Hi - posting a few hands for general check-in advice. I'm mostly a mid-stakes fixed limit player, so forgive me if these are obvious.

Setting: Game is easy Sunday morning Borgata $1/$3 with all the OWM who just woke up, drove down, grabbed their coffee and are ready to limp and then fold. Hero has ~$700 after being up playing with the tired crew, and is definitely the youngest at the table (I'm 35) and most aggressive (I've shown down KT for a raise pf oooooo)

Villain 1 is your friendly grandpa. He told me all about his niece and how good the bad beat jackpot at the showboat used to be. Doesn't really do much in hands other than limp.

Villain 2 is ancient, doesn't speak, and played one hand where he casually open limped 99, flopped a set, checked it back, called a bet on the turn and checked back a river when a flush hit.

On to the action (if you can call it that). All 7-max.

Hand 1:
Villain 1 limps utg, button limps, sb completes. I check J5.
Flop: JJ4
Sb checks, Hero bets $5, utg calls, button and sb fold.
Turn K
Hero checks. Villain bets $15, hero calls
River 7
Hero checks. Villain bets $25, hero folds

Hand 2:
Villain 1 limps utg, co limps, button limps, sb completes. Hero checks J8
Flop T85
sb checks, hero bets $10, utg calls, rest fold.
Turn 2
Hero bets $15, utg calls
River J
Hero bets $20, villian raises to $45, hero folds

Hand 3:
Villian 2 limps in mp, hero raises to $15 otb with JT bb calls, villain calls
Flop T84
checks to hero who bets $15, only villain calls
Turn 7
checks to hero who bets $25, villain calls
River J
villain leads for $35, hero folds

Hand 1 & 3 are good folds.

I feel like hand 2 has to be a call. If he is a true nit he doesnt have 97 or Q9 so maybe a very very slow played set. If V1 is very friendly I would try to get him to show you his cards at some point.

Honestly if the game plays like some of the 1/2 & 1/3s I find myself in during the first hour or two of opening at my poker room, I'd move tables ASAP.

Next time maybe post pot size on each street (which gives us a clearer idea of what you're betting into what).


H1:

Fine, imo.


H2:

I check the flop (probably mostly folding to a bet).

I probably check/fold the turn.

I'm fine with river.


H3:

I probably overlimp preflop.

Think I'm ok with postflop.

GcluelessNLnoobG

On the flop we have only second pair in a multiway pot. I can see an argument for betting for equity protection, but it certainly isn't a good value bet. Check and evaluate.

As played, on the turn it is heads up, we are out of position, and we have second pair. I would check and hope that the villain checks behind, likely folding to a bet.

As played on the flop and turn, yeah, I would bet the river. Easy fold to a raise. We are more likely beat by a set or JT than we are by Q9.

ETA: These flop and turn bets are obvious good bets in limit hold'em, but they are obvious mistakes in NLHE. This sort of spot is where LHE players get into trouble. (I was an LHE pro for a long time, so I know.)

I can't quite figure out what hand he has in H2

If he's a nit, any of the two cards that make a straight he would have folded pre, but nits don't raise river without the nuts generally. I guess TT or JJ are the only 2 cards, but nits are often too scared to make river raises without the nuts.

If you're 100% sure he's a nit and plays scared money, then bluff reraise on H2, since he can't have the nuts and will fold assuming you do. This is of course pretty baller and rests 100% on having a good read on him.

BTW - what's your definition of nit?

My definition fwiw is playing 10/5 or tighter, very rarely bluffing, and raises or big leads on turns or rivers are nearly always monsters. Always thinks MUBSY.

Yes, clearly this is a leak from my LHE experience and general play style. Agreed 100%.

Guess it depends on the definition of nit, like you said. A lot of afternoon 1/2 nits will limp in with any piece of trash (bad beat jackpot!) and then play super nitty and cautious postflop (never raising without the near nuts). I though that was what OP was trying to get across.

H1 and H2 both went 4 or 5-way at a 7-handed table, which is a pretty good indication that players are limping in with all sorts of trash.

Wouldn’t put it past the opponent to have 97o in H2 for the second-nut straight. Agreed he shouldnt have Q9 too often since that’s just a gutshot and wouldn’t call turn. Definitely don’t think this player type is raising with worse than JT, so I think H2 is a good fold.

Nit was probably the wrong word. OWM? I don't like this term cause I'm one of them...

For those who wanted to know the results:
Hand 1 villain showed JTo
Hand 2 villain showed pocket 22

Defo not a nit if he's calling your flop bet with an underpair with multiple people behind.

Grunch:
H1 well played.
H2 I would have check / called at every chance.
H3 I think this is fine, though I don’t love the JTo MP open. I’m sure I would open it at some % based on game flow but just don’t get nuts with it.

Post grunch : people are ALWAYS spazzier than you think.

