Dazarath, you make it sound like you disagree with Doug but I don't think you do really. He just threw out a hugely simplified rule, in an easy-to-follow manner, to nudge huge sinners towards the right direction. Of course the real deal is better than the simplified rule, but the real deal takes months to learn. Closer to the ideal but on the other side is still closer to the ideal.

I just wanted to soothe out the "I disagree with you" particle. Because you don't, really.

Mucho thanks for the greatness from both and all of you.

If you are value betting "the nuts or close to it" you are not "thin value betting".

Seriously? You felt the need to bring this up again why? Did you read the thread? I think what I meant by this was covered. But thank you for making yet another post about it in the same thread.

ok lets say a player raises utg. We know this player is a str8 forward type of guy that only raises big hands and thus we know he is not likely to fold to a reraise. We have lets say 10/9 suited. The effective stacks are such that the implied odds are 40-1. We know that the utg player will stack off with as little as tptk but we also know that he rarly folds pf after raising utg. Two questions why 3-bet him when he is likely to just 4-bet or even shove? Are we not geting correct implied odds to limp in and take his stack?

Every single time?

You must be very deep-stacked to be anywhere near those kind of odds. You need to be sure that noone will do something stupid behind you. You need a very strong read. It is a specific situation.

What Doug was getting at, was exactly that: you need a SPECIFIC SITUATION to call. Whereas most novice players seem to think they need a specific situation to raise.

I will often call in this spot with KJ if the guy is loose, and I know he will CB and I'm pretty sure he has nothing. I am ONLY doing it because I have position on him, I am flop player and I can out play the opp on most flops. But then, Im not a newbie :O

In some situations raising is best, followed by folding with calling being the worst of the Three. Thats whats being said here and its true. If u rasie u put more money in and get rid of the drawers!!! RAISE!!!

Yeah and in some situations raising and folding are by far the absolute worst options.

If you're calling or limping way too much then a rule of raise or fold will plug a massive leak.

If you don't have this leak then that rule will make you go backwards and stunt your growth. Dazarath explained it very well and it's an extremely important concept, go back and read his post.

Okay Mr Rider
i dont call
almost never

but..
Sometimes i just want to see a flop and see what the flop does for me..
lets say i have Ad3d .. Im glad to hit the flop

But..the problem..then..offcourse..is..that if i hit my monster i am not gonna get paid enough?

Okay i get it

but
that really changes your starting requirments, cause you have to have a good hand pre flop to raise, ..
and sometimes you have to raise with 'garbage' so your opponents don't think you are just playing the nuts..
Hmm

Fun thing
i am playing poker 2 years now.. hm no.. 3 years.. And i was always very loose and agressive
but now i know what CAN happen on the flop i dont raise so much, and am not that loose anymore

But maybe i should be more agressive.. with a very tight approach

Why do you want to see what the flop does for you? What the hell does it matter? I want to make money, if you want to see what the flop does for you then don't expect to make much money.

No you don't need to raise with garbage.

You can raise with SCs, off suit broadway, suited aces, etc.

Raising with J5o just isn't going to be profitable and it's completely unnecessary.

What's wrong with changing your starting requirements? If you can't open a wide range profitably because you don't play well enough postflop then you shouldn't be opening those hands. Pretty simple really.

You don't need a good hand to raise a lot of the time. You do need a good hand if you want to limp or call a lot though.......

Why should i raise with a hand i am like 'mwoa..don't like it that much'?

I like pairs, suited connectors .. I dont play with K9's and stuf like that (i do in late position)
Yes i am nitty, but i rather muck 1000 hands and win 1 big one, then lose 1000 hands and then get even with 1 big hand


And sometimes i want to see a cheap flop cause i could hit a monster and make money of it..

You don't have to play a hand you don't like, you can fold it.

If you like the hand then raising >>>> limping in most situations. The times where limping is better aren't worth worrying about at the moment.

Yeah you could also raise, hit your monster and make even more money off it. The times you don't hit your monster you'll either take it down preflop or find it MUCH easier to take it down postflop.

Never ever raise a hand which you're not comfortable raising.

Rarely, RARELY call a hand which you're not comfortable raising.

See?

I don't know, maybe drop down in limits and try calling no more than every twentieth hand you're going to play. Then cbet, oh you can cbet pretty much 100% of the flops and it's still OK. And hopefully you see how god damn well it works. I was lucky enough to start out with this anti-calling strategy, and it's just... just try it out. Soon enough it should just click why it's so right, and you'll want to shoot yourself for ever having called.

E: Beaten to it by Joker.

Hm okay
offcourse i understand this


And offcourse there is a difference between limping and calling a raise, right?

Yeah, of course there is. I don't get your question.

Oh Sorry

i think the topic starter is talking about raise when nobody allready raised

I have 99 .. and someone bet big before me, I can call the raise, i don't need to re-raise
maybe i am up against aces, kings..

Absolutely, and if you read dazarth's post (#142) he explains this pretty well.

