Full Tilt Poker $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

CO: $7.75
BTN: $16.88
SB: $10.00
BB: $12.18
Hero (UTG): $11.00

Pre Flop: ($0.15) Hero is UTG with K 8
Hero calls $0.10, CO raises to $0.30, BTN calls $0.30, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.20

Flop: ($1.05) K Q 7 (3 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $0.30, BTN folds, Hero calls $0.30

Turn: ($1.65) A (2 players)
Hero bets $1.10, CO calls $1.10

River: ($3.85) 7 (2 players)
Hero requests TIME, Hero bets $9.30 all in, CO calls $6.05 all in


Ok, I've been playing around with these turn donk bluffs on really scary cards...I've found that c/c+donk is often a good alternative to c/r as it accomplishes roughly the same goal but lets you mix up your play a little better. Villain is 27/9 passive preflop but only over a very small sample; I have not been at the table very long at all, so I have no reads.

I limped UTG to find out if the table would be passive enough to let me get away with seeing cheap flops with drawing hands that way (this is common at 10NL.)

I'm pretty sure my river shove is bad, but I thought once I decided to rep the A and/or flush with a turn donk bet I kinda had to follow through with it.

I don't have much experience with this kind of bluff...can anybody offer any thoughts? Thanks.

You've got to be kidding me?

Preflop: Seriously, don't. Just don't. Villains are bad and can call there you with pretty much anything that beats you.

Preflop line is horrible and makes my eyes burn. Fold pre. As played, why overbet that riverbluff? I can see that he folds anything more to a overbet than to a regular valuebet, and I actually cant se him calling turn with a hand that he dont call this river with. All around pretty bad played on every street.

Ugh, read some stickies or something, this hand is so bad.

don't limp pre, especially don't limp K8 ugh
don't donk the turn, ugh
don't jam the river

People don't fold at 10NL OP.

Does anyone have any suggestions that don't consist of "Play 10/8 ultra nitty because it's 10NL"?

I want to hear why this is bad, not just "This is bad because stickies say so."

I've read all the stickies and am a winning player at 10NL when I play TAG. I get all that. I understand why limping is traditionally "bad", except it's not really--it's good when you have a hand with some postflop value and you'd rather see a flop against villain's iso raise range (or his limp behind range) than against his flatting range, because you know open raising would fold out all the hands you beat.

It also allows you to play flops with a much higher SPR when you don't get iso raised, so at tables that play more passive preflop it's a good way to see cheap flops with more speculative hands that play better with higher stack-to-pot ratios. So yeah, I know your 10/8 nit style never limps, but it's by no means an inherently bad play.

So yeah, thanks, but I know all of that and I'm interested in learning non-standard lines to work on my total understanding of the game than I am in being a 10/8 set miner making $1.20 an hour.

There are lots of players at 10NL who make lots of money playing limping and flatting lines. Look at those guys running 62/8 with eight buy ins on the table--they play well on the turn and river so their preflop/flop strategy doesn't matter that much. I don't mean any offense, but you guys are just parroting generic super nit strategy and it doesn't really contribute much of anything meaningful.

And uh, yeah, people do fold at 10NL. The idea that "ZOMG NOBODY FOLDS AT MICROS" is a total myth perpetuated by people who don't know how to pick bluffing spots and/or haven't played uNL in three years. The games are by and large very tight these days--there are definitely still calling stations, but the average 10NL player is not a station anymore. He's a 24-tabling HUD bot--that's who this play is aimed at.

How can villains call me preflop when I limp and flat their open raise?


The river play is the only one I was concerned about. Every other play, including the donk bluff on the turn (donk bluffing turn scare cards gets TONS of respect at uNL) was pretty standard.

Evidently you guys are the standard uNL player now.

How about trying to range what he would ultra value the flop with.. at no point are we discussing what his range might be here.. what are we trying to get him to fold? what is he giving you 4-1 on a call with? And I see no way around the fact that if he's calling the turn he's not calling the river... what does villain EXPECT you to limp with? your limp call range here makes any sort of boat unlikely.. so what are we repping? J10o? a low flush? What are your stats at the table ATM? I can maybe see limp calling and playing it this way if the board were say 1098 4 4 but I just dont see this working enough, if at all. And the most glaring issue here is how the limp/call range of a standard hero would correlate to this board

Have fun at the tables OP!

