So every now and again we find ourselves in a game with flopaholics. The guys who just cannot find the fold button preflop and will even peel the flop super wide.


Anecdote:

Im in a game last night and there is a BIG spot in my game sitting on like 300-400bbs. I've seen him call preflop as wide as 94s, pretty much any Ax, any type of handle resembling a SC or S1G and only raising maybe top 5%. He plays something like 5/60. if he looses a pot or two it shoots up to like 95% VPIP

Its getting late, hes with a friend who is sleeping in a chair behind him and Im getting the feeling hes about to head out the door soon, the rest of the table is fairly straight-forward/tight.

We consider that the best course of action given his super wide l/c range and the tigher cold calling range behind us is to start to ISO him relentlessly, in doing so we find ourselves into alot of funky/weird spots we're not super confident in or familiar with and make mistakes and value own ourselves a bit.

questions:

How wide do we want to ISO a guy like this? statistically my preflop isoing range against him is +EV but when funky spots come up preflop im sure how to handle I find that im quickly squandering any EV gained by ISO him a very wide range.

Does it even make sense to ISO him in a really high rake structure? they take $5 out of $30 and $7 out of $50?

Example

100bbs Eff

Fish limps
HERO 15 with A3o
Fish calls

HU
FLOP(30) A64

Fish checks
HERO?

A3 is way ahead of his l/c range so in theory i think preflop is good.

OTF is where i get in trouble, V can have any 2pair any set (not AA) any draw and will also peel this flop with hands like 77-JJ

Cliffs:

Im isoing Vs who are VPIP a TON super wide and getting into weird spots and losing money.

Haaaalp!

Depends on his postflop tendencies but generally vs. very loose passives you want hands that flop TPMK rather than draws. So Q9o > 76ss for example.

If you were 400bb effective and confident that he plays a passive, calling station game postflop, you could probably profitably iso with ATC.

In this hand I'm definitely betting the flop and turn whatever amount I think he will call with underpairs and 6x, then checking the river. If he has a draw he will call more but betting bigger tends to ISO ourselves against better aces and draws. If we improve to two pair, bomb/fold the river for value against his aces.

If we had a better kicker I would be betting all 3 streets assuming a decent run out, and I would be betting bigger to target worse aces rather than underpairs.

This is a good example of how it's important to formulate a plan for an opponent before the hand is underway.

Someone who is calling like 60-90% of the time, at this point it's like a HU game, and if you're IP you certainly want to be raising them very wide. You can't go as wide as a normal HU game because there's 7 other people on the ****ing table with you, but because they are playing predictably PRE, we should be able to iso a lot.

You're right about 2 things:

1) It's profitable to iso the fish with these table dynamics
2) there's a lot of funky difficult spots.

This is where HU experience is invaluable, as you get an idea of what type of BS hand is good based on the logic of the hand. At this point, I would just VB TP weak kick or better. You're good a huge amount of time. There's going to be variance of course and you just need to learn his betting patterns to understand the logic of the hand.

If he's very aggressive, you let him do the betting. If he checks it with questionable hands, just check it down with no equity. If he shoves a lot with nothing, call him with low equity. If he mostly shoves with very strong hands, fold most but the nuts/near nuts.

It's a variance train, and your success with depend on how comfortable you are postflop with **** hands vs even ****tier hands + player.

Hopefully you're not scared money and willing to engage these great table dynamics, because I believe they are immensely profitable.

Last night I was in a similar situation, I was pretty much raising any ace and broadway type hands IP, for as much as I could raise it for without getting villain to fold. It was like 9x bb raises at one point and getting called.

I was 250bb in the hole, with 350bb invested, before leaving that table +50bb in profit. It was a roller coaster of a ride and thank god my pockets are deep and I understand the flow of these games.

It takes a lots of money and post flop skill to optimize your EV for these tables, and if you run good you can easily have a 500-1000bb night.

Random points:

1. Your rake: Ouch. TBH, isolating is normally marginal enough that it is possible for that rake to consume all the profits. It'd be pretty close, I think, but I'd keep isolating and tracking my results to determine whether I was making a profit.

