this is as easy as money gets. if only EVERY table was like this.

There is a more fundamental problem inherent to these spots - mainly that at LLSNL you should very rarely (never?) be check/calling the river, but rather bet-folding.

Why? You'll never be bluff-raised with worse, yet your opponent will frequently call with worse, so you value-own yourself instead of passively bleeding away $$$.

It seems like 6 of 1/half-dozen of another as you may think, "the money's going in regardless of whether or not I bet/call a similar amount," but in practice you will reap the benefits of being called down by worse and picking up thinnish value, while ALSO setting your own b/f price OTR when your opponent is ahead.

Under-betting to avoid hard decisions is a double-edged sword that will slit the neck, wrists and ankles of your bankroll (melodrama ftw):

The *best* part of LLSNL is that bet-folding is never a difficult decision! The VAST MAJORITY, WITH VERY FEW EXCEPTIONS, of LLSNL players are showdown monkeys who will not raise on a semibluff, will not raise a straight on a three-flush board, will not raise 2-pair on a 4-straight board, etc....they will, however, raise THE NUTS on each of the above board textures.

Knowing this (that live donks play ultra-transparent, and give VIRTUALLY NO FALSE/MISLEADING INFO), we can correctly bet-fold whenever we believe we'll be good 60% of the time. Most LLSNL grinders are reluctant to push a 60-40 edge consistently as the variance is quite high, but this is the way that a 10bb/hr winrate is achieved.

Learn to fold overpairs. Sounds simple. Much harder to actually do. Pick your spots when to stack off in these instances.

Which is why you are on a pretty solid downswing at the moment

is $2600 enough for 1/2

With low variance profitable style and your A game, it will be enough to get you started as long as the doomswitch is not on full blast.

After playing many many hours of TAG I'm now at a point where I feel comfortable enough with hand reading where I can apply my current strategy. Very Loose-passive preflop and very TAG post flop.
As it's been stated before, most of the players know how to play preflop so there is really no point bloating pots on the round where the incompetent players know how to play best. The main goal of LLSNL(imo) is to play for stacks, not trying to 3b light pre or iso'ing limpers.
Now I definitely wouldn't recommend this type of play to someone who is new at 1/2 live NL.

This is my take on LLSNL.
1. Identify your table; now you don't necessarily have to understand each players tendencies, just what type of player they are. (eg. old man rivers only call/raise with nuts, lagtard that raises every draw and top pair, calling station, etc etc).

2. Limp the hell out of your hands. What kind of hands am I going to stack someone with preflop unless I cooler them(aa v kk) even against most lagtards they know not to stack 100bb light preflop. Now on the reverse side what kind of hands am I going to stack someone with post-flop? Sets, 2p, straights, and flushes. Simply for the fact that LLSNL players hate to fold if they have a good top pair, bottom two pair, dummy end of straight, and low flushes.

3. Be able to hand read well. Obviously playing loose-passive is going to be burning money unless you know when to make marginal calls post flop to make up for all the hands you're limping. Based on what type of player your in pots against will determine how you play your hand post-flop.

4. Once you hit the megafather flops(or getting good odds to draw to nutty hands) again use the identification of the type of player you're playing against to determine how you play your hand out. (playing against station? PSB valuebet town him. Playing against lagtard? go for some c/r. playing against old man rivers? if he's betting just keep raising him because they don't know how to fold their hands, etc etc)


TL;DR keep pots small pre-flop when even the worst of players play best and try to see as many pots as you can. Inflate the pots post flop when you have a strong hand.

He's also 100% correct, and this comes from someone not on a downswing if that's what matters .

This post wins the thread TBH. Solid play w/strong value betting is the cake, anything else is the icing.

How do I turnoff the doomswitch?!?!?!

Bolded is so wrong. You don't raise preflop to stack someone preflop. You raise preflop to make it easier to stack someone post. It's a lot easier to get someone to go broke with tpgk when the pot is 80 dollars preflop instead of 20. Bet sizes go 55, 130, 275 (all less than psb) instead of 20, 60, 120 (all psb). In situation 1, you've made ~500 bucks, situation two you've made ~200.

The point of raising preflop is to create high leverage situations when you want them. High leverage situations can come from a variety of things: good cards, good position, isolating a bad player.

Playing loose-passive preflop looses you a ton of value. It's also fairly typical hole of a reg who wins at 2/5 but not 5/10, as the loose-passive approach often causes you to lose 3-5 bbs at a time because you're money is essentially dead in the pot preflop and on most flops.

I kind of think this thread is a bad idea.

I fear this is devolving into people making over-generalized statements about LLSNL that will just hurt the growth of a beginning player. I don't want to just retype my previous posts ITT but all of the basic (and intermediate and advanced) concepts that have been discussed in all of the other strat forums here on 2p2 will help you to beat LLSNL.

There's no magic secret techniques to beat LLSNL. If you use all of the techniques and ideas and concepts that are taught in all of the other resources (all the strat forums on 2p2, poker books, training vids, strat forums on other sites, etc) and apply them correctly then you will crush LLSNL. If people try to smash all of that into one single thread it's going to be oversimplified and counter-productive.

Edit: I will say this though:

Generally it is true that if you play solid fundamental (aka ABC) poker you will win at the lowest stakes.

But there have been multiple books each with hundreds of pages written about that very subject. There are now three (I think?) forums dedicated to beating the lowest stakes of a particular type of poker on 2p2 each with thousands and thousands of threads some with hundreds of posts. It's impossible to condense all of that info down to one single thread imo.

