An interesting (to me at least) theoretical approach, however flawed...

2/3 game with $100 capped buy-in amount ($150 if felted) nine handed full ring game... player next to me plays maybe 20-30% of hands, every time he chooses to play (if it is "first to open" or it's "limped to him") he makes it "eight to go".

He does it with stack sizes (both his and everyone else's) of $80 to $350. Whether he's up or down. Every time he is first in.

Aside from him doing this, game is not particularly tight and not overly loose. The players are bad regs, occasional newbies, maybe 2 or 3 reasonably good players.

After three hours of that I ask him "... you don't have to respond if you don't want to, but I'd be interested in your rationale. You seem to have decided that making it eight to go is optimal. Why?"

Guy was anxious to share his thoughts, nobody ever asked him. He wants to disguise his starting hand, and he wants "to have more choices when the action comes around to him", either pre-flop or post-flop. He feels 8-to-go never makes him pot-committed.

Is he a winning player? I will answer that later.

Some very natural consequences arise when a guy does that.

A lot of Villains see the cascade of $8 callers and mumble "pot odds" as they, too, join the cascade. Six or seven ways to the flop, sometimes eight, and of course usually both the small and big blinds find the discounted call amount irresistible.

Some Villains, I'm just sayin, find that limping with premiums (and some find that limping with anything) in anticipation of maybe five or more $8 limps is too much fun to pass up, and when it comes around back to them they make it 2x the current pot ... and they, too, disguise their hand because sometimes they take it all down without a flop - and sometimes they have premiums - and if anyone calls their big raise they feel any two cards bigger than, say, an 8 seems (to them) to have enough equity to make it worth while.

In that way, Mr. "Eight to Go" makes it a looser game with more action.

Although he thinks this is in his own best interests, I have my doubts.

I won't burden the thread with my own opinions just yet... but ...

What do you think?

Someone may ask "what do you mean by a bad reg"?

A Villain who is always there afternoons and weekends, who thinks, for example, after five people call the $8, a good hand to come along with is something like Ax suited or not, any connectors of any size including one-gappers and two-gappers, and any two suited cards.

No, they rarely call the 2x-pot reraise ... unless that puts them all in, then they are happy to get it in with any Ax.

It's a bad strategy against good opponents who will figure out his range and punish him with reraises. And if he is raising like that over limpers he is making limp/raise very profitable as you noted. Against fish and bad regulars that don't adjust it can work if he plays tolerably well post flop but I don't think I have every seen anybody at 1/2 playing that sort of style profitably.

He is also pushing the game heavily towards raw hand strength. With a couple of calls on $8 SPR is going to be < 10 most of the time and TPTK becomes a committed hand. For the same reason drawing hands will go down in value.

Seems a bit too inflexible to me. For example, if everyone is sitting on $80 and there are 4 limps to him on the Button, it seems pretty bad to make it $8 with pretty much any hand at this stack depth; his monsters give the world far too good IO where he'll be committed postflop, and there's no reason to juice with it at this stack depth with speculative hands (where the SPR will be ~5 with just an overlimp) plus risk having to fold to a limp/reraise; if everyone is sitting on $600, much more argument for it.

Having said that, in some ways my approach (especially OOP) is somewhat similar in that I always make it $3 to go (i.e. instead of raising $5 with my whole range like he does, I raise $0 with my whole range). But when I'm forced to raise in LP/blinds I size my raise to effective stacks.

And I also see your point about how lots of better players will start adjusting as soon as they realize they are sitting in a game with Mr. Make It Eight, including limping premiums. Poker seems to be this constantly shifting pendulum of tactics, and I've gone to a limpy tactic to combat the overraisey tactic that is very common. But I will admit this pendulum *might* be slowly swinging back the other may in my game, as now more and more players seem to be taking a similar passive approach, and thus the better aggro players are learning to tone down their aggression.

GcluelessadjustingnoobG

Nope. Don't like it unless he's amazing post-flop. The only advantage is that his range is extremely wide. Aware players should be able to adjust very easily.

I will admit that I adjust my pre-flop raises only by the number of limpers and position (based on table dynamics and stacks), but never by my hand. Some people think that's a mistake, too.

But would you rather have the TP hand or the speculative hand? If the effective stacks are $150 and he makes it $8 and gets 3 callers, the SPR will be 4.5. So TP will have a hard time getting away, and meanwhile speculative hands got pretty awesome 21+ IO. Although admittedly hands that are still drawing postflop have little IO due to the small stacks behind, and of course the first preflop caller(s) with speculative hands are taking a risk that others come along without reraising.

GitsetsupsomeweirdspotsforeverybodyG

Is it optimal? No. Could someone be profitable in the described game? Yes. It is at most a small error compared to what most low stakes players make.

IO won't be that good, it's a $100 max buy in game. With most players nursing a stack below the max buy in the implied odds on calling $8 is going to be marginal to bad most of the time.

That's fair enough if everyone is a super short $80 or whatever, but OP did say you can rebuy in for $150.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Sounds like the perfect preflop strat for what is essentially a 1/2 game at that vpip. If he's good post, look out. Yes, I'm serious. He can't be punished easily and can open call more hands without getting too committed. Everyone should play this way pre.

Correction. His OPEN is good. his raise over limps (OP that was a bit weird the way you added that in there) is poor.

If hes playing 20-30% of hands in a 2/3 game capped at 33BBs....he's not good.

Plus if he's getting in a very large 8% - 10% of his stack preflop every single time with this wideish range (which he would always be doing when sitting $80 - $100 deep) then that is pretty suspect too. With deeper stacks, he'd be getting in a lot smaller percentage of stacks, so more reasonable.

GcluelessNLnoobG