I have reached 100 hours of 1/2 nl live play. I am very straight aware and I can sincerely say that more than 9 out of 10 times that villain could be holding A3 , 24, 57, etc..in order to have the nuts..that is precisely what villain has. My set, 2 pair etc is as worthless as the day is long.

It comes down to a matter of living in acceptance vs. denial.

Wishful thinking isn't going to change the reality of the result.

The 1 out of 10 times (if that) that its correct to make the call clearly does not make long run mathematical sense.

Believe me, I am talking to myself more than to you. If I cannot accept just folding as a weapon in these all too common scenarios, I too will wind up out of this game before I even get started!

Good luck!

But this isn't a marginal or questionable spot that we are talking about....
Find a single piece of information, a single source, any guide, poker journal, what ever, anything other than your own mind that suggests limping kk utg without the express intention of a l/rr is a good idea...

I'm all for freedom of choice, I'm on here defending a point of view that differs all the time, I think so much of the advice here is to nitty, I think plenty of the advice here is overly cautious, and far to much emphasis is placed on the cards we hold opposed to the situation we are in....I will defend those points, but they are marginal spots or ideas, weather to raise 3x 5x 7x with 33 utg+1 ot just fold.... I'll have that argument, and.it woukd be easy to find better players than me arguing both sides of the argument.... The thread I got flamed in for completing the sb with trash.....same thing some top pros would, others would not, there is a debate to be had.....

There is no debate to be had about raising kk in EP... (without a decent idea you can l/rr)....Im happy to read any other source of info you have that makes it a good play, but if you can't I really think you should look at your own game and what can possibly be leading you to these conclusions.....you've played long enough you must have a decent roll....because limping kk up top just screams scared money......

I have said before your post-flop advice is usually really sound, I never understand why you don't play all kinds of junk, you must have the edge over your player pool...... But to post stuff that is just plain bad is doing the community a dis-service in my view.....
I would never have became a winning player, my kids wouldn't have been to disneyland last year, If it wasn't for twoplustwo...I owe alot to this forum and the advice from good people like yourself got me there, when I started out if I saw a post from a guy with 25000 posts I woukd think 's*%% this guy must know his stuff, this must be good advice, how would I know any different?'
Now I feel obligated to point out that actually what your saying in this thread is not good advice, and that's not just my opinion.....That's everyone that I've read anything by who has any semblance of a winning history.....please prove me wrong, reference anything or anyone,I will gladly read it,

**folding aa utg has the same eV as folding 72 utg.... I have 73 utg..... that's better than 72 which is the same as aa....Therefore raising 73 must give me more eV than raising aa**

@ RR

I'd have to reread to confirm, but I believe there are sections regarding this in both HOC (I think it is mostly coming from a point of view of trapping money in the pot and taking it down preflop against aggressive cowboys who attack limpers in LP) and PNLHE as well (I think it is more coming from a point of view of setting up a desirable SPR, which is mostly where I'm coming from). Again, I'd have to find these sections in both to confirm, but I'm pretty sure it's there. I mean, its hardly unprecedented stuff, and obviously it is very situation dependent as to what line is more EV (and hero postflop skillz are often overlooked in this evaluation).

G/derail,imoG

A big chunk (50%+) of the profit is with AK+,QQ+ preflop?
My ass. I've lost over 12 big blinds nett this year with these hands, even preflop. Someone ALWAYS outdraws me with a wimpy speculative hand, sometimes they hit a set, sometimes two pair with K-9.

Limp reraising works some of the time, if the table is not TOO passive. If someone raises, they will virtually never fold to a 3-bet. The average player on these tables has no concept of what a limp-reraise is. However, if you see someone else do it, they almost always have KK+. On the most passive tables it is unlikely to work - last Friday night I sat on a table where there was NOT A SINGLE PREFLOP RAISE from ANY OPPONENT in a ONE AND A HALF HOURS. (Of course, they were not folding to my $20 raises either.)

1) Your downswing is completely normal and has nothing to do with the actual equity of QQ+. It sucks to go through, and can tell you I relate at this moment, but your personal short term experience does not define the money making power of these hands.

2) Pending location, a limp-reraise is super transparent. I rarely see it work at my tables.