They're sticked for a reason.

OP, I dont think alot of us are 10/8 setminers making 2 bucks an hour.

But there is some merrit to what you're saying. One of the biggest winners at 25nl on FTP played 30/10 (I forgot his name but he had a 4BB/100 winrate over 400k hands or something).

I mean I think limping is suboptimal and all but its not a huge mistake if done with the right reasons. Limping K8s UTG is prob not the way to go though, neither is turning into a complete spewmonkey postflop.

Totally agree, you have to play a style that suits you and you're confortable with, if that makes you a setminer and you're still profitable by all means be one. If it makes you stat wise a loose passive player but you're raking in the profits by all means to that too, if you're winning consistently (over more than a couple hundred thousand hands), chances are you've mastered that style and you're profitable. Yes maybe you could increase your winrate with some adjustments, but couldn't we all independently of our stats?
Some things though no matter what stats you play with aren't profitable and limping K8s UTG is probably one of those, especially when you spew like that on the hand.
HEM stats have some meaning but mean absolutely nothing when it comes to skill, a 9/7 can be profitable just as much as a 45/20 can be, its all in the way you play the game and how good you are at making decisions post flop, a 9/7 doesn't have many post flop decisions to make, either he hits his set or he misses and pretty much is a fit or fold game, a 45/20 will have a lot of post flop play and a lot of decisions to make, he needs to be a good hand reader to be profitable.

I am repping a low flush, yes. My stats were likely on the order of 35/20.

You say if he is calling the turn, he is not calling the river? Wouldn't this suggest that the river bluff is actually good, if it folds out most of his turn call range?

btw, thanks for the useful response.


Yes, because they are very good for learning the simplest way to be a solid winning player at uNL. And that's great--I really respect and appreciate it. But the tight, solid play style they advocate is by no means the most profitable way to play uNL games, simple and straightforward though it may be.

I believe too many people learn to play one winning style and then presume it's the only style that can be played profitably--hence many of the posts in thread here.

I am honestly suprised, if it is profitable to limp-call K8s from UTG.

Why, no problem, buddy. Thanks for your contributions to thread.


Why not? This is 100% opponent-dependent. A lot of people in these games play really badly postflop in this spot--they let me rob them with limp/flat+check/raises and such an awful lot.

The only reason the introductory strategies tell you to avoid limping is because it requires you to play aggressively postflop and choose spots/read hands well. Just like flatting 3-bets OOP--the conventional wisdom is "just don't do it" but it's really not a problem if you're confident in your ability to play OOP without initiative.

Fishes aren't folding to your barrels and beter players will dominate you from ip, with beter hands. If you have some data to show us that limp/calling pre is in fact profitable, then by all means show it to us. Sticky threads are conventional wisdom for a reason: because they work. I doubt that this type of playing works in a long term.

I really deeply disagree with so much of what you posted but there's no point thrashing it out. If you think you can make profits doing all the stuff that everyone who has beaten the game in the past and is beating it now advises you NOT TO DO then go for it. Please open limp a ton, play 100k hands and come back and show us how you're doing.

If you want to talk about your line, what hands do you think you represent?

What range do you think villain gets to the river with?

Do you think his calling range is different based on your betsizing?

What stats/reads do you have that suggest he is going to fold here?

Basically, why do you think this will work?

Ak, AQ, j10 and flush are all in his range, he's probably not folding these holding.

Irregardless of the crap that has been said:

Yeah ok, you want to make a play on villain. Fine. So you c/c+donk on a scare card. Yeah i've seen worse. But when no draws hit on the river and the 7 pairs, do you REALLY think you're scaring anyone who can call you on the turn with anything more than a bluff-catcher? And do you really think most bluff-catchers will give in to the overbet-pot shove *which works because it looks like an attempt to maximize folds and not calls*?

Sorry I meant if he's calling the turn there's no way he's folding on the river.. Now if you say you're repping a low flush your turn play makes littlle sense.. with a low flush would you really want him seeing a river card free? I'd have to say if you're going to completely bluff at this it has to start on the turn. The turn was the real scare card on this board for him. The Second 7 just does nothing because you're not just calling down two streets with 7x... you cant slowplay a set of 77's with that board and if you have something like K7 or Q7 you're raising the flop because the board is so wet.

