I am a limit hold’em player making the transition to NL Hold’em with a couple of pre-flop questions.

1st Hand: $160 Effective-The UTG open limps and it is folded to me in the HJ with K9s and I raise to $10. Is this a good raise or am I spewing chips?

2nd hand: $152 Effective-4 limpers to me in the HJ and I raise to $16 with AQs and it is folded to a young aggressive Asian kid in the SB, who makes it $45 to go. Folded back around to me, what’s my play?


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1. It depends on the villain. You're behind about 40% of the hands in the deck. If he's limping a lot (playing about half the hands when no one opens, fit or fold post flop, everyone remaining is going to not call just to see a flop and he's not position aware, then it is a good raise. At a passive table where you don't have anyone 3betting light, it is fine too.

2. People generally don't 3 bet light. It would depend on what everyone else does. If the 4 limpers call, I'd fold. If it is going to be HU, I'd call.

+1 to that.

K9s would be my border line for ISO vs UTG limp. I’ve seen lot’s of players OL/C with offsuit broadways so we could be dominated sometimes. Need to pay postflop carefull and only continue with extra equity (like bdfd, OESD and GS).

Hand 2 calling IP and see how it goes. I’m not 4Betting.

1. Looks fine to me unless an IP player is going to give you a lot of trouble.

2. I'm calling for that price. 3x is pretty small especially with the dead money.

I am going to assume we are playing 1-2.

In games where people in general don't like to fold and where 3-betting is uncommon, I would like to raise larger here, to something like $16. My default rule of thumb is 4x + 2n, where n is the number of players already in the pot including the big blind. You can, if you like, figure this as 6x + 2k, where k is the number of limpers. This rule of thumb is cribbed from Alexander Fitzgerald.

When we size up like this, we are aiming to make money less by taking down the blinds than we are by getting our target to put too much money into the pot with too wide a range, and then making them fold to an appropriately sized bet when they miss the flop 70% of the time.

We will profit when we do this with any two cards, even a cocktail napkin and a Kind Bar wrapper -- if no one notices how often we are doing it and adjusts their 3-betting range accordingly, or even starts flatting us more.

In your situation we are in the hijack, and that means there are four players (cutoff, button, small blind, and big blind) acting after us whom our raise must get through to successfully isolated the limper. There is too much chance that one of them wakes up with a hand (or realizes how wide we are playing) for us to play the napkin and wrapper profitably, so we need to dial back on our isolation-raising range.

My opinion is that K9 suited isn't strong enough but even KTs is.

Especially because the SB's squeeze isn't large (I would have made it at least $60) I am seeing a flop here. AQs is way too good a hand to fold, and it isn't strong enough to 4-bet, so we should call.

Do bear in mind that if we make the call, the pot is going to be a hair under $100 and there will be a hair over $100 in the effective stack, so we will have one bullet left.

Hand 1 is fine. Iso pre and c-bet any favorable flop is printing money at 1/2. There are some villains where if they are the only limper and it folds to me OTB I can profitably raise any 2. In a given hand position is substantially more powerful in NL than it is in Limit.

Hand 2 is a tough spot. On one hand 3-bets are pretty rare. Getting 3-bet with AQ/QQ is always annoying because in both cases it's usually a coinflip against typical 3-bet ranges but you're whole stack has to go in to continue. The correct play is probably call here and just close your eyes and call down on any favorable flop. Folding & shoving can both be used as exploits against more known villains.

We're "behind" to all aces, all pocket pairs, and bigger kings. That's a 25% range. The limp allows us to discount the premium hands. We also have a much easier time realizing our equity in position here. Not to mention we just outright win preflop some times. This feels like a slam dunk raise.

What are the odds of 4 people limp/cold calling a 3 bet to $45? Kinda weird that you even mentioned that.

In most cases where everyone folds to the 3 bet, I'm jamming or folding and just about never calling. We arent deep enough to try to call and hit a flop.