If nobody has raised before you then raise or fold (unless you have a small PP/SC and there's a limper with a very short stack, note that it's a very specific time when limping > raising).

If there's a raise before you then
- reraise your best hands for value (anything you're happy stacking off with, AA/KK/QQ/etc.),
- call with your next best hands that you can play profitably (99/88/AQo/etc.),
- reraise your next best hands (65s/J9s/etc.) that you can't call with profitably,
- fold otherwise.

Note that the 65s/J9s type hands are ones which you'd fold otherwise but are good hands to bluff with. You're basically 3betting "light" and it's something which becomes much more common as you move up. If you're playing micro stakes you probably don't need to worry about it yet. As Dazarath pointed out most players who want to start 3betting light will start 3betting from their 99/88/AQo hands instead of their air hands. This means that they miss out on all the value of calling those hands. Make sense?

Yes

I would just like to add that reraising with 65s/J9s type of hands is something that should be done occasionally. You can't reraise every suited connector and high one-gappers simply because there is so many combos of these that you would be 3-betting those hands way to often compared to your monsters. So with these hands you need to randomize you play and fold sometimes and reraise other times.

And when starting out with these plays remember that position is you lifelong friend and you wanna be with him.

Well it depends on your opponent. If you're on the BTN against a TAG CO opener then 3betting JJ+,AK+ for value and all SCs/suited one gappers/strong suited two gappers/mid suited aces would be a pretty good range.

If a nit opened UTG and you're otb then a range of QQ+ for value and 54s - 67s as a bluff would be better.

OOP against the TAG you might tighten your bluff range to something like all SCs/small suited 2 gappers.

But this is fairly irrelevant at micro stakes because
1. there's very few TAGs opening a wide range in LP or only calling with a tight range.
2. you don't need to 3bet bluff a nit at all.

My problem was..
I was very loose agressive
raising every pot
just crazy play

then i start know about poker and then i went tight.. but the agression was gone also

and everytime i was turning agressive again.. i start to loose up and play every hand

Now i just know i have to wait for good hands and good situations, and THEN be agressive

So i really transformed from loose agressive to tight agressive

Dont know if i can use both

I have a few questions about this. If a fish(30+,10-15pfr bad postflop etc) raises and you have like a J9s, 108s on the BTN is it really better to 3 bet or fold than call? Also what do you do when you 3 bet with AK and get 4 bet, seems like when I shove they only call with AA or KK and when I call I usually miss but folding isn't great either.

I would think your 3-betting range would contain to many semibluffs. With JJ+ and AK you have 40 combos. With 54s-JTs and 53s-QTs and T7s-Q9s and A8s-AQs you have 92 combos.

I would prefer to only 3-bet like 20 of the 92 combos to have my 3-bets comprised of 2/3 valuebets and 1/3 semibluffs. I'm not saying that these are the golden numbers everyone should play but I think your range contains way to many semibluffs.

It's pretty hard for me to answer this.

What I'd do would be both 3betting and calling because he'll call with so much crap and check/fold the flop to us a lot or pay us off with worse hands too much. In effect I'd be isolating him, just looking to get in lots of pots with him in position and abuse him. Here, provided we play much better postflop then the fish, both calling and raising are profitable so go nuts.

What micro stakes players who aren't comfortable playing this style should do would be to play tight and trap him. It's pretty high variance and if you're not comfortable doing it then you don't need to. You will eventually though as you move up.

This situation is much different to a TAG who, OOP, will pretty much always 4bet or fold. We'd be 3betting for completely different reasons.

Against a TAG if you're not comfortable 5bet shoving AK then don't 3bet in the first place unless he's going to call you with stuff like AQ/AJ/etc. and 4bet QQ/KK/AA but in effect that would just be a raise for information (which most of the time is a bad thing). Against the fish you could probably 3bet AK and fold to a 4bet (if you wanted to) since he'll call the 3bet with so much crap and dominated hands, but again calling would still be +EV.

It depends on the situation. With a player opening a wide range in LP and we're in position we should be thinking multiples of our value range, not fractions.

OOP or against a tight range then we can go back to fractions.

Also the deeper we are the more inclined we should be to 3bet bluff in position and the less inclined to do so OOP. We should also be more inclined to call in position when deep and less OOP when deep.

So let's say we're sitting to the left of a player with a wide range from LP and we're about 150BBs deep. When he's on the BTN and we're in the SB our range will be very tight but when he's in the CO and we're on the BTN our range will be ridiculously wide.

But, again, this is against competent players, not ones who are going to call a lot OOP.

And again I'm going to put a warning on this:
NOT APPLICABLE AT MICRO STAKES.
Please don't start going wild against nits and calling stations because it's high variance and if you're not comfortable doing it you're going to lose a lot of money. You can play ABC and take their money. This is purely a theoretical discussion, come back to this when you're moving up to small stakes.

Do HUDs generally have a "folds to 3-bet stat", can you use it to decide wether to 3bet or call, and how?