Come on, no it's not. The odds of flopping a boat with 7-2 are just terrible, less than 1%. We have a great hand with the best position against players who are predictable.

A good but not ideal scenario is that the small blind OMC completes his Sb. We got a few extra dollars in the pot. Chances are the flop comes down and they check to us and we take 6 in stad of 4. Stealing blinds against tight players is good long run play. Stealing an extra few dollars seems even better. I'd say it's a good 80% we winl with a decent sized bet both pre-flop or after the flop.

I understand the argument and think there is merit to it. However, don't forget the rake as it's a huge it to your direct odds in a limped pot. You limp and SB completes to three ways then you steal flop you've risked 3 preflop and 3-5 post flop to gain 3 (if rake is $3) while allowing a flop to come and laying a huge multiple of implied odds for them.

When you raise for a steal the implied odds you give are still really high but cut down to a fourth of the limp implied odds you offer (say you open to 12). You directly risk 12 to get $4 which is worse direct for you, but you've also presented your opponents with the chance to make big mistakes that will make you much more money. It's much harder for them to make a big -EV mistake when you open limp.

I like the limp only because if there's one thing that potentially causes OMCs to spew it's a chopblocker

Missing the point. We have plenty of value hands to raise here and barring weird circumstances we should raise with the top of our range as well. It's a standard raise, worrying about people folding when you'd rather they would call is something you have to let go of in poker. Make correct plays, move on.

For most people AA is a huge chunk of their winrate. Minimising pot size with our moneymaker is just backwards thinking.

This has to be more true in some kind of limit game, no? Fixed, Pot or Spread limit? In No limit games, the size of the pot is only limited by the amount of chips on the table. We can make up for the lack of betting on later streets.

We are not minimizing pot size with a money maker. We are choosing to increase variance.

Yeah, to be fair the rake at this table is ridiculous, 10% up to $8. But no flop no drop.

With OMC, out of position I think our only chance to get a big payday is to cooler them. I can think of no better hand to do this with than pocket aces. Maybe A-X suited vs k-X suited, with only 3 players, would be ridiculously rare.

You beat up omc by set mining them when they have a hand and stealing their blinds when they don't. We just aren't going to be taking much money from them.

This is a shallow analysis, yes you can bet any amount at any of your decision points but if that was the only consideration we could simply save all our betting for the river because hey nothing stops you shoving 100bb into a 2.5bb pot.

The street where people do the most calling is preflop, therefore if we want to build a pot with a good hand, we should start by raising preflop.

I respectfully disagree. You are creating your own scenario based on what you want to happen and not what is likely to happen. 2 tight players left. We bet say $12 and they have cards that are worth calling a $12 bet preflop? However, they aren't good enough to just raise on their own after we show weakness by just calling? What range of hands can OMC have in this scenario?

They probably aren't calling a raise with suited connectors from the blinds and they probably dont have an Ace because we have 2 of them. If they have a decent PP say 10's to Kings, they raise on their own anyways. Maybe 2 paint cards. But this scenario just seems unlikely.

Guys I consider to be OMCs have a wider calling range than their range to iso out of the blinds. This is in fact true of most LLSNL players. You have to completely change this scenario to build a larger pot by limping than raising.

There's not really any merit to beating this to death. Raising here is Poker 101, which is why you got a nearly unanimous response. It's very difficult to make a large error by raising AA preflop so unless we have some weird dynamic going on we should just raise.

It can also cause them to just check/fold hands they would have called with.

The only reason to ever open limp the button with AA, is if there is a wild crazy maniac to our left, who loves to open shove AI over limpers... but not raisers.

Raise to build a pot. It sucks when they fold, but it does happen even at the loosest 1/2 tables.

The most common scenario when limping is that the SB completes, and then they both fold the flop, and you win $4 instead of $3. $1 extra won't compensate for the money you lose when either of these guys hits a flop, with some oddball hand.

If you raise you're going to be heads up and win $10 extra most of the time.

OMC's are tight, but they often over-value TPGK... expect them to call pre with AQo, KQs type hands and pay you off when they hit top pair!

I'm not trying to act arrogant or think I know more than the other posters on this thread. Just saying, how often does this scenario occur? There are no books that have anything to say about playing aces in position against tight players on the blinds. If anything, after reading Daniel Negreanu's books, he recommends sometimes slow playing Aces for deception.

Why exactly, do we raise from the dealer position to steal binds from tight players even with rag hands? Poker 101. But based on the theory that OMC will still call with a wide range of hands, we are building a pot, in a situation that does not work well for us.

But we can have that oddball hand. There's no rule that says that we need to fall in love with our aces. If the flop is particularly wet and scary and the 2 OMCs start playing back at each other, we basically only lost $2 or $3.

Meanwhile, there's a chance albeit slim, we can flop or turn a well disguised monster if an Ace shows up. If it does, we have a chance to turn that 2 call into a 2-300 dollar pot.

How this thread manages to have nearly 40 comments is completely mind blowing to me. This is kindergarten level stuff to be thinking about. It’s an unbelievably simple spot.

Edit: oh, I’m comment #40. Hopefully this ends here (It won’t).

This is the argument bad players use to justify playing just about every hand.

I need to justify playing pocket aces?

C’mon man.

Come on it's just ridiculous to say limping with Aces is the same thing as limping 9-2 suited,

Similarly ridiculous to limping aces on the button even.
Similarly ridiculous to this entire thread.

You're entitled to your opinion sir.

Really guys, questions like these aren’t the ones to ask if you want to win at poker and make it to 5/10+


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Basically none of this is true.

1. You asked a question and got a near unanimous response, which you’re now arguing with, so it’s difficult to believe you’re asking in good faith rather than for validation. I wouldn’t term this arrogant BTW, I think stubborn is a better word.

2. This spot occurs all day every day online, and the correct approach from literally billions of hands is to raise.

3. I literally couldn’t care less about a TV poker stars second hand opinion on this situation. I mean, I care enough to type this sentence, but that’s it.

4. You are getting confused about what I said. We want to build a pot with the nuts, since our OMCs will call with a wider range than they will raise against our limp, we build the biggest pot by raising. I didn’t say they call with a wide range of hands in general, then they would not be OMCs.