Quote:
Originally Posted by JimL
Passive limpfests can be much more intellectually stimulating than games that are more aggressively 3 and 4 bet.
For one, you can profitably play far more hands in various positions when you are pretty sure it is going to limp through. Playing more hands results in getting into much more intellectually interesting situations more often.
For two, passive limpfests require different skills than more advanced "regular" poker games. Knowing when to bluff is far less important, but understanding how to control the pot size is much more important. It also changes the value of starting hands.
For three, just because everyone else is limping, or making/calling small raises does not mean you need to do the same. You can raise as much and as often as you think is correct.
OP, this is one of the most important comments in the thread ^
Both in terms of improving your skills
and in terms of producing an intellectual challenge, learning to crush at these games can pay huge returns.
To do it requires that you become highly aware of situations, players, and game dynamics that alter "standard" strategy. Solid ABC poker still wins at these games, but it's boring, slow, and can cause frustration. By ABC poker I mean generally decent value-heavy or vaguely GTO play.
The key to these games is recognizing the massive amount of exploitable spots. That, by definition, is non GTO. It requires that you correctly assess what deviations your opponents are making, and adjust to exploit them. It works because on the bottom stakes rung, very few opponents are aware enough to realize this and make any counter-adjustments. It provides an excellent training ground for finding players' flaws and then attacking them.
A lot of this involves playing post-flop & playing multi-way pots. So many players learn decent standard pre-flop strategy and lean on that to build their win-rate. By the turn, they are mostly lost and flailing, hoping to carry their PF advantage through to the river. If you spend a lot of time in these games seeing flops cheaply and with speculative hands (limping and flatting far more than standard recommendations), in position, out of position, etc, you will gain a huge wealth of experience and feel for post-flop spots. You will learn to manage pot size, make informed stabs, bet for thin value, apply pressure across multiple streets, read goofy bluff lines, and adjust hand strength to account for multiple players, particular styles, and weird situations.
This is a stellar set of skills to have when you move to bigger and more dangerous games, and because those games run leaner and more aggressive, it is actually a set of skills that takes a longer time and more numerous, expensive mistakes to learn at the higher level. You will also get the chance to think carefully through the theory of what you are doing if you are as interested in studying and the intellectual side as you say. You will have the chance to take the principles GTO is built on and apply them to weird sets of ranges and different starting hand scenarios, like figuring out how to balance a PF range that is 50+% limps or flats. It will also greatly disguise your style, skill, and level of aggression. In tough larger games, you can get eaten up with that kind of PF range, but in the small games, you can get away with it just fine.
OP, you yourself listed your first three criteria for a highly skilled player to be defined by "standard" PFR actions: raise first in, 3b a lot, squeeze. There's value in doing those things, no doubt. But there is more value in getting fish involved in a hand they can't quite let go, or letting them chase a draw at the wrong price. By exhibiting a ton of PF aggression, you chase out a lot of bad or mediocre players and prevent them from getting themselves into spots where they are completely clueless and facing large bets. So you actually take advantage of their small preflop mistakes, but doing so costs you the chance to set them up for big post-flop mistakes. NLHE is a game of reading players and trading small mistakes for big ones.