3) Going back to 1, seems like you're playing in a super stationy game with lots of pf pots. That might be why you're losing with QQ+ more than you think you should. If you go 4 way with KK, you're equity drops to ~55%

I think there might be a misunderstanding between what you guys are saying. GG, you suggested to open limp KK UTG against unknowns. RR is saying this specifically is bad, and I agree.

On the other hand, you've said "I typically play at very loose (to even "big" raises, and can even get lol action on face-up limp/reraises), decently aggro tables, where not everyone is a face-up ABC non-bluffer. Limp-reraising is printing money at these types of tables (especially compared to opening)."

That's fine...if your table conditions are weird and you will get to limp-reraise the vast majority of the time, go for it if it makes more money than raising. (Although you're implying you encounter a lot of tricky players so your limp-reraising could be pretty face up to these guys). But if you have weird table conditions you should say that before making a blanket statement like "At a new table with no history with anyone, I'd typically limp this preflop in EP." Not everyone is going to be familiar with your table conditions, and your first post does not reference them at all. It appears to be how you would play the hand at your table, when you should be thinking about how you would play the hand at a more typical table. OP did not say where he is playing, but it's much more likely his table conditions suggest raising KK vs. limping.

I don't know whether 50% of our profit comes from QQ+, AK, but you should definitely be winning a lot with these hands. If you aren't, you're either playing the hands wrong, experiencing negative variance with these hands, or both. How many hours have you played this year? If it's a lot (say 500+), I would suggest you're probably misplaying these hands. But you're saying you always get outdrawn or outflopped (which can't possibly be true), so it sounds like negative variance. DO NOT assume these are bad hands. That would be a catastrophic mistake. QQ+, AK are *massively* better than even other premium hands like TT or KQs, and even more ahead of the marginal and trash hands.

[ Yeah, so sounds like limping KK is terrible at your tables. If people are calling $20 raises, make it $20 pre-flop, or even higher if you can get away with it.

I said a bunch of times, if your open limping kk for the express reason that you expect to get raised and then can re-raise, then I'm OK with that, it's a play I don't like but I get it....
What I have the problem with is this idea of limping kk up-top because your at an unknown table and to keep the Spr down, because you expect a bunch of callers....

(not exactly sure why the "without express intention" is there, of course we're looking to reraise it)

Not sure why I've put so much work into this, but last night I skimmed thru 3 books at home and they all mention places where limping with big hands (mainly to reraise) is perfectly fine.

HOC Pg 43. As I say, HOC is mostly concerned about balancing your limping range (I'm not) plus the situation where he limps, a bunch of other limps, and then some cowboy raises the limps, where he can now reraise (I actually much prefer the situation where I limp, there's a raise, followed by a bunch of callers, where a reraise here is *far* more profitable, even it we never see a flop). On Pg 140 he also recommends factoring in postflop skills, arguing that outclassed players (which OP might be) should aim to end the hand preflop; course, I'm guessing HOC is thinking a preflop raise often ends the hand, which it rarely does at most tables I play at, therefore if we're looking to end the hand preflop then limp/reraising will be much more effective. On Pg 262 he goes on to say how beating weak games we can just play far more ABC.

PNLHE is all about setting up desirable SPRs, and it tailors its preflop play to simply do that. Pg 218 gives a perfect example of a situation where it thinks limping KK in EP is the best plan. In the end, it recommends attempting to hit either very small SPRs or very large SPRs with big TP hands, and argues the middling SPRs are the worst (overall, I happen to agree with this idea, although I don't agree with them regarding what the poor middling SPRs is, where it fears 13, which I think is perfectly fine, whereas I fear 6-8).

NLT+P is a lot about not offering opponents good implied odds. It addresses big hands on Pg 101, where it suggests the shallower the stacks the more we should be raising for value, but the deeper the stacks the less we need to raise our strong hands. Pg 258 Concept 20 mentions overlimping AA deep.

Note that all I'm doing is showing that these ideas are not unprecedented. I hardly think you'll find a piece of poker material that doesn't go into the benefits of limping big hands in EP. You don't have to agree with this information (heck, I probably only take the 20% I agree with in each book and leave the other 80%), but it isn't as if I'm pulling these ideas out of thin air. It's well documented.

