ok thanks

I find myself reluctant to pull the trigger on the button with hands like ATo or KQo when there are 3-4 limpers in front of me, but I see now that this attitude is costing me money. CHA-CHING x 4!

Very good post. Congrats.

great post

" hero??? kicks a puppy" lol

Close to the best post I have read @ 2+2.

one quibble.

QJs vs 33 is in fact a value bet

A+ post Kurt. Your first one was almost enuff explantion by its self.

As far as C-betting is concerned after iso limpers. I think that many people just do it automaticly/autopilot, but they don't think about board texture, what villian can have, or what we are trying to represent.

Every CotW has been great (+ sircuddles post) and reinforces ABC solid poker. Which I need.

Applied this concept this evening with positive results:

HAND #1
Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 Pot Limit Hold'em - 7 players - View hand 62029
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG+1: $9.00
MP: $28.45
CO: $11.45
Hero (BTN): $21.55
SB: $12.85
BB: $28.80
UTG: $14.50

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with K T
UTG calls $0.25, UTG+1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, CO calls $0.25, Hero raises to $1.60, 2 folds, UTG calls $1.35, UTG+1 calls $1.35, 1 fold

Flop: ($5.40) 6 2 9 (3 players)
UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $0.50, Hero raises to $4, UTG folds, UTG+1 folds

Final Pot: $6.40
Hero mucks K T
Hero wins $6.10
(Rake: $0.30)

HAND #2
Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 Pot Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 62030
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG: $4.50
MP: $14.35
CO: $25.00
Hero (BTN): $50.00
SB: $25.00
BB: $26.45

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with A 2
1 fold, MP calls $0.25, CO calls $0.25, Hero raises to $1.35, 2 folds, MP calls $1.10, CO calls $1.10

Flop: ($4.40) 3 8 3 (3 players)
MP checks, CO checks, Hero bets $2.50, MP folds, CO folds

Final Pot: $4.40
Hero mucks A 2
Hero wins $4.20
(Rake: $0.20)

HAND #3
Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players - View hand 62032
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG: $27.45
UTG+1: $17.40
MP1: $10.00
MP2: $41.70
CO: $28.70
Hero (BTN): $24.50
SB: $12.90
BB: $8.55

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with 8 T
2 folds, MP1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, CO calls $0.25, Hero raises to $1.25, 2 folds, MP1 calls $1, CO calls $1

Flop: ($4.10) 9 9 3 (3 players)
MP1 checks, CO checks, Hero bets $2.50, MP1 folds, CO folds

Final Pot: $4.10
Hero mucks 8 T
Hero wins $3.90
(Rake: $0.20)

Comments?

And the neat thing is that setminers are so focused on the "big pot", they won't adjust and will just keep paying you 5bb each time.

Always know your villain... watch out for the ones who DO adjust.

I must admit Kurt, I got a good bit out of this. I JUST started playing FR online (6max and SNGs mostly), and it's a situation that doesn't come up as often in those games.

Excellent post Kurt. Now you got me looking at FtoCbet again and isolating and cbetting in better (more) spots vs the right kinds of players. thanks for that.

Great post. I'll have to read this more in depth!

Hey Kurt I wanted to ask your opinion on something regarding isolation raises and figured I might as well do it in this thread

What are your thoughts on sizing the isolation raise depending on the stack size of the limper? I did a sweat with someone recently and they were recommending making it .75 or $1 if the limper had, say 20BB-40BB. If someone has 15BB, do we bother ISO raising or just wait for 77/AJs+ and put them all in pre? Also cbetting less on flops vs. shorties can help save money, because most of the time if you ISO raise their only option on the flop is shove or fold. Thoughts?

tyty

I think most of your ideas are in the right direction.

TBH I haven't experimented with smaller iso raises against short stacks. What I will say is that these players do tend to be "trickier" and trapier. These are the players who I find slowplaying JJ+ to the flop, then shoving over your cbet when you have half your effective stack in. When there's a bunch of limpers the same dynamics are in play (big pot, etc.), but the shorties rely less on implied odds, and so tend to have a tighter range and are closer to committment... I would be wary of isolating an unknown shortstack without at least a hand I would normally play.

Solid advice.

The mid-stacks you can ISO for sure, and raising to $1 does seem to help because if you both flop monsters the stacks can still get in super easy, but in the long run all those times he donks and you fold or you check/fold or give up on turn those $0.25 add up. It seems that maybe others might come along easier, but I haven't been doing it long enough to really tell yet.

Solid article Kurt, very well done. And I vote that this is the best OP in the Concept of the Week series.

I'd take a step further and say that against villains who are playing level 1 fit or fold, your ISO range really doesn't matter. In the example where you had KJ and folded after getting check raised, even if you flop a J or K you aren't really going to be continuing anyways. We are ISOing wide because people fold. They checkraise when they can beat one pair (sometimes they checkraise weak TP + draw hands, but basically what I'm getting at is when they checkraise, it sort of puts us in a RIO spot - we have to risk our stack to find out if one pair is good or not because rarely do people checkraise the flop without following up on the turn).

So! What I'm saying is KJo = AK = 22 = ......you guessed it, ATC sometimes. Of course you can't do this 100% of the time with ATC because people kind of catch on to what you're doing. But you get the idea.

edit: Also it should be noted that you are isolating limpers because they play weakly. This isn't necessarily in the form of "plays fit or fold postflop." You don't want to be taking this blanket "raise ATC vs limpers and c-bet every flop" strategy against limpers who are calling stations. In that case, you want to be ISOing for value with hands that can flop best vs 2nd best (like a hand as weak as AT for example). Just know your villain, why you are ISOing, and how they are exploitable - whether it's in the fact that they play fit or fold or that they call down with bottom pair.

