushes with SCs, the rate at which that happens along with the marginal IO when they do (like ck back OR betting 78 on 689 vs AA) is not enough to justify/recover the inflated early street premiums you seem willing to pay to do so.

Of course its a bluff preflop. On the flop, the dude should've taken the free card. I make a ton of money in position with suited connectors but they have to be played correctly. (I have stopped playing them so much OOP thanks to you guys here so thanks for that).

Maybe we are talking about apples and oranges. Playing in the evening or on Saturday, you're right. You can never bluff and just play big pairs and TPTK fast and furious and do well, but I play mostly during the day with a bunch of oldish regulars and playing opposite from what they are used to seeing is what gets their money.

I guess what Im saying is to beat TAGs, or better yet "weak passives", you need to be a LAG but if I was playing a bunch of loose players, TAG would be all I needed to do.

But Mike, when stacks are shorter, it is harder to profitably realize the equity of small card hands. Sure you can bluff but you can bluff with ATC.

Small SCs have their value deep when you have room postflop to barrel or semibluff and get the backup of turned or rivered 2p or straights when your semibluffs/barrels fail and you capitalize on big pots. Small card hands that often are outside of your perceived range certainly payoff then.

When stacks are 60 bbs or whatever you simply can't do that profitably due to stack comittment of both hero and villain. This was what I was attempting to express in my earlier post. Jbuzz put it very succinctly.

It's widely accepted, and for good reason, that in NL the value of big card hands and small card hands converge as stacks get deeper. But shallow the big card hands will be more EV.

Of course the shallower the stacks are, the less you can "play poker". In my games, I would say half the table has 50-65 BBs and half has 100BBs or more. It would seem less profitable to raise 98s against a 60BB stack because you will never win 200BBs when you flop a monster but those players also tend to play much worse which makes them easier to outplay and its amazing how often they limp/call and then fold the flop.

Playing live we dont have the ability to go back and look at certain hands like we used to with PokerTracker, so I cant say for sure how profitable these hands are for me, but overall I think my play has improved tremendously since I started playing more LAGgy preflop. I wish I was better at explainaing my thoughts as to why that is.

The problem I have with what your saying Mike is that you're implying that isolating 60bb limpers w/ 98s is more profitable than AQ-AJ "Because you can get it in more confidently when you flop huge".

If a 60-70bb players limp calling range is (22-TT, 78s+, Axs+, K9s+, Broadways) Your top pair type hands like (AK,AQ,AJ,KQ,KJ) have more value and play much better against this range than suited connectors.

That said I would still isolate a fit/fold fish with a wide range but I'd rather do it with the stronger hands than the weaker ones if given the option.

When the stacks are large, you're absolutely right. When the stacks are small, this is objectively wrong (by which I mean math and stuff show that it's wrong except for pathological cases).

With deep stacks, TP is going to be way behind when all the money goes in. In those cases, you need a very strong hand in order to play more than a relatively small pot. (Small pot means small relative to stacks, not small in absolute dollars.)

But for a small stack, this is exactly backwards. Speculative hands like 87s don't have the runway to get to their big hand and are very unlikely to flop gin. Big card hands pretty much either make a hand on the flop or they're done. Small PP are in between. Less likely to be best on the flop, but more likely to flop something big than hands like SCs.

When you have a hand like AQ, if you hit TPTK, you're very likely to be ahead on the flop. With a short stack, you can get it all in on the flop and deny drawing hands any implied odds. Even if they have the right immediate odds to call, you're still making money on every dollar that goes into the pot.

With a short stack, play only hands that pretty much get there on the flop: premium pairs and big card hands. (You might be able to limp in with a small PP if there are enough other players and you don't expect a raise.) Playing SCs, suited aces, and other speculative hands is losing money. If you get there on the flop, get the money in as fast as possible. Trap dominated hands and force draws to either pay too much or surrender their equity.

With a big stack (meaning a big effective stack), SCs, small PPs suited A's and other speculative hands become more valuable. Big cards are also valuable, but the speculative hands get closer to them. Now there's room to maneuver post flop and the speculative hands can flop a draw with very profitable implied odds. TP hands, on the other hand, need to proceed more cautiously because they have to avoid giving fat implied odds to the speculative hands.

100 BB is a bit of a blend. You can play some speculative hands, but the money is still not that deep. If TPTK goes in for 100 BB, it's fairly likely to be behind in a limped pot. In a raised or 3b pot, it may still be ahead.

TPTK can be difficult to play with 100 BB stacks for this reason. They generally want to play for less than stacks. But not always. It depends on preflop action and V's tendencies.

