Yeah, but we are getting a great price here with a rather strong draw in a multi-way pot against villains that don't like to fold. Shouldn't we at least be considering flatting? I mean the Villain in this hand has previously called it off with A-high. I think both flatting and raising will be +EV, but it's difficult to tell which will be more.

Also, food for thought... If the PFR jams all over pairs behind us if we flat and the fish come along, isn't that also a favorable situation for us (obv don't want to be against the NFD, too late to worry about that now though). Do we think he will fold an over pair if we jam?

I think shoving is better because we can get V2 to fold a lot of the time and that increases our equity in the hand. If both V's were always calling it off then flatting would be more profitable.

I'm cool with preflop. After this many limps at this obviously loose table, I doubt we have much chance at thinning the field ourselves with a raise, so I'm cool with seeing a cheapish flop with a good multiway hand in good position. And even though I'd rather have not paid so much to see the flop, the hand is still going very multiway with us in position, so I grit my teeth and call.

Pot size should probably be more like $200 going to the flop, no? Whatever.

I think I shove the flop. The pot is already a massive ~$300, so it's well worth winning. We have the second nut flush draw and overs, so we should be doing fairly well equity wise. Against TP hands like small overpairs we are actually ahead, plus massive dead money in the middle, plus FE (of which we should have some).

The bigger the pot is in relation to our stacks, the more aggro we should be and attempt to win it. The smaller the pot is in relation to our stacks, the more passive we can be, and simply sit back and try to hit our hand before attempting to win chips afterwards. This is a big pot.

ETA: A little surprised that everyone else is in the "raise pre" camp (although, I must admit, I didn't realize that our later read was that straddler was going to raise, which does change things drastically). We obviously have no FE preflop at this table (lol, we just went eleventeen way to the flop for $30, you think $40 is going to get it done? Really?). We often have a dominated hand. And our hand does play fine multiway (I'm getting slightly hard seeing a cheap flop at this table in position). Overlimping here is standard at this table, imo (with the one caveat being that we aren't expecting straddler to raise).


GcluelessNLnoobG

yes we have great equity on the flop and people might wana consider calling because we're getting a great price. but add fold equity when we jam it(in case we flat and miss the turn and river) and we now have even more enormous equity (including FE).

Also, why would we wana flat pf when we can isolate and hand ourselves the keys to the car? We then force everyone ELSE to hit the flop and there is a lot of dead money in there. By isolating to about two callers we have a much better chance to win the hand instead of playing fit or fold.

I hardly ever look for FE pf. besides, I WANT people to call me and try to hit their hand, because I make more money that way (assuming people are playing very good postflop).

Did you notice we went 6ways to the flop? When we go 6ways to the flop, it doesn't matter who is driving the car; all that matter is who has the best hand. And we get get into some extremely sucky situations when we flop a mediocre hand like TP in a bloated pot like this. We have a speculative hand, there is no reason to build a big pot preflop in hopes that we'll hit; overlimp and keep our implied odds sky high, imo.

GoutofstepwiththeforumG

We only get into a tough situation with TP in a 6 way hand if we cannot lay it down when faced with the right amount of aggression. The vast majority of the time, everyone is going to have to play their hands pretty face up in a 6 way pot, so we should have a fairly good idea of where we're at just by the normal action and gameplay.

And we don't actually have a speculative hand preflop. When everyone limps like that, we know our hand beats their range. So we should turn up the heat to the point where we get 1 or 2 callers. In my experience, they'll still call a larger bet with hands that we dominate anyway -- we really don't have to worry all that much about being sandbagged by a bigger hand that is limp/calling.

We should eventually have a good enough read on our opponents to know whether they're likely to be sandbagging with a big hand anyway.

IMO, the correct adjustment to a limpy/cally table is to push harder with our value range. It is not to play along with the fish.

We just saw a 6way (or is it 7way?) flop for $30 each. Pot on the flop is approximately $200 (more according to OP). We have $420 left. We flop TP. A dude bets $100 (let's say he has the same stack as us). Now what? Calling/making any bet is pretty much committing us to the pot (calling a single $100 1/2 PSB will create a ~$400 pot with us only having $320 left). Sure hope we don't make a big mistake (and it is a huge mistake to fold the best hand in a pot this big, as well as call of the rest of our stack with the worst of it). Can we figure out which situation we are in facing a simple single bet? I can't. Unless you're figuring we're going to face a bet, reraise, reraise on the flop, allowing us to safely fold our hand.

