And this is where I'd simply say that limping around is actually a better result than going multiway raised, where thanks to the high SPR we actually have room to "play poker", plus if we make any mistakes (which we often will especially if we take a conservative postflop route and fold too much) at least they will be smaller mistakes thanks to the smaller pot.

GimoG

The assumption for the toy game is that you are utg.

If the one rule is that a 5x open goes 5 ways then, most come to the natural conclusion to open larger (thus going fewer ways)

From what I understand (and those in the other camp can correct me if I'm wrong), I think there are those who think going 5ways to a 5x raise with 100bb stacks is a perfectly fistpumpy result.

GnotinthatcampG

66 doesn’t care if everyone calls, it prefers it and might do best as a minraise, AQo utg is likely the exact opposite. AA is somewhere in between.

It's a very good result, perhaps not the best available in such a good game.

AA absolutely loves callers, not surprising for a hand that has such a huge advantage over everything. People just don't like it because it jacks variance way up and people hate losing with AA.

From what I gather the 2 camps here are basically:

1. We are ok trading a little bit of EV for a high reduction in variance. (limp/rr to get HU to the flop, potentially missing some value from a few extra callers)

2. Trading EV for variance is NEVER ok (open AA in every position, disregard number of callers and eval the flop)

Until I got the proper bankroll, I was firmly in camp 1. Now, however, I'm starting to see merits to both approaches, depending on how a particular table plays.

No. Limping camp believes limping from early position in certain games is more +ev.

Good players will exploit the **** out of you if you actually do this...unless you are a nit which is in itself suboptimal.

In online poker. Not live poker where attainable winrates are way higher than online.

Wrong.

No.

What about limping with the intention of limping and then either call, fold, or raise depending what the other players do in the hand?

This thread looked promising but ended up being full of some of the most terrible posts in the history of this subforum (not the posts I replied to). On a positive note, at least it can only get better from here.

When I said "it's always a mistake to limp hands which are strong enough to raise" I meant in the context of the thread, which was about limping weak hands in position after limpers. I didn't mean "never limp reraise", but somehow the thread became about limp reraising and similar preflop trickery, which has little to do with limping speculatively imo.

I don't even know what you mean by a hand which is strong enough to raise. 32 is strong enough for me to raise, or 3bet. What do you mean by a hand that is strong enough to raise?

You made this assertion in your op. Pointing out that some people limp planning to trap are not in fact "screwed" should be a pretty obvious point to make. Point out that people play strong ranges passively from ep on 10 handed tables is an obvious point to make.

There's a lot of very good reason to limp 9s in position here, and the fact that by raising you might rob yourself the opportunity to flop a set vs the top of 1 or more opponent's range is a key one.

The specific example I gave originally was 99 behind limpers. See quoted posts below. I assume you agree that 99 is always a raise OTB behind limpers, barring weird scenarios. I think that's a pretty clear example and don't want to play Loki's Wager on exactly where the line is.

I flicked back through your posts. Maybe let me quote the original thread of the 99 limp I was talking about:

That's what I'm talking about. Limping 99 in a standard LLSNL game because oh no what if overcards come and we don't win. Not "well one time my friend was to the right of a whale and yadda yadda". There are player-archetype based exceptions to pretty much everything in poker, I don't see the point in dragging them into general strategy discussions. Do you agree with those last two posts above?

I see no problems with giving an example after 5 posts on the subject. Trying to boil all of my posts down to that one example... which was one half of one of my posts... after several posters (including yourself) asked for clarification is more than a little disingenuous.

If you wanted to argue against that poster's specific argument for limping 9s then maybe you should have posted his argument in the op instead of just positing that one should always raise 9s. Because people limp with the intention to reraise is a perfectly fine argument to "one should always raise limpers with any hand worth playing" but we can focus on the other argument.

He is at least partly correct because it is table dependent as he said. He is also correct that if a lot of players see the flop then 9s loses a lot of its equity. In many ways 9s is an ideal hand to refute what you're saying because despite being a top 5% hand it is often handicapped postflop due to the nature of holdem. I imagine he could raise here and be +ev, whether it's more +ev than limping is pretty difficult to answer and arguable.

99's real advantage goes up as number of players increases. If you and one other player put 5BB in preflop and they have a typical limping range, for which I use top 50% with premium hands removed*, then you have 67% equity and can expect to get back 6.7BB. If 5 players call with the same range, you have 25% equity and get back 7.5 BB on the raise. These numbers are the tip of the iceberg in terms of benefit of raising since we also get to play a raised pot in position with a hand that frequently makes strong hands.

I have no idea what you mean by "often handicapped postflop due to the nature of holdem". Whatever you mean by that, why doesn't it apply double to our opponents, who have far worse hands and are out of position? I feel like it's fundamentally just a variance dodge, like "I have 99 and an overcard flopped, now I have to play in a raised pot where I'm not sure if I'm winning, shouldn't have raised".

