This is a great example of why so many of us make money playing poker. OP is keeping his head down and mind closed. You keep fighting the good fight, i’m sure the ‘luck’ pendulum will swing your way eventually. Maybe someday you can find a game full of winning TAG / regs so so you can really clean up. Taking money from idiots is so much harder......

LOL @ V is an idiot and keeps making the EXACT same move and I keep paying him off.

If other players being idiots bothers you then playing poker is going to be a problem. There are a lot of people who are really bad at poker who play poker. And the worse they are the more you should be looking for them and being friendly with them.

Don't get confused by the fact that a lot of good low stakes play is very exploitable. So many low stakes players are so bad that plays that could be exploited are often more profitable then more theoretically optimal plays. If you can consistently limp/shove from EP with QQ+ and still get calls on a regular basis from worse that is going to be more profitable then making a normal open.

I think that somewhere out there, there are a few OMC types who have figured out that they can limp rr bluff with 95% success if they pick on the right guys. But they won't get you, if you ever run across them. By that time it will only have cost you enough to buy a car.

As far as the idiots thing. Really, not many things are more foolish than judging people based on how they play 1 particular card game. Wow. Some guy invests his time and energy on his career and family rather than his 1/2 nlhe game. What an idiot.

I once saw a 1/2 grinder call a medical doctor an idiot for the way he played poker, which he probably did twice a year.

Hello, my name is Noz.

I am nittier than GG.

I need help.

But when I limp-reraise a late position raiser from my early position, I do it with any two cards.

$12 to $18 easy money profit every time it works (80%) and even if I don't take it down, I still have two live cards.

Comes up two or three times an hour, sometimes more.

The Villains will NOT 4-bet me.

In games with a capped buy-in it's an easy way to chip up.

You should see their faces if a short stack shoves, we get to the river, and I show them KT or whatever.

Works best in nitty games obviously but it's easy $$.

Csb. One time I 4b shoved blind and got folds.

Also works from the small and big blinds.

But works best with known limping-nits and really wide late position limpers.

Most of the time they donate their limps and "wait for a better spot".

Sometimes they don't give up.

If they insist on calling, give it rest for a few orbits.

I like it. NO way I am folding AK/TT/AQs vs you.

About the "Idiot" thing...
I just like the word and try to make it a (nasty) habit in my posts.

Obviously, I am talking about POKER-idiots.
Most limp-raisers are not idiots IRL.

I obviously have a list of known monster-limp-raisers.
But because my mind is so wide open, I consider the possibilty that they might one day include JJ in their range, so I'd have to call with AK or AQs.

They are ALL monsters, until proven otherwise. Players like Noszr are very rare in LLSNL.

I'm going to add something to this that I read in a book once, that I think is a decent perspective on limp/raising in NL.

The book was talking about limit, and why we should raise hands like AJ in the BB if limped to us. Why should we raise, the book asks, if our opponents are all correctly calling us? And the answer is, because by raising we are exploiting the mistake that our opponents already made by limping to us and giving themselves the pot odds to call the raise.

I often think of limp/raising in NL similarly. Why would we limp/reraise our monster hands if we suspect people are going to fold? Because we exploit the mistake our opponents already made by opening up the action with a wide range.

Now, of course, one of two things is going to be true: either our opponents will fold too much to this move, or they will donate more. If I think they fold too much, I can start making this play much lighter than a typical player. And if I think they call or raise too much, I'll still go lighter but for thin value this time.

But the point is, even readless about how my opponents will react, it can sometimes be valid to limp/raise a monster. I just need a read that my opponents are raising preflop with a wide range, and then my raise punishes the mistake that they already made by raising too wide. If I happen to be up against an opponent who is a nonbeliever, even better for me.

^^^^ This is a similar idea to the phrase I've attempted to coin: "limp to punish the raisers".

ETA: Last night I was watching a few-years-old episode of Poker Night in America and it had a quick blurb on this HU poker AI program called Claudico ("I limp" in latin) which apparently had a limp happy strategy. I'll let you wiki it yourself (I just did, and admittedly it didn't do great against some pros, not that those are our typical opponents), but it mentions that other AI bots also have limp happy strategies as well. I'll admit I have zero knowledge of poker AI, and perhaps they have improved to have more aggressive strategies (I really have zero clue), but I did find it interesting that even an AI strategy could perhaps lean to a limp happy strategy (which of course flies in the face of our ingrained "aggression is best" brainwashing). There's more than one way to skin a cat, and so long as that cat is being skinned then I'm guessing the method used can't be judged too harshly.

GcluelesstermcoiningnoobG

Even if the opener is playing the correct amount, the bigger mistake is made by the guys loosely calling that open raise. Without them, the play would never make sense. But in my specific game, we always expect one or more snappers to snap call the open with a 30-40% range...

Accepted. But does it make sense to waste your very best hands on this?

This was HU, and I am certain, that it used a balanced approach of not only limping monsters

In what sense is it a waste EV wise, especially when compared to the alternative (i.e. raising ourselves and going 5way OOP with our dick in our hands)?

Here's another example from yesterday. A Button straddle. I limp the SB with AK because *anything else is just so bad*. BB shoves $50 blind (ok, wasn't really expecting that and it's not the norm but whatever). We currently have a huge $300K BBJ going, so UTG with a $150 stack takes the $50 to the face with J9soooted cuz, BBJ, whatayagonnado? Button straddle takes the $50 to the face with AQo. I limp/ship $300. J9s struggles forever to fold his BBJ hand. Button *snap* calls.

So against the Button I get in $300 preflop as a 3:1 fave plus some decent dead money in the middle. I'm too lazy to do the EV math on this (especially with the blind guy sucking up some equity for the smallish main pot), but my ++++EV here is thru the roof and I'm 99% positive it completely dwarfs the EV of lol opening it myself at this table.

Over the years, I've learned not to take such a hard line on things, and I think I'm growing a little more open to "you can do this, or you can do that, whatever". But honestly, it's gotten to the point where in my game that if you're raising in anything less than the CO, you're likely doing things wrong.

Gbut,that'sme,andinmygame,sodon'tbejellyG

Someone kill me plz

Your arguments are sorely lacking in content.

Gtryharder,imoG

I'd rather argue politics or with a black woman from Georgia about god not existing than try and convince a nit to raise and splash.

It's not wasting them. It's putting in the most amount of money possible when they are still at their best equity-wise.

AA is the nuts preflop, but it is rarely the nuts postflop. If I have a choice whether to pile the money in preflop with AA or play multiple streets where the value of my hand is probably dropping street by street, why wouldn't I attempt to do the former?

This is the exact same logic behind why you raise preflop in the first place, or why you 3bet preflop in the first place.