FWIW, I have zero problem with a preflop raise if it is likely to accomplish narrowing the field to HU or 3way. The thing is, this just seems so unlikely at this table, especially with all the limpers already to us.

GcluelessNLnoobG

well top pair in a 6 way limped pot is nothing to get too excited about. And I am not raising pf to build a big pot in case we hit our hand - I am actually raising for the opposite reason, knowing that most likely I will miss the flop. Now, by taking the initiative pf, we can win without a hand while it forces the other one or two people who call to hit their hand to continue, but when we just call pf we are pretty much forced to hit a hand to continue with 6 players in the hand.

Not to derail to far, but in your example, why are we not giving The Dude some respect for his $100 bet? This seems like a trivial fold with TPMK.

Next hand we raise to $35, and see how many chuckleheads we get.

...

I ask the question honestly: If you're going to limp along with the other fish, how are you going to beat them? What makes your style different then theirs?

Very interesting strategy discussion ITT so far, this is why players like me can learn so much from this forum

Read GG's "well". he has a far different approach to playing than a lot of us but based on his player pool seems to work for him.

There is nothing at all wrong with limping certain hands in certain game types and in certain conditions. but it doesn't mean we are a fish just because we limp, even though there are people who don't wana "play like a fish".

Why is everyone assuming that raising is going to thin the field to 1 or 2 opponents when clearly this isn't going to happen at this table? We just saw a 6/7way flop for $30 each!

GgoodluckisolatingwithyourspeculativehandsG

completely agree, shove flop not particularly close either

pre is OK but prefer raising mainly just to maintain pos, if you get BTN and blinds to fold and keep the position for the flop you have a much better hand imo, even if none of the other players fold and it's a partial bonus if any of them do

surprised no one suggested re-raising the straddler, seems std actually and better than a flat at that point

So our plan is to routinely fold TP in SPR ~2 pots with huge money in them? To a 1/2 PSB bet? Where obviously we are at a table where worse TP hands could easily be calling preflop raises (I mean, that was one of the points of raising preflop at this loose table, for value in that a worse TP hand would call, right?). This seems like a big mistake to me if we are incorrect. Course, it's just as big a mistake if we call off our stack with the worst of it too.

What I'm saying is why are we purposely trying to put ourselves in this obviously tough spot? Why not just attempt to avoid it, overlimp preflop, hope to see a cheapish flop, and then if we flop TP we can easily fold because it's not much of a mistake folding TP in a small pot / high SPR (i.e. big deal, move on to the next hand). Now, some of the time, our opponents aren't going to cooperate with our plan and they're going to end up creating the exact same situation had we raised ourselves (like happened this time). But at least we don't create it ourselves 100% of the time.

GavoidingstupidspotsG


This is a pretty simple one to answer: because (hopefully) we play a lot better than them postflop, especially in multiway limped pots. They hit 2nd pair, see a donk into the world, 2 callers, and with 3 people still to act behind, fistpump, declare "pot odds!", and call. Or, they slowplay their monster hands and don't get nearly the maximum value we would. Or a myriad of other mistakes, such as stacking off for 100bbs in multiway limped pots with mediocre hands, and so on. We are way better than these idiots postflop in multiway limped pots, so let's get into as many of them as possible with them for cheap.

GpreflopfishG

Well for one thing nobody respects straddle raises.

It is likely that a raiser in the field gets some respect

And this is something else no one else has addressed (and admittedly OP appended his "straddler raises his straddle everytime" read much later in thread): No one else is a little concerned that there have already been a zillion limps to us when everyone knows the straddler is going to raise? Very good chance someone is sandbagging preflop when if first gets to us.

ETA: Preflop for me comes down to whether we think a raise after a zillion limpers truly has a reasonable chance at thinning the field (3way at worse, where "driving the car" actually does mean something postflop). Based on the results of this hand, and having played at these types of tables, it just seems extremely unlikley this is going to happen.

Gforinstance,IwouldeasilyoverlimpwithAAhereG

AA... Orly.

AA and other big hands is such an easy overlimp here.

GimoG

This reminds me... Have to quickly figure out where GG plays and take a poker holiday there ASAP.

No worries, lappy. We've always butted heads on preflop.

Gmorethanonewaytowinatthisgame,IassumeG

Tru story.