I think that's correct tbh

There is some really good knowledge being tossed around ITT - good work everyone.

I generally don't even bother getting creative with SC's (ie: raising multiple limpers after I've been showing down only big pair hands) until effective stacks are >150 BB's (and ideally more, like 200+).

Playing winning poker should be easy. What I mean by that is you should never feel like you are making a "difficult decision." Every time I am faced with a "tough decision," I can be reasonably assured I made a mistake somewhere along the way. Sometimes this is unavoidable, like playing premium pairs OOP in a 3! pot >200 BB's deep, but those are exceptions rather than the norms.

You should absolutely never be in a tough spot with 98s vs. 60-80 BB stacks. If you find yourself in that predicament, just accept that you screwed up in one (or multiple) place(s) along the way and do some off the table homework to figure out why that happened. Maybe you raised limpers and got check raise shoved on an A76 flop with your 98s by a short stack. Yep - you made mistakes in that hand for allowing the SPR to be so low that check/shoving was a possibility (in addition to you not taking your free card).

I understand every word of this. I just dont agree with all of it. Im not saying raising a suited connector isnt better 200BBs deep than it is 100BBs deep. Im saying its still proftable at 100BBs deep if you know what youre doing. Thats all.

I don't disagree with you wrt to this hand or playing SC accounting for stack depths, etc. But saying you should never be in a tough decision is kind of absurd. I mean the other guy is trying to win pots too so we are going to have to make some decisions and some of those will be tough.

Now I'll grant you against most LLSNL mouth breathers we can assume that most of the decisions will be trivial but if we are trying to avoid making tough decisions in hands, later streets, whatever, then you are likely leaving $$$ on the table.

But raising SCs into calling stations 100bb deep is not profitable IMO.

What does a station limp with and how are we doing against that range with 9-high? Understand that when we hit a pair, we're going to run into A- and broadway kickers a lot vs. someone that doesn't fold. Running semi-bluffs on a station is terrible because our fold equity isn't enough to make it worthwhile.

So we're left with flopping gin and since the odds of doing so are very small, it's simply bad to bloat the pot against these guys.

EDIT

Maybe it's too simplistic to take this kind of approach. But I simply don't consider myself good enough to make money against someone who hates folding and is ahead of my range, when the SPRs are small. So I either pick a range that beats them and bloat the pot or I take speculative hands cheaply in position.

Now if you're confident you can outplay these guys postflop profitably with small SPRs and weak hands, more power to you. I'll be the first to admit I'm not very good at poker.

Where did I say it was a good idea to do it against calling stations?

Yes I thought You were quite clear that you were talking about your weekday, daytime games with OMCs and whatnot.

Well you said 'preflop is fine', when we're raising SCs into calling stations and then gone on to cling to the merits of raising SCs, so it's a reasonable assumption to make. If you've made a mental 180 somewhere in the past few posts, that's something you've kept to yourself so I really can't be expected to pick up on it.

True I was being pretty general for sake of argument, but I think tough decisions and mistakes go hand in hand. If the goal of poker is to make fewer mistakes than our opponents, then we should be faced with fewer difficult decisions than our opponents if we avoid the common mistakes they make.

Obviously tough decisions are impossible to mitigate completely, and for me they generally arise when I am OOP and choose to forgo pot control for value instead - which often leads to difficult river decisions in large pots, but those are generally the exception.

Usually you can tell you had a good session when you played a fairly straightforward game, bet your hands for value, didn't find yourself having to make many difficult decisions, etc. And more often than not, those "easy (and profitable) sessions" can probably be traced back to correct decision making regarding preflop decisions.

Everything in poker can be traced back to preflop.

The weekday daytime games I play in are mostly full of weak tight OMCs. Half of them limp / fold all the time and a lot of the others limp / call and then fold the flop when they dont hit TP. Playing LAG against either type works pretty well for me.

I played TAG for many years and did pretty well but nothing has improved my win rate and improved my post flop play more than playing LAGgy preflop and on the flop but shutting down to resistance.

Im convinced against these weak tight daytime regs, I could raise almost anything in position after a limper or 2 and bet most flops and make money. Its amazing how much money can be made with very little variance. Obviously you need to pay attention to who tries to float and that kind of thing but its pretty scarce during bankers hours.

In this situation the stacks are shallow, meaning less than 100bb. There was a stack of 400$ or 80bb and one of 300$ or 60bb. There was 150$ into the pot leaving a low SPR which is great for a solid TPTK type hand. 98 suited is a hand that need lots of implied odds.