Yeah so this is how I know you aren't understanding what I'm saying. You don't divide 0.86/1.5 and say you win 57% of the pot on average.

By your logic, since AA has a winrate of 8.61BB's - I should divide 8.6/1.5 so now I win 573% of the time? It makes no sense.



Sklansky's new book is getting a lot of bad reviews because most people who read it aren't grasping the concepts he is talking about. To be fair, it's actually not the readers fault since a lot of these training sites don't teach players how to think for themselves and instead echo maxims like "Never limp" or "Fish rarely bluff," both which has been thoroughly debunked with population data.

I will say that of the examples i saw of sklanskys book that they were completely absurd. Ie, limping behind with KK. That example is madness and I will not accept that you could possibly make more doing that than you can with raising.

With that being said, I am in the camp that believes wholeheartedly that limping has a place in live poker. It is certainly situation, table, and hand dependent. Often in live poker fold equity is so low that the risk to reward is not profitable to raise with non premium hands because a huge part of what makes them profitable is that you can bluff.

How much do you really want to risk to win those limps with A3 when you are in a game where you can take everyone to value town so liberally?

The more limps in the pot, the less you should raise preflop w these types of hands. If you have 4 limps in front of you and you raise to 20 how many of them are folding? If its anything like the games i play in its 0 and the blinds might come along too. You really need to go to 35 if you want them to fold and even then you'll get at least 1 caller. And what does their range look like when they make that call? Its a lot stronger, definitely AQ, AJ, AT in there. So many times those get limped by these passive players.

Examples where id want to limp behind:

3 players limp, A8s on the button.
3 limps, QTs in cutoff with another fish to my left.
2 limps, K9s on the button.
3 limps, 99 in CO

Examples where I'd raise:
1 limp, ATs in CO
2 limps, ATs in CO
1 limp, 88 on button
2 limps, AJo on button
2 limps, KQo in HJ

The more limpers there are the less raising I'm wanting to do in general. Also not going to be limping in earlier positions except with the low pocket pairs. Looking to limp in later positions when there are already multiple limps.

I wrote an entire thing and you found the one thing you thought you could argue. This shows “listening with the intent to argue, rather than to understand”. You dont give a **** about learning, teaching, or (the point of this forum) collectively coming to the right answer, you just want to feel like you won.

I never said you win X% of the time, thats an incorrect reading of what i said. Maybe i wrote it wrong (I admit this because my goal isnt to just argue like you), my point that your projected win with a hand is relative to the pot, and this pot is already considerably larger than the one you posted.

I mean yes, im not grasping what youre saying, because what youre saying is complete horseshit. Again, by YOUR logic, if you fold everything but AA, itd realize 8.63 BBs, and what you do preflop with A3s (or just about any other hand) is almost completely inconsequential to your WR.

Lol then show proof or GTFO of here. I asked for the data showing limping as an effective strategy, and you didnt provide it, you authoritatively allude to there being proof you are right. Proof that is in your possession but not in this thread. This is some Joseph Smith with the golden plates **** lol.

Done with you. Good luck limping or whatever.

I’m in the overlimp camp. And check flop.

I love learning, that's why I understand this concept. I'm actually trying to help you.

Your preflop play is directly correlated to your opponents, a computer will never limp preflop (unless BvB) because it is playing against other GTO bots. That means it is going to be unexploitable in every game tree preflop/flop/turn/river.

If you nodelocked a solver to play against fish/weak regs, with all their postflop tendencies. A solver would 100% incorporate limping preflop into their strategy because of where EV is generated. You want to play rivers when the pot is the biggest and fish have the most leaks relative to theory. This is how you get a great winrate in live poker.

The main problem I see with cocky live guys like you is you have zero accountability. Your nonsense would never fly online because there is tracking software so we know how good a person is and where there leaks are. The only tracking programs you have for live are manually input so anyone can just make up winrates.

Live poker is more about image and reputation over accountability, that's why you think guys like Andy Stacks and Bart Hanson are experts when in reality they would struggle to beat even midstakes online.

When I ask Google for directions from A to B, it typically gives me a few choices. Lol @ picking the top recommended choice and declaring all other choices "bad".

My guess is that you could argue that postflop experts may be able to squeeze slightly more EV by raising preflop. Non-experts are likely better off overlimping and playing make-a-hand poker. Horrendous postflop players may be better off folding preflop. One size doesn't fit all.

Me, I'm happily overlimping preflop and checking this flop this multiway due to likely having very little chance at winning it outright. As played, perhaps some argument for a large semi-bluff on the turn, although it typically isn't a good idea to attempt to get someone to fold a pair + draw (most likely opponent holding). Obvious river fold is obvious.

