Hi guys, I'm dabbling with Pokersnowie and Pio a little bit and I'm quite confused by the RFI - ranges in the SB, especially from Pokersnowie.


It's giving me a mixed range, but the majority of the hands should be open limped against the BB like J8s, T7o, AJo and QQ(!).

I'm not really wondering about the width of the range but about the fact that I'm supposed to open limp at all. I always thought SB was 3-3.5x RFI or fold.


Can anybody explain this?

the stronger hands are so villain can't just auto punish you with anything. you want to complete the weaker hands because you are getting great odds on a call vs villain with a random hand, but are out of position and have a weak so would prefer not to increase the size of the pot, effectively negating your odds to call.

a lot depends on villain's strategy. vs a passive player you can and should complete liberally when it is folded to u in the sb.

Hm...at the first glance it makes sense, but on the other hand...
I always - and I mean always - 3bet anyone from the BB when the SB completes because I have position and I know they contest my BB with any2.

I mean, completing gives the BB infinite pot odds, thus he can play a 100% range. The probabilities for hitting the flop are the same for both so I give him a free chance to win a pot against me. Also I show weakness from OOP.

Also I think Pokersnowie is not factoring in rake, which adds another dimension.


Honestly, I always thought that completing the SB against the BB was the second dumbest thing right after limp calling from UTG....and I'm still not 100% convinced that completing makes sense. I'm not even completing in a HU match.

3:1 pot odds against a single random hand is a huge incentive to complete. This is not at all similar to open-limping UTG where you are getting far worse pot odds and there are many left to act behind you.

If you are always raising someone who completes their SB, it is likely effective against weak-passive players who don't have a balanced completing range. It will lose money against good players who do have a balanced completing range, and torch money if your opponent knows what you're doing and is capable of exploiting you.

That is not three-betting, just raising.

No, Snowie does factor in rake.
And top players have been using limping strats in the SB for years. It's particularly common in tournaments, where the presence of antes mean that you want to play a lot of pots, but you don't necessarily want to open raise, because the BB doesn't fold much due to his positional advantage. It's never much fun playing bloated pots OOP.

I've been experimenting with limping the SB for a few years and it's definitely a fine strategy, if you know what you're doing, but in the micros where villains don't defend vs steals very well, raising is likely to be (much) more profitable. (At zoom 2NLz, for example, the BB folds to SB opens more than 50% of the time, which is ridiculous).

FWIW, I find it quite funny when regs snap-raise vs my SB limps, because I limp-reraise some absolute garbage (balanced by some monsters) and usually pick up more than I would with just a standard open.

I remember several years ago there was a lengthy discussion of that topic after open limping from the SB became a thing in high roller tournaments.

But if you play micro stakes and don’t know what range you should use to limp, it’s certainly more profitable to not do it.

Hm...another epiphany, I guess.

But I really think I should keep an eye on it and make a slow transition, because as you guys said, people at my stakes are overfolding to raises from the BB anyways and when I look at the limping ranges from GTO solvers in this spot...I honestly don't even know how to implement them.

Then why would I ever not complete the SB with my playable hands? If I raise I am getting called a lot anyways and if I have a good hand I get to limpraise.

Well...I think you got me with that

Open calling in the SB with hands you might or might not (marginal perhaps) be folding to a 3-bet seems reasonable for the price. Combined to hands you fold to a raise and having a balanced limp-reraise range. Often there being a better overall expectation like that would not surprise me. Psychology (stats) plays the biggest part here. In tourneys, it is about the steal and re-steal stacks where one should consider all the options and different ranges.

Usually, it is simple and often better to open raise or fold; that tends to be the trend even in PLO (where the BB calls or should call more often, though the SB doesn't need to fold to a 3-bet there), but even in PLO it is on the map to limp with similar hands, especially when they are of specific type more vulnerable to a 3-bet. One can then balance it or not, and exploit. In NLH, one both steals more often as well as folds to a 3-bet more often, that might balance out as counter-reasons.

Let's go through the process of why mixed strategies from the SB are a thing now:

Origination of BvB play: Everyone limps, hand versus hand, best hand wins
SB: "Wow, if I raise preflop, he might fold and I can win 1 bb instead of break even. So I'm going to raise 100%"
BB: "Wow he's raising 100%. I need to counter this. I need to call more and 3 bet more to punish him"
SB: "Wow he's calling and three betting a ton. I better tighten way up so that he's spewing when he calls and three bets, but I still wanna play these decent hands so I'll limp them"
BB: "Wow he isn't opening as much now. Better calm down on my 3 betting and fold a bit more. But I'm going to raise whenever he limps"
SB: "He's raising every time I limp. I better limp a strong hand sometimes so he doesn't do that"

And that's how you converge to a balanced strategy. Essentially you want to be able to take any action at any time and do it in a way where you aren't spewing. For example: in a vacuum, it's definitely more profitable to raise QQ as we get immediate value from a wider range, and deny equity to hands that actually have a good shot v us (example: K2o outflops QQ 17.1% of the time). But by limping, we give ourselves a shot at a limp-reraise, which protects us the times we have one of the hands we're representing, like an A4o or T8s or something.

In wide range spots, it's important to not give away information and only play hands in clumps of value (strong hands are played like so, medium hands like so, weak hands like so). This is how weaker players get the living hell exploited out of them, when people can narrow their hand range down to monsters in spots where it would seem almost impossible to for the untrained.

FWIW, the #1 argument against open limping, wether from the SB or any other position, always was that it's way harder to balance two different ranges than just one raising range. Same argument why 'standard' bet sizes postflop were a thing for a very long time.

In the age of solvers and everyone putting in tons of away from the table time on stuff like that, those two problems aren't nearly as bad as they were in the past.

You should limp less sb vs bb until you play in a game like 200nl + on PokerStars.

The rake will generally kill you if you start limping sb at 10nl etc