I see the vast majority of threads here are questions about specific hands and this is certainly more of a theory post. If this is better suited in the theory forum I understand but I just wanted input from the guys who are playing these games on a consistent basis.

I've put in 99% of my volume as an online player since ~2005. Recently I've been transitioning back to live and have been having a hard time with some of the preflop situations I'm encountering and how to play certain portions of my range. Mainly wanting to isolate weak players with marginal hands.

Online a bad player will limp and we can isolate pretty wide in certain positions as long as our image isn't **** and often we will play a heads up pot, in position with a weak player. Live I'm having a hard time with this scenario. I will target a weak player to my right and isolate a limp with something as marginal as KJo, ATo, J7s, T6s, 95s, etc. because I know these hands are +ev for me to isolate with over millions of hands of online play. Its somewhat ingrained in me to want to pull the trigger in these situations. So far the results live have been very few heads up or 3 way pots, many 4+ way pots and a lot of times just having to give up because I don't ever flop nearly enough equity with these types of hands to proceed aggressively w/4+ players.

My standard sizing has been a 4x open +1 additional bb for each limper. I noticed many players open much larger (even upwards of a 10x standard open?!!) but I also view this as a catch 22 because while I may have slightly more success in limiting the field size, I'm also bloating a pot very quickly with a marginal hand while chopping away at my SPR where the majority of my skill will be making better post flop decisions. Also it seems like live players have a much smaller fold button when they flop anything so the merits of isolating and cbetting seems to have less value as an overall strategy. Thoughts on any of this?

Going forward should I simply not be playing these hands? I don't really like the alternative of over limping them because a lot of the time I will end up with second best made hands, guessing where I'm at, and falling victim to terrible reverse implied odds when I do play a big pot. If I'm wrong here I would certainly like to hear why.

Thanks in advance for the reply's!

Read the best of sticky.. there are a few threads in there.