Quote:
Originally Posted by JewBear
My thoughts when limping A9s were described by a poster in this thread. Table was limpy every hand, raising would likley get callers who have me dominated and then I'm in the same position.
No, opening does NOT leave us in the same position. Consider all the times when we get it heads up with AQ and the flop comes K97 and we make a better hand fold with a cbet. Huge victory.
Or consider this hand. If we raise it big preflop, he might just fold ATo preflop. That's pretty standard for many players, actually. And when this flop comes out, he has to be afraid that AT is no good anyway. We have the option to barrel him off a better hand. We also have the option to check back the flop when we hit an ace to realize our SDV. Perhaps checking it back allows us to get another bet or two from a worse pair.
My standard line against a villain who has a fold button is to barrel if there are draws, and to check back my pair if the board is dry.
Having initiative in position puts us in total control of the hand. This is so important that it's just about impossible to explain, but if you just try raising your button more I think you'll get a feel for it. When I first started doing it, it worked so well that I went too far and started raising K8o. I was addicted!
Anyway, I don't recommend raising K8o. When I'm against limpers on the button (and on the co if the button is tight), I'm raising 22+, 67s+, T8s+, A2s+, KJo+, JTo, and all suited broadways. As you can see, A9s is right in the middle of that range.
Maybe it's exploitable but so far it's worked pretty great. I'll limp some of those hands (low pp, suited broadways) from earlier positions to hit gin, but abusing the button is just incredibly powerful.
This hand would have played totally differently, and ime much more profitably, if we had raised preflop.