GcluelessonehandedtypingnoobG

You can play the hand for a raise pre or a limp pre (and a l/c in most cases), it's a hand that can literally be taken either way. The best way to play it will depend on a lot of factors, most of which are the players who act after us, such as if there's a habitual raiser or light 3bettor otb, I would just limp and let him raise and then watch all the limpers call including us and playing it for it's multiway value instead of raising it only to fold to his 3bet OTOH, if there was one limper I would most def. raise it rather than limping in that situation.


This is a live strat forum, not online, so there's really no need to even talk about GTO and solvers for a live low stakes full ring game and who cares if Bart wouldn't be as good as he is playing online - he's a Live poker expert so it's pretty much irrelevant (just like a 100NL online player giving advice on live poker.

You need to know theory to exploit better, exploits and GTO aren't separate they are two sides of the same coin.

And at the end of the day it's still poker. You have 2 cards and you are playing against another player with 2 cards. The only difference between live and online is player tendencies.

I've noticed a lot of live players treat online as some separate entity where bots/RTA/collusion runs rampant and there is almost nothing to be learned from but that isn't the case. You can apply a ton of information (regarding board textures) to live poker, especially when it comes to mda and fish play.

I know live players aren't incentivized to acknowledge this so that's probably why they dismiss it.

I mean...this is the LIVE NLHE strat forum.

If Sklansky's approach to live poker is better than, say, Bart Hanson's, there should be some way for Sklansky and his followers to prove it, if not by way of demonstrable results, then at least by sheer force of logic. Maybe Sklansky is like Copernicus or Galileo, speaking truth to power, and eventually he'll be proven right.

The challenge I have in understanding the value of limping pre is that it would seem to encourage more multi-way pots, and doesn't do anything to define our opponents' ranges. Since we're talking about playing more rivers, I'm guessing that we'd likewise take a more passive, fit-or-fold approach post-flop.

If that's right, it sounds like all we're doing is trying to cooler our opponents by flopping or otherwise making a big hand, or bluff-catch with marginal hands. It sounds more like Bingo than Poker, inasmuch as it doesn't seem to leverage the leaks which exist within the player pool.

It would seem to be more deceptive than a more aggro approach, but it wouldn't seem to maximize the value of having a big hand, or the value of being able to bluff with a range or nut advantage as the pre-flop raiser.

We're being told we should exploit opponents' leaks, but we're not being told what those leaks are, or how taking a passive approach exploits them. Is it that they enter pots too wide, and too passively? Wouldn't the exploit be raising, not doing the same thing?

The obvious leaks opponents have in live poker are pretty apparent. Most opponents are either too loose-passive, too loose-aggressive, or too nitty. Raising the loose-passive limpers would seem to be the most obvious exploit. Limping and over-limping would only seem to work with opponents who are much too aggro.

But I was talking specifically about A3s, not limping pre in general. Of course it's always better to raise pre than limp, but with a suited baby ace it's not a mistake to limp it knowing we would be playing it multiway where if we do turn or river a NF it wouldn't matter too much what our opponents ranges are since we would have the nuts.

If we're open limping or over-limping pre (or flat calling), with all sorts of hands which others might open for a raise, or might fold, it makes me curious how we're responding to raises from players behind.

Maybe this isn't the most neutral example, but to attempt something which seems fairly neutral - suppose we open-limp or over-limp from MP with 99.

What are we doing facing a single raise from LP?

What are we doing facing a single raise form the SB? From the BB?

What are we doing facing a single raise from the HJ or CO, and a 3B from the BTN or SB?

Why do I feel like the answer is we're just limp-calling a single raise but folding to a 3B? Do we care how multi-way the pot goes?

Do the stack depths matter here, the way they do if we're calling to set-mine? Or are we just calling because 99 might be the best hand, and we're just not folding it until a later street?

Are we playing lower or bigger PP's the same way? What about suited connectors, suited aces, etc?

Sklansky is way better than Bart Hanson. He understands poker on a much deeper level. How do I know this? I've read most of Sklansky's books and also watched a ton of Bart Hanson's call in show to understand his thought process. There really is no debate here.

To objectively prove why limping is superior you would need to collect data manually and it's unlikely anyone would get a big enough sample given how slow live poker is.

Defining an opponent's range isn't hard because highly exploitable players have sizing tells and also if you understand MDA you know what boards are overbluffed/underbluffed as a default (although this is more important vs regulars than fish).

Using concepts like range and nut advantage are important when playing against good players but most of your opponent's don't even know their own range, how could they possible know what yours is? You want to play more rivers because fish play face up and will overfold relative to MDF.