Excellent Kurt!

So far, this whole CoW thing has been pure Nitro for my learning process. Keep up the great work, OP's!

I was planning on letting it twist in the wind for 45 minutes or so, but TDK and mpethy's responses were so perfect I had to jump back in.

Solid post sir.

I used you concept with great success on my last session, and I found a spot where I did not know if it was a good move to raise the limpers :

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.10(BB) Replayer

SB ($15.12)
Hero (BB) ($11.95)
UTG+1 ($7.50)
UTG+2 ($30.06)
MP1 ($9.92)
MP2 ($5.84)
MP3 ($29.95)
CO ($6.98)
BTN ($9.32)

Dealt to Hero QT

UTG+1 calls $0.10, UTG+2 calls $0.10, fold, fold, MP3 calls $0.10, fold, BTN calls $0.10, SB calls $0.05, Hero??


Here I am on the BB so I will be OoP on the flop if I get called, which sucks. If I raise to 1$~1.20$ I think I will get maybe one or two callers. No one plays really well post-flop and they all fold to cBet more than 50% of the time.

Is it better to only raise with your premium hands (sometime with 93o to balance) and keep hands like QTs to see a cheap flop when we are SB/BB or we have to punish limpers even in that position?

^NLTAP addresses this idea very nicely.

tl;dr check. For the non-tl;dr explanation, well...I guess you'll have to go and buy the book like the rest of us.

Your hand plays better multiway and you can hit a lot of flops where you aren't sure where you're at if you raise pre.

Also want to add too (don't know if it's been mentioned quite yet) that if you're considering ISO raising a chain of limpers, you really need to look at the stats of the first limper. If he's not likely to fold, and you have air, folding > ISO raising. People love to call preflop in the name of "I was getting good odds," so no need to play your 78s for a raise against 4 people when you can limp in against 4 people and have more room postflop.

JimmyJack, I'm glad you got value out of this thread.

Your question about QTs out of the blinds fits better under MT2R's S.L.O.B. concept than isolating limpers, though they are related.

Sorry to be late to the discussion, but I want to add something to the talk about limping small pockets.

I have analyzed stats for a lot of players from NL $10 to NL $200. I have seen multiple winning players at each of those levels who are making a profit in a big sample by limping small pocket pairs.

In my opinion and experience, simply saying that limping small pairs "isn't profitable," is incorrect.

I have also seen many winning players who are losing money by raising their small pocket pairs; again I have seen these players at all levels from $10 to $200.

Based on what I have seen in hundreds of databases, I have concluded that whether to limp, raise or mix limps and raises with small pocket pairs is probably the closest and toughest decision in preflop poker. I have seen all 3 of these strategies make money in the hands of winning players, and I have seen all 3 of these strategies lose money in the hands of winning players.

I know this doesn't add much to the discussion, and I am sorry about that. Based on what I have seen, I believe that all three strategies are potentially effective strategies. I have no explanation for why some winning players make money limping and others lose money. Nor do I have an explanation for why some winning players make money raising and others lose. But I am certain that I have seen solid winning players winning and losing with both strategies.

That said, I agree that we should be raising limps lighter than we might otherwise enter the pot. 22-66 are going to hate almost all flops that don't give them a set, so we will have a clear advantage most of the time. So regardless of whether limping or raising the small pockets is more profitable, the isolation play clearly can and should be used to exploit a limping strategy (whereas floats can be used to exploit the raising strategy).

Much better to iso-raise from the blinds with the eight-deuce offsuit than the jack-ten suited. Bad idea to take a strong implied odds hand and turn it into a bluff, especially if it's the kind of hand, like nine-eight or queen-ten, that could conceivably be dominated by one of the limpers. It's much better with those kinds of good speculative hands to see a cheap flop; the five limpers in the pot have already sweetened it such that you're likely to make big money if you hit the flop hard.

Like I vi said, NLTAP has a chapter on this that's +EV for everyone ever.

mpethybridge: Say we're in MP1, and UTG is a 36/4 habitual limping fish, and back in the cutoff or on the button there's an aggressive reg that loves to iso-raise. What do you think about OCCASIONALLY limping 44 behind UTG's limp and then reraising if the aggroreg iso-raises?

This is probably a subject worthy of its own thread, how do deal with regs behind you that iso-raise a lot. (Other than find a softer table.)

I did personal analysis on myself (much smaller sample size obviously), and I found that for my personal style of play I don't like open limping. I will overlimp. So with that in mind, I looked at my small PP and where they were profitable, Open raise-over limping, CCPF. The SHOCKING results were that were most profitable open raising in late position (). So in EP I did some range substitution, I took out the bottom PP and put in stuff like 9s7s instead of 22 etc.

In LP, there isn't much difference in my wr 22-55 when I am isolating than when I am isolating with ATC.

Not sure if this has been mentioned.
But it is actually important what holdings you iso-raise with.
Sure on some tables ATC is fine......but please be looking to your left before you do it.
If you are habitually iso-raising - an DtD or other competent regs pick up on it..........do not have a suprised look on your face when you seemed to get 3-bet squeezed a ton.

Also with regards to picking fish and fold-c-bet - rarely will you have enough stats on fish for which this stat will have converged. So I suggest iso- raising with holdings that will allow you to be aggressive or at least have some showdown or suckout value.

e.g. I would dump iso-raising 54o or 22 even if they had a 150 hand high fold to c-bet number - and be more inclined to iso-raise with J2s or A6o