So let's take all of these ideas and apply them to the hand itself. What do we have working for us? We have KK. That's great, a big plus. But what do we have working against us? Being OOP with no one else acting yet at an unknown table, we have zero clue what raise size will likely narrow the field (and yet still give us action), if that's a goal (which I think it should be, although you might disagree on that). We'll most likely end up OOP postflop (would we rather play a big pot OOP or a small pot?). Stack sizes are such that we won't be able to setup a trivial stack off situation postflop (versus if the stacks were smaller). Opponents are all unknown, and we're going to setup an SPR where stacks can be played for postflop (is it a good idea to play for stacks against someone we know nothing about?). And on top of all that, we have an OP who states he's stuck money playing big pairs this year, which *might* suggest he might not be playing them nearly as well as he thinks he is postflop (so he might want to end the hand preflop). 1 plus versus 5 negatives. Looks like a good spot to limp, imo.

But OP can do whatever he wants, I really don't care. But if he continues to lose money with big pairs, he might want to look up the Einsteins definition of insanity.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Using altavista search I found. ..

"The definition of insanity is open limping kk against unknown villains " - Alfredo Einstein

GG,

1) You have a few thousand hours of live poker experience and you are saying you would have "zero clue what raise size will likely narrow the field" at a new 1/3NL table? Seriously? After 3000+ hours at live poker, you'd have zero clue?

2) "Stack sizes are such that we won't be able to setup a trivial stack off situation postflop (versus if the stacks were smaller)." Seriously? Hero opens to 5bb pre and gets 1 caller. Bets 9bb into 9bb and the caller calls OTF, and there is 86bb left. Bets 20bb into 27bb and the caller calls, and there is 66bb left. Hero shoves 66bb into 67bb and V looks you up with lots of stuff. If you're telling me folks fold to this line, then you should be taking this line 100% of the time. IME, this line doesn't work often enough to use it as a bluff, but works great as value.

3) OP is stuck with big pairs this year because he's not going for enough value, IMO. This hand is maybe the only one where checking the flop might be worth while, but in reality, just going for 4-streets of value is the best approach.

The only way I'd limp here is if I was >90% certain someone was going to open for a raise and I'd be able to get a limp/raise in cleanly.

Literally, if there's any doubt, just open to 10bb and stack off trivially easily. This would be several orders of magnitude better then limping.

1) I've already answered this question in this thread (see post#35).

2) What I'm saying is that raising does not setup a desirable SPR situation where we should be comfortable stacking off to (as per PNLHE). A raise to $15 leaves leaves us HU in an SPR 9.5 pot (likely OOP), or sometimes 3ways in an SPR 6.5 pot (again, likely OOP). These, in my opinion, are some of the worst situations we can get ourselves in, especially against unknowns. If you're comfortable betting 4 streets for stacks OOP into unknowns having gotten in just 5% of your stack preflop, then fine (I'm not).

3) Without seeing exactly how OP is losing with these hands, it's pretty difficult to say. My guess is way different than yours: I don't think it has anything to do with missing value, and much likely more to do with constantly getting himself into difficult situations.

Look, not everyone is going to agree with PNLHE's strategy of planning TP type hands around either very small SPRs or very large ones (i.e the limp/reraising plan failing is a *perfectly acceptable result*), and avoiding the middling SPRs (which is the only difficult result to play, which a raise is almost always going to result in). That's fine. Do what you want. But I sometimes get the feeling that people think I'm a lone wolf puling this information out of my ass, when it is simply a very well known and viable strategy. If you have another strategy that works for you, that's fine too.

GcluelessNLnoobG

You're really hung up on SPR way, way, way too much. I don't know why you are invoking it so much.

Because he didn't read the first edition of Super System.

Because every single HH I read is "i raz KK, 5ways to flop, i haz overpear in SPR 3 pots, I bets, he raz, now I donts no wat 2 do" (or, in this case, we flop the nutter butters and it mostly remains the nutter butters and we *still don't know what to do*). Maybe they'd better off doing something different? Not a shot at OP; more a shot at people who think noobs should keep playing the way they are playing and expecting a different result.

Gornot,whatever,whatdoIcare?G

It's really weird. His entire game revolves around SPR. I blame this post 7 years ago when someone decided to introduce him to the concept:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...67&postcount=9

Sick sleuthing skillz!