My general SWAG for comparing online win rates to live win rates is that win rates in live play in marginal spots or with marginal hands are going to be something like five times higher in live play than online; thus, if an online win rate for isolating limpers is 1bb/hand, I'd expect it to be around 5bb for live, and, if it wasn't in that ball park, I'd be looking for an explanation. But that is just a SWAG, and I actually have very little data supporting it (my own win rate with isolation plays being one data point supporting it, as well as my win rates in other marginal spots).

2. Isolating fundamentals. The basic premise of isolating is to get heads up in position with a person to exploit their tendency to fold too much. So, if they fold pre-flop, that's fine, and if they limp/call then play fit or fold, that's even better.

That's the basic isolation play. The more advanced isolation play is to get heads up with somebody bad and simply exploit whatever tendency they have. In other words, your described villain, someone who limp/calls and then peels wide on the flop, is a poor candidate for basicisolation plays, where you're rooting for him to check/fold to a c-bet. Against this villain, you'll need to change up th basic isolation strategy of more or less c-betting by default. Against this guy, you're going to have to have a hand or some equity.

For that reason, I'm not a fan of your iso with A3o here. Sure, it's ahead of his range, but, most of the time, what you flop is all you're ever going to have to work with. It plays like crap. Much prefer to have T9o or K5s than A3o against a villain who is going to peel wide on the flop.

3. That said, my plan for your hand would be to c-bet the pot maybe 60%, and barrel the turn on any non-heart card that improves our hand with 2 pair, trips or by improving our straight draw; something like A, 2, 3, 5 or a 7. So I'm going to barrel turn about 18 cards, check back all hearts, and usually check back most everything else. Checking back all rivers unimproved, and bluff catching river donk bets.

Isolation plays are where pot control lines really earn their money, because, most of the time, you have crap like you have here. In general, you don't want to be going crazy on these hands. Obviously you want to get max value, but max value for a crappy ace is a completely different thing than max value with AK; it is really easy here to bet your hand strongly enough that you tighten his calling range up to things that beat you. You need to be careful with that.

As a highly relevant aside: when I was coaching online, the vast majority of the people who were having trouble with making a profit on their isolation plays were having trouble that stemmed from being too aggressive. The two most common leaks were: 1. running too many multi-street bluffs just trying to blow the limp/caller off his hand, and 2. Losing bigger pots than they won by failing to pot control.

Both of those leaks were related to the thinking that "this guy limps almost anything, he can't have much here," and just bombing, without giving due consideration to the fact that the villain keeps calling.

I saw it all the time in online databases--aggressive isolators have a tendency to forget that there's no rule against them being outflopped or outdrawn by the fish they isolated. Controlling your aggression in isolation spots is the key to success.

Look at a basic isolation strategy: he limps, you raise, all others fold, he calls, flop comes down, he checks, you bet, he folds, you win the pre-flop money minus rake. Every so often, maybe a quarter of the time, maybe less, he'll call your c-bet. If you have air when he calls, you're going to lose both the preflop money and the c-bet. So a standard win is going to be maybe 6bb, and a standard loss is going to be maybe 15bb. So if we win, say, 3 out of 4, we have a win rate of .75bb/hand. The rest of our win rate is going to have to come from our non-standard wins, those where we flop a hand and he calls the c-bet (of course, we'll have some non-standard losses in that group, too). Winning 3 of 4 is actually probably too optimistic, though. It's probably closer to 2 out of 3, in which case, we have a negative win rate of -1bb/hand on the standard hands, and we need to make ALL of our profit from the non-standard hands where betting continues beyond the flop.

4. Position. The main hazard in isolating a limper is not the limper, it is the players yet to act behind you. An isolation play fails, by definition, when a limper limps, you raise, and you get called by someone yet to act.

For the basic category of isolation plays, where you're expecting to take it down with a c-bet against a limp/call, check/folder, this is an important point to remember: you were bluffing and someone called your bluff. At that point, preflop, your play has failed and you should ordinarily be expecting to give up, unless the flop somehow bails you out (by giving you a hand, equity or a great c-bet texture).

For the more advanced play, where your range is much more playable, it is less of an issue that someone else called.