The way MDF works is that - it's risk/(risk+reward)

If I bet 50% pot OTR I am risking 50%/(50% + 100%)

so 50/150 = 33.3%

MDF = 1-Alpha (33.3%) so he needs to defend over 66% of the time. They will fold much more than 33.3% of the time because there are highly exploitable players.

You have to remember you need two strategies when playing poker, you play one way vs fish and a different way vs regs.

Yeah I see this hand quoted all the time (it was KK btw and he overlimped in the CO).

I don't think overlimping KK is correct here but to be fair in the book he said it was an extreme example. Although the point of the hand history is to illustrate a concept that the limping is bad crowd clearly doesn't understand.

I said in my first post in this thread that I didn't hate the over-limp pre. I still don't hate it. I'd have preferred to raise, but I understand the value of limping with a small suited ace.

That said, I also understand the value of raising (or at least, I think I do). I think once the BTN raises, we need to think about whether it would have been better to raise ourselves, as that may have made the BTN fold, or kept him from re-raising, and now we have to think about whether it might be better to fold to his raise, rather than calling.

I don't profess to know if it actually is always better to raise than limp. That idea is obviously a tenet of modern poker theory, but maybe it's wrong, as some like DooDoo and Gobbledygeek seem to be suggesting. We should hear them out, and weigh their logic, if not their results.

I would think solvers would be able to help quantify the EV of each choice at each node - over-limping vs raising, and calling the raise vs folding to the raise. Even if we're deviating for the sake of making live exploits, we should at least know which choices are theoretically higher EV at equilibrium.

Maybe not, though. Solvers seem to be much more aggro than humans. Perhaps that's at the heart of what Sklansky, DooDoo, Gobbledy, and you are saying - solvers don't have the answer when we're playing humans. Game theory will only get us so far, unless and until the player pool catches up.

Here in this forum, as well as at the table, I'm fine acknowledging that players may differ in their approaches, such that some may feel more comfortable over-limping and / or taking more passive lines post-flop. I know I tend to prefer taking more aggressive lines, I think because I have a hard time folding value on later streets.

One thing I would like to see, but I don't think we'll get, is a comparison of the projected EV and variance for more passive lines versus more aggressive lines.

For instance, I would have preferred a $20 raise pre. On the flop, depending on how many opponents were still in the hand, I probably would have c-bet $30-$35, checked back turn, and given up if I didn't improve on the river.

How would that line compare to what I think you were suggesting, which was a more passive line of check-calling to make our hand?

The question would seen to hinge on how often BTN is 3B'ing, flatting, or folding pre, how many other opponents come along, how often our c-bet gets through, how often we hit our draw on the turn or river, how much value we can extract when that happens, etc.

I suppose we might expect that raising pre and c-betting flop will win the pot more often on those earlier streets, whereas over-limping and check-calling will lose less money when we miss, but possibly win more often on later streets, though likely smaller pots, when we hit.

The argument here seems to be whether or not raising pre and c-betting flop actually does take the pot down often enough to offset what we lose when we don't hit and need to fold. The debate is about what happens when / if, but we don't really know, all we have is our expectations and beliefs.

We can't know which line would have worked better here, because hero donked the flop and barreled turn, which, in retrospect, is interesting, in that it starts out passive but then quickly shifts to aggro, apparently inducing V to jam with what I would presume is thick value. Hero's line would seem to have been the most costly.

I like my preferred line and your preferred line better than OP's here. I'd expect either line would have lost less, and potentially won more, than OP's line.

Yes you have to change your whole thinking about how the game is played, I think that's the main reason why the detractors don't even entertain the idea of limping. Because the detractors think in terms of ranges, except that's the wrong thought process.

You don't think in terms of ranges if your opponent doesn't think in terms of ranges.

There's too many questions here for me to answer but if you limp 99 and someone raises and then another person 3bets, it's a very easy fold. Live 3bet%'s are nowhere close to GTO. In fact most people 3bet only top 2%-3% of hands.

I mean this hand went 7 ways to the flop. Doesn't happen all that often in 6max online.

A3s seems a very natural hand to overlimp. Raising over several limps with a weak suited Ace gets the worst of both worlds - won't get the pot heads up and reduces the SPR/bloats the pot with a modest, easily dominated hand. You could happily iso it over a single limp -maybe two - to drive out players behind. That isn't the issue at hand here.

A few random thoughts...

Sometimes I've caught myself over-thinking things, leveling myself into making hero calls, hero folds, or hero bluffs, because "theory says", in situations where my opponents are just doing exactly what they appear to be doing. This has happened facing both fish and regs. I wonder if Sklansky hasn't gotten too deep for most live players playing in most live games, particularly at low stakes.