GcluelessSPRnoobG

But what you're not admitting to yourself is that you're being results oriented about the small number of spots where H plays his big PP hands strongly and loses, like this hand.

In reality, suppose H limps pre in this hand -- is the result going to be any different? No, of course not.

V still flops an OESD and H still flops the nuts. Let's say it went 3 ways -- after rake its 2bb in the pot OTF, and H bets pot and BB folds but V calls. Pot is 4bb OTT and hero bets pot and V calls.

OTR, pot is 12bb and now Hero has 93bb remaining. V opens for pot and H min-raises to 24bb and V reshoves -- its now 129bb to Hero's 69bb, Hero's getting 1.9:1 and needs 35% equity to call.

GG you are saying we can fold here because we elected to limp pre. But in reality, folding in this hand at any time, played either way, is terrible.

There's dozens of ways to play this hand. All of them that get to a spot where Hero doesn't stack off are just plain bad.

I'd argue it doesn't though. It's just nut peddling and being extremely nitty when we don't have the nuts. This has very little to do with SPR. Do we think he'd be comfortable opening up in a tournament setting and getting it in super wide in spots due to this same internal logic? I do not.

As Lapi points out, limping doesn't make this hand easier to play and you lose just as much. I still don't think the river is an auto raise, but people have commented enough on the hand as is.

SPR was really helpful developmentally for me. I would occasionally make awful folds and the concept helped me on the path of recognizing which spots were auto gii. But, now, I'd say I think about a hand's SPR in game less than once per 100 hours. I just don't need it. It just seems like a way unnecessary scared money approach.

I'm down - I'll take the utg AA 5x open on $300 and you can be any of the other 8 guys. I'll even give you a big break, I won't agree to checking it down and I'll just shove my last $275 in there every time. Let's play forever. You in?

First of all, the limp/reraise has been around since Super System. Everybody knows it. The books you're mentioning are old. That doesn't mean they're not useful, but poker evolves. Nowadays most fish know the limp/reraise play.

Second, I do not value SPR to the extent you do (though I find it a useful concept), but I have to point out you are butchering PNLHE by suggesting it supports how you play.

I happen to have Profesional No Limit Hold'Em (by Matt Flynn, Sunny Mehta, and Ed Miller) here in front of me. I think it's a great book for when it was written and still has a lot of useful ideas. But you are misinterpreting it. They don't argue not to raise KK here. They do say limp-reraising KK to hit is okay when a straightforward raise will not hit your target SPRs There's even TWO explicit example where they raise KK UTG in a 100BB pot! (p.248-249).

Page 187: "Play as many hands as possible near your target SPRs."
"Keep your opponents from playing near their target SPRs."

Page 196: There is a chart suggesting an SPR of 4 against tight players, 6 against "average" players," and 10 against "loose players" for hands looking to flop a big overpair.

In retrospect our opponent seems loose, calling raises with 54o, so higher SPRs are fine. But without hindsight we would guess an SPR around 6.

Page 207: "Pocket Aces are in a class by themselves. With few exceptions, when you have aces you prefer to get as much money in as possible preflop, even if it yields an SPR near 13. Recall that with top pair hands, you usually prefer an SPR over 20 to one near 13. With Aces, that's not true. You will win many pots with aces without getting all-in. Each time you do, you benefit from more money going in preflop. Triskaeidekaphobia exists because SPRs near 13 make it easier for your opponent to to steal. However, when you have Aces, only the most aggressive opponents can steal often enough to "make up" for the extra money in the many pots you will win."

I know this is KK, but you said you would also limp AA.

Page 207: "If you can hit your target SPR or get all-in profitably with kings, do it. If you cannot get under your max SPR, you have to think. Unlike Aces, Kings sometimes do better with high SPRs than medium ones. Kings are usually the best hand preflop and often the best hand on the flop, but far less often than Aces. That makes getting money in preflop less valuable compared to Aces. If your opponent rarely steals, ignore triskaidekaphobia and get as much money in preflop as you can with kings, adjusting for the possibility of running into aces. If instead your opponent steals a fair percentage of the time, treat kings like Ace-King and avoid SPRs near 13."