I'm actually closer to "limping the hell out of our hands" as well. Maybe we're coming from different games, hence the difference in our preflop opinions here and in that other thread?

First, it will usually only take one postflop raise (if any raises at all) to get stacks committed in a typical smallest stake game where lottsa players are playing with < 100 BB, especially if they're the frog-in-the-boiling water and don't realize that calling that first street or two with their TP is basically committing themselves. Obviously if stacks are deeper, it will be much harder to limp/stack someone.

Second, the idea that one can "isolate a bad player" is fairly lol at these stakes too. Not to say this situation doesn't exist and arise from time to time, but attempting to isolate on the light side with a mere 8-10 BB raise only to see things go 5 ways to the flop kinda sucks.

In these types of games, methinks passing on our small edge preflop in order to capitalize on a large edge postflop is where it's at.

GthoughIcouldbewrongG

Again, the point you're missing is that you're creating a higher leveraged situation with a preflop raise.

This means that your postflop edge is larger, not smaller. Your postflop skill doesn't go away because you raised, you're just playing for higher stakes.

I think our postflop edge is actually lessened cuz now we create situations like the other thread where our SPR is like 2 and it's a 5way pot. There's not a lotta skill involved for myself or my villains at this point; any bet is pretty much committing ourselves/villains (and even poor villains know that), so I really hope we have the best hand.

Whereas if we just limp and keep the SPR high, we allow villains to make massive mistakes postflop.

A villain committing his stack with TP with an SPR of 2 ain't making much of a mistake (although you could definitely argue his preflop call was a mistake). The same villain committing his stack with TP/etc. with an SPR of 15 is making a massive mistake.

Again, I'm talking about situations where stacks are typically < 100 BB; if stacks are deep, then I think your point applies.

[quote: Whereas if we just limp and keep the SPR high, we allow villains to make massive mistakes postflop.]

This is completely backwards

That post doesn't make sense at all.

Your big point in the other thread is that raising AQ is scary because people don't go broke with tp, now they do....

The rest can be described as wrong by 55-135-275 v 20-60-120. You clearly have little idea of how SPR works, and frankly SPR is an outmoded and oversimplified way of looking at things.

+1 spr being dumb. Losing more money on a single bet is obviously worse than losing less.

I agree that there is no "concerte formula" to beating LLSNL. Just like there are no concerte playing styles or 1 way to win. This thread is designed to allow players to share their experiences for how they win at LLSNL and concepts they believe are essential to do so. Obviously, every poker hand is situational, which is why we love this great game. As much as hands can be similar to previous ones, each one is different in its own way.

Rather than say these are the ways to beat LLSNL, people are fomulating their recomendations to beat it.

I'm really enjoy hearing all of these concepts and the in-game adjustments people make during play.

Where did I say no one is going broke with TP in the other thread? I actually said the opposite: the only time we're likely to get action from a hand we're beating (other than a draw) is when someone else was unlucky enough to also flop their dominated TP (a two outer).

I'm assuming those set of numbers of for 2/5 (otherwise we're playing with well over 200 BB). I'm not saying it wouldn't be easier to stack someone by raising vs limping (obviously it is); I'm just saying in the typical game with smaller stacks it's usually *almost* as easy, thus why risk more?

Typical 1/3 game. Villain has 80 BB ($240). 6 see a flop ($18). Villain leads $20, 2 callers. Pot is now $78 on the turn, checks to Hero who bets $50, only Villain calls. Pot is $178 on the river, with villain having $167 left. Yes, it sets up a rather largish ~PSB shove on the river to get stacks in. But this is the *worst* case scenario. Any raise postflop (or more callers on other streets) will easily gets stacks in by the river (if not the turn).

I guess we'll agree to disagree.

i mean, you made it obvious why you're wrong, even taking every assumption your way you end up giving villain 2-1 on the river while I'm giving him just under 3-1.

Care to explain why?

I actually think it's totally forwards, in that with low SPRs on the flop most villains won't make that big of mistake (correctly committing their smallish stacks with TP / etc. whereas folding hands that are going nowhere), whereas with high SPRs they have a tendency to make huge mistakes (calling TP/weaker in multiway pots and getting themselves into situations where they end up committing their stack in a limped pot).

I posted pretty much the worse case scenario (no postflop raise, only one caller on the turn) and yet still got myself in a situation where villain only has a PSB left. Yes, he's more likely to call your 3:1 than my 2:1 (although against most villains, my guess is that this point is moot: what's relevant is that omg-I-have-TP-and-the-pot-is-big). The point is that we're still playing for stacks (even in my worst case scenario) and I had no need to raise preflop with my speculative hand.

Anyways, I think I'm just going to leave it at that.

I guess we're playing in different games(I'm in Midwest) The majority of players are not stacking off with less than tptk and the ones that are willing to you don't need to inflate the pot preflop to get value from them. Even on a A2679 board will you get three streets of value in a pre-flop raised hand if you have AK v AQ. Not saying there is no PF edge to be had, just that post flop edge is so much bigger against bad players. When you are the only thinking player at the table why would you not want to play as many MW pots as possible?
Now obv this is gonna change if you're at a 9 handed game where there are 3-4 solid regs and the rest fish. You're going to want to use position and your preflop edge to iso them. This isn't the case though in the typical casino 1/2 game it is filled with level 1 recreational gamblers.