The suggestion that we have a strategy for fish and one for regs would seem to rely on, A) our opponents being clearly identifiable as one or the other, B) them consistently acting in line with their role, and C) our ability to effectively implement two different strategies, within a format where our baseline strategy is likely to have us facing one or more from each category of opponent, i.e., we're somehow supposed to play both strategies simultaneously, possibly frequently.

Candidly, I read Sklansky's "The Theory of Poker". My recollection was that it was largely theoretical (duh), and I can only think of one big takeaway off the top of my head, something I still think about in my approach to the game, and I'm not 100% certain it actually came from him, rather than some other book. Maybe I'm just not smart enough for Sklansky.

Conversely, I've found Hanson's content to be very accessible, clearly explaining tactics with practical applications for live play. Hanson isn't the only one, either. We can turn to Galfond, Little, Polk, and any number of other theorists, to find accessible and practical advice for improving.

Sklansky may in fact understand poker on a deeper level, but I would argue that being able to rebuild an engine isn't a prerequisite for becoming a proficient driver. A deeper understanding of the theory underpinning the game may not profit us more than having a reasonably solid strategy that works well against the population as a whole.

Sklansky is waffle. It's like reading the blurb beside a bit of modern art. If you don't understand it, it's because you're not smart enough to understand its profundity... and obviously absolutely nothing to do with it being meaningless impractical guff.

FWIW, the Sklansky KK hand was "two off the Button", i.e. the HJ. I remember this cuz I thought to myself "yawn, standard", since I haven't raised a single hand preflop in the LJ- in ~7 years and need very specific requirements to raise the HJ (which I'll only consider if there is a Button straddle and Button + CO are relatively shortstacked). I've just posted my 6000 hour results in my highly raked 1/3 NL game in a thread below. I ain't crushing. But I'm not barely winning either.

Very little in poker is black versus white. Most people can find their own way in the very large grey area and do perfectly fine for their skillz set. If you think you'll do better here raising it preflop, the raise it preflop. If you think you'll do better here overlimping it, then overlimp it. You'll probably both do just fine.

Gnothatin',justsayin'G

The most important job of a poker teacher is to teach you how to think. Then you can adjust to any situation you find yourself in.

Hanson just goes over hand histories in his call in show, as anyone that has been coached before would know. This is the least effective way to transfer knowledge from one person to another.

Poker is a game of concepts. As far as math goes, you really only need to understand 4 formulas:

1. MDF = 1-Alpha = Risk(Risk+Reward)

2. Bluffing (initial bet) = Edge (Risk + Reward) = Edge (Bet + Pot)

3. Bluff Raising = Edge (Risk + Reward) = Edge (Raise + Bet + Pot)

4. Calling a Bluff Catcher = Edge (Risk + Reward) = Edge (Call + Bet + Pot)

Intuition/pattern recognition is more important than Math in poker but it's important to understand these 4 basic formulas. Sklansky is very good at math and not so great at intuition (this is why he has never been a world class player) while Bart is better at pattern recognition and has less aptitude in statistics/math.

The problem with learning from someone that has good intuition/not great math is that the intuitive knowledge isn't easily transferable, where as the math portion is since it is objective and has formulas.

Most people if they tried could understand the math, it is just basic algebra.

What happens is people get intimidated by the math instead of working through it. A lot of the advice that mainstream poker pundits relay creates binary thought patterns. Anyone that has studied poker long enough will understand that poker is all about nuance, especially at the higher levels.

For the love of god, this must be one of the worst hijackings of a thread ever.

Here's the TL;DR

1. Is GTO unexploitable? Yes.
2. Would low stakes players benefit from understanding GTO concepts and selectively applying? Yes
3. Should we use exploitative strategies (that deviate from GTO) in low stakes? Yes

Done. You're welcome. And now you can stop bickering.

Whether we raised or limped pre, when we go 7 ways to a flop we are going to usually need the best hand to win.

For A3s that often means we will need to make a straight or a flush or 2 pair.

Since this doesn’t happen often, we want to invest minimally and keep the spr high.

I said none of this, i even said i agreed online players are better, and youre probably better than me. But im gonna be honest, ive now got you penciled in as a complete poser. You say youre a crusher but wont produce more than 60k hands of data. You say the data proves that limping is an effective strategy, but wont filter by winrate and show how often crushers limp.

Show how often crushers limp or GTFO. Everyone else is welcome to engage with this clown but im blocking him and not coming back to this worthless thread.