By stealing, the authors mean bluffing you out of the pot, not a pre-flop move. Also note the main reason KK is not as good as AA is your opponent could have AA. Someone flatting from the SB is extremely unlikely to have AA. And unless your opponent is hyper-aggressive, we should ignore the usual rule of "shoot for an SPR over 20 rather than near 13." A random opponent at 1/3 is extremely unlikely to be aggressive enough to try to blow you off an overpair with a weaker hand, say, a flop raise followed by calling your turn bet and shoving the river. Absent reads, we should ignore "shoot for an SPR over 20 rather than near 13" rule.

Page 218: You kind of cherry-picked here. What it actually says is "In games with 100BB stacks where players typically call a lot of money preflop, as can happen in late-night live games, you can still obtain favorable SPRs for top pair and overpair hands because you can raise to 5BB preflop and anticipate multiple callers.

However, in tighter games with 100BB stacks it is difficult to obtain favorable SPRs for top pair and overpair hands with straightforward preflop raises. So 100BB stacks are often awkward for big pair hands, even though 100BB is a common buy-in size.

Once the stack sizes get around 100 BB, limp-reraising with big pairs becomes a viable strategy for achieving favorable SPRs when a straightforward raise will not."

Again, this was written in 2007. Does Ed Miller still suggest limp-reraising big pairs? He does not. I don't know about the other authors. In any case, table conditions are clearly important. If it's a normal game, raising big pre-flop with KK is excellent. And note their tighter game exception lumps together big pairs and top pair, while explicitly saying on p. 207 that AA is an exception and KK is often an exception. Limp-reraising may be viable, and they explicitly condition this on a straightforward raise not being able to achieve the target SPR!. That's a huge thing to leave out.

Page 241: I'm paraphrasing here, but these base SPRs are when you're OUT OF POSITION. This is implied on this page as they suggest larger SPRs are acceptable in position.

Page 248: "Hand No. 2: You are under the gun in an 8-handed $2-$5 game with a capped buy-in of $500. Most people, including you, have around $500 (100BB). These players are fairly run-of-the-mill and a little loose. Most pots are multiway. You have KK. What should you do?

First, determine the hand you are most likely to make on the flop. That's easy: two-thirds of the time you will make an overpair of kings. What will your target SPRs be with an overpair of kings? As these players are "average," you estimate your target SPR at 4 to 6.

Next, you have to project how many callers you'll get. Let's say you anticipate 2 or 3 callers as long as you don't raise to more than $30 and get two callers, the preflop pot will be $90 to $105 depending on whether any blinds call, and you will have $470 left. Your SPR will be around 4.7 That's fine. If your opponents will call a bigger raise, raise more."

Page 249: "Hand No. 3: Same hand as No. 2, except your opponents are tight players who don't play many hands preflop and are careful postflop. The stacks are 100BB, and you have KK under the gun. What should you do?

With an overpair of kings against these tight players, your target SPRs will now be around 3 to 4. Furthermore, you cannot expect 2 or 3 callers if you make a sizable range preflop.

Suppose these players won't call more than $20 (4BB) preflop with a reasonable range, as is true in many tight games. What should you do then?

The question to ask with kings is how often will your opponent try to steal postflop? If he won't steal often, make a $20 raise. With one caller, the SPR would be around 11. That's bad if your opponents are good at stealing, but it's acceptable if they aren't. If your opponents are aggressive or good at stealing, a better tactic is to limp or minraise with your kings. Aggressive opponents will put you to difficult decisions when the SPRs are near 13 and you aren't committed.

Sometimes you won't be able to hit your target SPRs. The goal isn't to always play at your target, just to play at it as often as you can and, specifically, more often than your opponents plat at their targets. That's enough to give you an edge."

Notice the ONLY situation where they suggest you should consider a limp is if you can't create an SPR near your desired range with a raise, AND your opponents are very likely to bluff you off the pot postflop. That is almost certainly not the case against a table of unknowns at 1/3. In fact, p. 191 says "What do you do when you don't know your opponents? ... For hands that look to flop an overpair, start with a target SPR of 5." Keep in mind this includes TT-QQ. With KK you want around 6 and and AA even higher.