Agreed if it was from MP, but it's on the button. I'm OK though don't love that it's not suited.

My bad.

You will probably burn out from poker if you continue to play in games like these. I know the objective of poker is making money but if you are going to do this long term it is much better for your game and your sanity to go up against people who don't live in a retirement home.

Are you kidding? OMC games are like the most stress free form of poker ever. If they’re loose OMCs, just play TAG, if they’re nit OMCs, play LAG. Don’t pay off aggression. EZ game


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Barry Greenstein said the reason him and Ivey never ran it twice in the older days of TV poker is because their mental was a lot stronger and they would be able to continue to play well even if they lost a big hand whereas their opponents could not.

I don't have any stress playing normal 100+ BB poker because I am a winning player over a large sample size and I enjoy playing big pots. If you want to chip away at predictable players who call with 95% of their range I don't see anything wrong with that but playing against those V's isn't going to help your game if you want to take shots at bigger stakes and improve your game as a whole.

Don't you get tilted by the 80 year old that gets up every 2nd orbit and comes back to wait for his BB and tanks for every decision over $20?

Now THAT stresses me out.

You young whippersnappers need to learn patience.

The money doesn’t stress me. The stressor is when you’re playing unpredictable players, it’s easy to make errors. But guys who limp/fold constantly are losing fairly big. I’ve met dudes like this dumping $40-$70k a year at weekday afternoon 2/5.

Yes they aren’t the most profitable guys to play against, but you’ll always feel good about the decisions that you make. It’s the least tiring form of poker because you’re almost never faced with a complex situation


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I think it's fine to play in quiet games when you want to. In this particular case I had started my session at 2am (yes) and had powered through a table of zombies and drunks. That's fun and all but when the sun comes up, and the coffee is hot, it's ok to want to chill out and make some easy small decisions. I spent 2-3 hours getting a sneak preview of an AARP meeting while I waited for the 20-40 to be called or for lunch time. Either way I don't regret this decision.

1&2 area Los to me. You have Strong hand in each one. You’ll be getting 20 to win 115 in hand 2. 25 to in 77 in hand 1. Hand 1 he can easily have just a king. In either case you folded to20 and 25. If they have it so be it but there’s hands you beat in their range. If you’re not ok g to call 5 after betting 20 then why lead out?

Hand 3 is calling 35 to win 115 but the board is super connected.

25 to win 77

Not sure what any of this means, other than it's bad advice.

Yeah like I used to grind 20/40 limit pretty regularly as well. One big takeaway is that my limit sessions could last much longer than my NL sessions. Limit, I could be in hour 14 and my gameplay is just as solid as it was when I first sat down. Whether the game was great or mediocre (i likely wouldn’t still be playing in a mediocre one FWIW). Because good limit hold em play is robotic. Just execute a strategy and if the strategy is good, you’ll do okay.

NL, on the other hand, I’m exhausted after like 5-6 hours. And that’s because there’s so much more stuff to think about. It’s why the game is more profitable relative to necessary bankroll to play it (like it’d be hard to win $50/hour at limit before $30/$60, and you’d probably need like $30k minimum for that, meanwhile you could probably get away with like $20k at 2/5 $1k cap and post $50 or more an hour if you play expertly). But it’s not a free lunch. My play deteriorates way faster in this game when I face yet another decision of being HU with a fish that I had just 3 bet and now have to enter river bluffcatch mode because I have 2nd pair, or whether a certain situation is a good triple barrel spot, or discerning what some random spazzy play from them means. I might go 5-6 hours feeling good before I’ll have enough.

But in a game against nitty OMCs, suddenly you can play a low effort, robotic game again. And I find that keeps me in the game much longer. Plus, when everyone around you is overly tight, you can be looser, and keeping involved regularly is more fun than grinding.


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Agree 100%. I can (and have) played limit for 16hr+ sessions without making more than a handful of mistakes. If you're from boston and used to play 20 at foxwoods I'm sure we played together; I used to post under a different name.

NL is new for me and I find it's challenging to not be robotic. Trying hard to think through every action distinctly but I tend to take a limit-minded approach and go for consistency / range protection than max value. OMCs help here cause it's very unlikely I'll be the one exploited (until I find myself betting pairs when I shouldn't)

Then I’m sure you know me. I find it exhausting to constantly being faced with erratic lines and huge bets on boards, and it’s hard to keep executing an exploitative strat. Beyond behind tight and value heavy on preflop and flop to best exploit the loose and gambool nature of live low and mid stakes poker players. But that sometimes means showing down marginally in situations where their ranges are completely borked, and generally being a bit of a showdown monkey post. But then somehow they never bluff the river? It’s all very tiring. I see myself making passive mistakes constantly after a few hours of live NL, simply because the grind took a toll, and now maybe I just call ATs when HJ opens and CO and SB flat from the BB.


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