I just want to say (again) that preflop is simply overvalued by alot of people at this forum. Yes, its better to have initiative and yes, you're gonna get your ass handed over to you if you'd limp on a table full of 2+2'rs, but still... 90% of your winrate comes from turn and river play. Some days "fold pre" seems to some kind of mantra here but against some people you can even open ATC profitable. Its all alot more situational, small preflop mistakes can lead to huge postflop +ev spots and the contrary is also true, playing perfect preflop doesn't mean you'll ever win at this game.

I haven't done it enough yet to have a meaningful sample size, but I'm interested in finding out more about it. I'll let you know.

Also, not bluffing fish is a huge mistake. There are two ways to profit from someone in poker: They call too much with the worst hand or fold too much with the best hand. Fish definitely do the former too much in some situations, but it's silly to assume they never do the latter. They absolutely do--you just have to read their hands well and find their folding thresholds on various types of boards.

Of course, it's safer and easier to just never bluff them, but there are lots of spots where they fold way too often. Just because they tend to call way too often in other spots doesn't mean they don't have any exploitable folding tendencies.


I don't mean any disrespect to those people, but you're making the mistake of assuming that because they've found one way to beat the game, anything they don't do must not be profitable under any circumstances. Poker is a game with many different ways to win. A play that fails miserably in one approach might work just fine in another.

Low flushes or turned two pair, mostly. Donk bluffing turn scare cards works just like 2-barreling them. In fact, it works even better against fishy players because it's so blatant. If they aren't considering the fact that you might donk bluff, they often just assume your donk bet on the turn/river means you hit whatever the scare card is.

A lot of marginal one pair hands like KJ, KT, QJ, QT, AJ, AT, etc. He can also have two pair with AK/AQ/KQ, or sets, or a flush himself, but given his failure to raise the donk bet on a three-flush turn, I think most of those hands are probably not in his range. His hand looks pretty marginal after calling the turn.

Not particularly; it looks like a spot where he calls with his one pair hands because he wants to see a cheap showdown and he isn't quite sure what my donk bet is supposed to mean. If I bet very small I would probably get a few more calls from very weak marginal hands, and if I bet very big I might get him to fold immediately, but I probably wouldn't get many calls from hands that will fold to a river shove.

A few reasons:

A) Players tend to iso-raise "weak limpers" fairly wide in order to play a pot in position with initiative against one opponent,
B) Players at this level tend to c-bet any A or K high flop almost every time,
C) Relatively weak players tend to interpret donk bets on scary turn/river cards as strength, so his call suggests that he has a number of marginal hands that he doesn't want to get the money in with and is hoping I don't bomb the river. On that three-straight three-flush board, why isn't two pair/set raising for value/protection if he thinks his hand is good for a stack?

Is he really reasoning enough to value call with the intention of calling all in on the river in order to get more value from my bluffs? If so, then hats off to him, but I think he only does that with flushes and maybe sets or top two.

The river brick doesn't really make much of a difference here; his turn call looks to me like a marginal hand that wants to showdown and is hoping I don't make a big river bet.

That was my reasoning.

Also, please review this guy's post because it makes the point I was trying to make very clearly:


+1

one more post and I'm done

I appreciate this may not be directed at me but some of the logic in this thread just doesn't add up.

This thread is fun to read. Very entertaining. Please continue with the limp/call idea and why it's good setoverset.

Nevermind. Im not with OP on this at all, his postflop and preflop play is atrocious. However, You also did a pretty good job misinterpreting what I was trying to say. You are right that when people suck postflop they should prob limit their preflop range etc and first learn to play postflop. But on the other hand of you only play premium hands from any postition you'll never learn anything. This was the point I was trying to make, preflop mistakes are not the reason people are winning or losing. There are plenty of players with unorthodox preflop styles who made it up to the highest stakes or who are beating their current stakes. There are also plenty of people with good 3bet frequencys and an awesome 22/18 style that are big losers.

Also, limping doesnt automatically mean that the pots will be much smaller on the turn and river. As limping might induce a couple of limpers where as raising usually only gets one or two callers. (which is why openraising is always better).

Im with you that limping isnt optimal but getting all angry and saying it is terrible while typing out 1k words seems really overexaggerated.

Maybe you didnt read my previous post itt, maybe that puts it in perspective.

They fold cause they dont have anything, Fish dont fold hands! If you plan on making money by getting fish to fold tpnk you will have no money, that's for sure.