Needless to say, getting called by someone who will have a positional advantage over you post flop is way worse than getting called by someone else who will be OOP in addition to the limper.

All of which tells us that we should increasingly open up our isolation range as we get closer to the button. TBH, I don't really have an iso range before the hijack, and, even on the hijack, I need the button to be a known quantity who will act predictably in some way before I'm comfortable really opening up my range to iso limpers.

So: if you are not on the button, know the button before you act. He's the most important player to have a read on before you iso a limper; it's more important to have a read on the button than it is to have a read on the limper. Ideally, he's an ABC tight player who will play his cards, period. If he's not, you have to proceed with caution.

An aggro player in the BB capable of squeezing is also a yellow light, probably a red one, for isolating limpers.

Light 3 betting players on an apparent isolation play was a thing online; it was a significant source of revenue for skilled 3 bettors. So jut be on the lookout for players behind you who might be aggro enough to exploit your exploitation of the limpers.

I may think of other stuff later.

I actually think the flop is easy. You hit, you have position, villain checked, villain has a super wide/weak range, villain is very loose and villain will call with many worse hands. Seems like a pretty easy bet IMO. We have a blocker to some of the two pair hands and to AA (and AA is unlikely anyway).

I don't see why we should be so worried about sets and two pair here. If villain can have 64 then he can have a ton of garbage that completely misses or is behind like 54, 34, 74, 84, 94, T4, J4, Q4, K4 ( all weaker hands that could call our flop bet). He can have a bunch of complete air like tons of hands with kings, queens, jacks, tens, garbage like 85, 75, T7, etc. and there are more possible combinations for those hands than there are for sets and two pair.

This. When I successfully iso a weak player and flop SDV, I want to realize it. I also want to maximize my return, but when we bet multiple streets with TPWK or less, we aren't generally maximizing our return, but our losses (although there are Vs who are exceptions).

In the example given, I still c-bet, to get some value, to balance my air c-bets, and to narrow his range a bit. I'm not barrelling unless my equity improves, though. If turn checks through and V also checks river, I usually go for slightly thin value with a smallish b/f if the board hasn't changed texture significantly, and check it back if it has.

Mpethy just wrote the book on isolation plays. The only thing I would add is that is that your image is important. The classic mistake LLSNL players make is that they learn a new concept, then overuse it so that it everyone knows they are doing it. You need to have a tight image. Your opponents shouldn't perceive that you're isolating wide. You need them to being thinking, "he maybe has opened up, but the odds are good he's just getting a good run of cards." If you've been caught raising light and firing with air, people aren't going to fold to your raises and bets.

Let's take a live example. If you're raising 25% of your hands in the CO and BTN and you're being dealt 30 hands per hour, over a two hour period you should be raising 3 times. Nobody is going to notice you raising 4 times instead of 3 times. The extra time is protected because of your normal play. The eager beaver LLSNL player is going to try this nearly every time in more positions.

As for the hand itself, Hero has TP. You have to bet this to protect the times you have nothing and cbet.

Ill give it 2 u in skwid terms.


So you want to go out and play some street poker?

start small and werk yer way up

A3o plays like total ass poast flop. Think about isoing hands that play well and do them. As you start to see how people react you can open it up more and experiment with different sizing (hint with serious fit or fold playaz u can iso it up and make essentially the same bet and they will fold if they miss the flop) and also different lines

going ballz out and isoing up shyt like A3o v an assclown who peels wide if u dont have a propah game plan is a great way to incinerate yer hard earned $$$

so the big question is do you understand what it means "a hand that plays well post flop?

Agree what Mpethy wrote and what has been added. Could have a concept of the month thread

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you need to get stove or flopzilla and run the numbers. A3o sucks....you have ~60% against against a SUPER wide range pre. on the flop youre a huge fav. you block Ax and hes going to miss or have a weak one pair alot rather than have u beat .
i would bet flop and prob blank turns for value and to protect. check riv.

isolate this guy with a wide value range...not trash like A3o. so you can iso with roughly 22+, A2s+, A7o+, K9s+, KTo+, Q9s+, QTo+, J9+. this will still be a good wide range but will let u win at showdown alot more and u can value bet more etc