* = { 99-22,AQs-A2s,K2s+,Q2s+,J4s+,T6s+,96s+,86s+,76s,65s,AQo-A2o,K5o+,Q7o+,J7o+,T7o+,98o }

What distinguishes what you're saying about 99 from the sort of players who limp AK? 99 flops an overpair or better a comparable amount (28.5%) to the amount AK flops a pair or better (32.4%).

This kind of math makes no sense. How do you have 67% equity without knowing what the flop will be or how anyone plays post flop? Are we checking it down?

this kind of math makes sense. It includes every possible flop.
And yeah, everyone is checking it down theorethically, but were is the problem?

Is this serious?

This is a bizarre question that I have no idea how to respond to. Is it meaningless to say we have 35% equity with a flush draw if we don't know how our opponent will play or what the turn and river will be? Getting money in with positive equity is one of only two ways to win money at poker (the other is to make people fold when they shouldn't). Everything else is manipulating the situation to be able to do that more effectively. I understand that people are arguing that the way to do that effectively with 99 is to wait until you're miles ahead and do it then, but it's a lot easier to win money in a raised pot, it effectively raises the stakes we're playing.

Maybe I'm coming across aggressively or something in this thread but I really don't understand this mentality. This stuff is poker 101. I feel like if it weren't so well known that limping AK is a hallmark of bad players, that people would be defending limping AK in that spot as well, with precisely the same reasoning (what if we don't flop pairs, we'll be "often handicapped postflop due to the nature of holdem", etc). AK's equity taking a 6-handed flop vs the ranges I gave above is almost exactly the same as 99's and it flops good hands roughly as often, so I have no idea what the difference is.

Well to begin with that's a very generous range, and also removing the possibility that anyone 3bets.


What does "expect to get back" mean? Since you are comparing your equity with their equity and then calculating how much of the pot you'll win I'm assuming that it means the hand ends here after betting 5 bbs. So yes if you only have 5 bbs and know everyone has a worse hand then you should raise, but in real life you can't boil the game down to such a simple thing, poker is far too complex.

What is a strong hand because in my experience 9s does not often make a strong hand multiway. Heads up a pair is often a strong hand, but if we are talking 6 people to the flop it is not. While given your example of people limp calling a2o j4s etc I guess it's possible people are felting any pair in this game, in most games you are not going to be getting a ton of value from a pair of 8s on an 8 high board after you raise preflop and then bet into 5 people. You are going to have even more trouble value betting with any overcard on the board. Furthermore you will almost never have any board where you can attempt to semibluff a better hand. So what, other than a set, is a strong hand that 9s can flop in a 6 way pot?




Because they have 10 cards to hit the flop with.

What I meant by what you quoted is that really only the top 1% of hands retain their equity on the majority of boards. Even a top 5% hand, for example pocket 9s, does not.

This keeps getting thrown around here for some reason and I don't know why. Seems like some attempt at being manly "I don't fear variance!" or something. The argument for limping is not to avoid variance, it's to maximize ev.

Once again the argument for limping isn't

The argument is

"I have 99 and an overcard flopped, now I have to play against 5 opponents with a weak hand after I made the pot large."


In multiway pots the majority of the value from 9s is from flopping sets and getting stacks in. Whether or not it makes more money in multiway pots from raising or limping pre is still up for debate.

edit: ak is a far stronger hand to raise here than 9s. That's poker 101.

No, sorry.

I'm not saying that's the be all and end all, I'm demonstrating that it's +EV in isolation and asking where the downside is. You say most of the value of 99 in multiway pots is in flopping sets, well, wouldn't you rather be in a raised pot when you do flop a set? Well, good news! You can raise preflop and win money on that street when you do and you'll always be in a raised pot when you flop a set, making getting lots of money in a ton easier. It's actually pretty hard to play for stacks when you flop a set of 9s in an unraised pot. Try constructing some hands where opponents will want to get it in.

This is an argument that we are not going to realize our full equity postflop. But if that's true, that must mean one or more of our opponents is going to OVER-REALIZE their equity postflop. There's nowhere else for the equity to go. By arguing that we won't win the pot with 99 as often as we mathematically should, you're arguing that Jim-Bob who is limp-calling out of position with his A7o is going to win the pot more often than he mathematically should. How is that going to happen? To say we are going to under-realize and our opponents are going to over-realize is to say that we are going to be outplayed postflop.

So what? As I just said there's way more to the game than preflop.

Postflop

Let me know how much you are buying with those preflop dollars once you've seen the flop. This is a seriously strange metric to use to try to judge if you've played a hand correctly.

There is far more to playing a hand optimally than just stacking someone when you hit it. I could raise 23 every time I get it so that whenever I flop a wheel I get to stack someone, but that doesn't make much sense. If you lose 5 bbs 7/8 times for a total of -35 and profit 50 bbs then you're making less overall than if I lose 1 bb 7 times (7 bbs) but only profit 35 bbs when I hit.


Cool. More reason to limp because we clearly don't need to lose more than necessary when we don't flop a set if everyone is going to just hand us their stack when we do hit.

And yeah 9s is a hand that gets outplayed a lot. (using your definition of "outplayed" not mine) Far more than a hand like AK.

would you limp TT?