Herro

So ive been at this table (1/2) for about an hour playing tight and not too many pots and have around 70BB. Villian is a big black guy (not hood black but middle eastern) who is playing pretty loose and had won the last 4 or 5 pots in a row without showing anything down is sitting on 150BB.

Villian limps UTG, Folds to CO(random guy who hasnt played many hands) who limps, I look down at Kc9c and raise to 15 in an attempt to steal or isolate and play a hand heads up.

Blinds fold. UTG min raises to 30, CO calls, I am getting 5:1 to call but cannot really establish a good range for Villian.

Is this an easy call given the odds? This is the bottom of my range and given the limp raise it screams strength but given the number of hands he plays I am lost in the hand

Stack sizes are important here but assuming effective stacks are around 100bb or deeper then yeah this is a call given the small sizing and your relative and absolute position.

Stacks matter here, you and villain both have to be reasonably deep for this to be worth while. I would want 100bb and preferably more, even that I'm only calling because we have position on both villains because Hero probably has to hit something better then top pair here. There is a small chance catching top pair is good vs villain's QQ/JJ type hands but Hero will never know if they are ahead or not in those cases and the hands will be hard to play.

I'm putting Villain on qq+. U need like 150+bb to even consider callig here. Just fold pre

what is his range here? Do i respect the 3 bet from UTG? could this be with any Ax?

His range is pretty polarized here IMO, at the very very least JJ+ and effective stacks are far too small for me personally to want to get involved although with such great pot odds and position I could be in favour of a call

Jesus christ, just fold pre. Show a little patience young grasshopper. Seems like everyone on this board wants to "isolate" with these god-awful hands. The "isolation" never works, and everyone loses money. And btw, you cant try to "isolate" when 2 players limp before you act. You cant hope one player folds.

Those spots is pretty much about avoiding stupid situations, and do what we can to not get ourself involved in tricky spots. What do we do if we flop top pair with our nine? What do we do if we flop top pair with our king? Do we like our hand?

What i am saying is that i would just fold this pre, and avoid the situation. Limp reraise is in my experience 9 out of 10 times a monster,and K-9 is not a hand i am taking to war. If i had a pocket pair or suited connector type of hand that could have good possiblities to crack his big pair, yes i am the team for calling and see a flop. But k-9? Just dump it, next hand.

Generally, my opinion is that many players will profit on avoid situations that they CAN avoid. Its a classic from HSP season 2 when John Aguistino says something like this after getting in a reraise war preflop with Esfandiaris KK holding 1010 and finally realized that he is trying to bite over more than he wants: "Why the hell did i put myself into this mess?".

Words of wizdom i believe.

As said above iso pre is bad, I don't understand why you would even have a polarised range here. I love how people think they can use position to profit here all your doing is donating

The minraise is too villain specific to really range here. However, the most likely possibility from UTG is that he has a big hand and wants to get money in without scaring people away, that would put his range at something like QQ+. Other possibilities include AK, pairs and suited connectors setting things up to shove if they hit and bluff if they don't, total garbage setting things so they can bluff later and a wide range of marginal hands trying to see if your serious with your raise.

This is one of those situations where paying close attention to what goes on is key. This sort of min raise preflop is always exploitable once you know villain's range but until you see a few hand it is very hard to get a range on what sort of hands he would do this with.

After thinking about it alot I think you are correct. I didnt want to give villian credit for QQ+ because of the number of hands he was playing but this is pretty straightforward.

My question for you is this: I feel like I havent been utilizing positional advantage enough in cash games. Is this idea a leak? In this situation I am limping 40% and raising 60%. Is this too often for a raise?

Agree

This hand is fine to isolate a late position limper if you're somewhat competent post flop.

^ there's 2 limpers. World of a difference. This would be a situation to raise for value with a good hand, not to isolate with crap.

could you elaborate alittle bit?

so what is the worst hand you are raising here with?

Yep, that is a very easy trap to fall into. The sudden small bet from a LAG should set off warning bells, because for many mediocre LAGs it is a hand good enough they don't want you to fold.

K9s is an OK hand to make this of raise for squeeze/control sometimes but not often. I would fold this more then anything, and I'm not limping in here very often, I would rather raise or fold. I don't expect a loose player to fold an EP limp very often, and K9s isn't really strong enough to raise for value.

Thanks for the help!

I've been tightening up my iso-with-crap attempts. With 2 limpers, all it's going to take is 1 call out of the blinds and before you know it we're going to a 4way flop. So unless blinds + 2 limpers are quite tight, I'm rarely attempting an iso with a weak hand after 2 limpers.

Even though we are getting good odds preflop, I think I just fold. I'm going to have no idea what to do on TP type flops and can see myself losing at least one bet postflop. I'd much rather have a hand like 66 where I know exactly what I'm doing postflop.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Probably AJo

I don't hate over limping OTB with suited king rag hands fwiw. We only get that little white guy once every nine hands so I'm not just giving it up to no raise if i have anything moderately playable. Less leaky than completing the SB with K9s imo.