Page 216 there's a nice chart for SPRs resulting from 1-4 callers for given raise sizes 100BB effective. I'm leaving out parts of the chart (nobody raises 30BB at 1/3)

Recall against an average opponent we like an SPR near 6, against a loose opponent we like an SPR of 10, and against a tight opponent we like an SPR of 4. SPRs 2 - 4 are also fine, just not ideal as we don't extract maximum value. We mostly don't want an SPR near 13 (though again, this is because we fear getting bluffed out of the pot, which rarely happens at 1/3). So anything 10 and under is a good result.

Note I add 0s in front of some numbers to make the columns align. With more than two callers we adjust SPRs slightly down (the authors do not specify how much, but I'm going with 1 per additional caller). With these caveats, all bolded results are acceptable SPRs even against a crazy aggressive opponent. Underlined results are near the target 6 (or 5 if 4-way, 4 if 5-way).

Raise size (BB) / one caller / two callers / three callers / four callers

02 / 21.8 / 16.3 / 12.3 / 9.8
03 / 14.9 / 10.8 / 08.1 / 6.5
04 / 11.3 / 08.0 / 06.0 / 4.8
05 / 09.0 / 06.3 / 04.8 / 3.8
06 / 07.5 / 05.2 / 03.9 / 3.1
07 / 06.4 / 04.4 / 03.3 / 2.7
08 / 05.6 / 03.8 / 02.9 / 2.3
09 / 04.9 / 03.4 / 02.5 / 2.0
10 / 04.4 / 03.0 / 02.3 / 1.8

So CLEARLY the OP is not in a "can't hit our target, gotta limp" situation. Against average or random players, we should raise rather than limp because we have multiple betting sizes that will get us our target SPR. Raising $18 - $24 is almost perfect, regardless of how many callers we expect. Raising $15 is also fine, unless we expect just one caller (it's still not that bad here, particularly if opponent is loose). And raising anywhere from $24 - $30 or even more is also fine, as long as we get callers.

Sorry I seem to have started a flaming of gobbledygeek which wasn't my intention,
With that in mind I will refer to your post about limp/re-raise, as I have said that is a reasonable idea if you are expecting to be raised the majority of the time so you can re-raise....
But earlier in this thread which is what you are getting jumped on for is that you said limping kk in EP is to set up a favoravle spr......... Thing is I don't want a favorable spr with kk, I want a crap spr, so all the money go's in......
I can honestly say that spr is one of the last things I consider when playing llsnl, it's just massively more important to range villans properly, and then exploit there poor play, what ever spr you create, you are creating the same spr for your villan, it's just not that important if your playing 100bb+ until you get to the turn or are in a 4bet pot.....

Think this thread should be locked up....

Raise kk from early position unless your at an agro table and you can get a l/rr in.....there is nothing more to say.....

Rrlockituprr

I don't agree with GG, but your bet is idiotic. You will go broke very quickly, because one of the 8 other players only has to call when he beats AA. Someone has you beat 65% of the time.

I'll take this bet forever and I will have all your money. How? I call when I hit two pair or better (or an insane combo draw) and fold otherwise. The end.

Don't know if you meant me but I'm not flaming GG, unless quoting from a book he's referencing to support his argument counts.

I don't really get this mentality. The subject has deviated somewhat but we're still talking about this hand, whether we should open limp KK against unknowns, not against people we suspect to be super aggro. And the answer is we should not.

I know that you have a solid handle on theory stuff, and I ffigured I didnt have to state the obvious conditions of my game. Of course you don't get to choose which of the other 8 hands to play, and you don't just assume I have AA and get to fold tp - you continue with the ranges GGs 1/3 opponents would pre and post. GG wants to arrange the game to whee the other players can realize their equity for free (check it down) which kind of goes straight to his bonkers notions about how to utilize the raw equity of a premium hand.

No I didn't mean you and thought your last post was actually really insightful, my point was that actually this shouldn't be up for debate...

We arnt analysing this hand any more we are just discussing the merits, or lack there of, of limping kk in a 1-3 game....
It baffles me that this has became a genuine discussion on one of the most respected poker forums out there...

I picked up on the limp kk thing because I really think this is just horrible advice for novice players, they would be better just shoving than open limping....

Limping anything when you are a relativley new player is tough, you find your self in so many weird post flop spots, why would we so this with kk, which is just so easy to play 90% of the time....raise raise raise pre-flop and bet-fold every street if you don't hit a set or see an ace.....if you did this with kk everytime I'm sure you would be +eV....