Adjusting to gigantic Open Raise sizes

If you are winning 50 BB/hr over a 6 month period, don't change anything that you are doing.

I think a lot of it depends on your opponents. If you are drastically better than them and they are making large pre-flop errors, you should open a wider range.

Is there a lot of 3betting in the game? Because that would be one of the main reasons to tighten up pre-flop when using large sizings.

Also in a private game, you may be at the mercy of the game's organizers to some extent. Like if you play the OMC strat and only open JJ+ AK, are they really going to let you continue to play with them and take their money?

Theoretically you want to call when you have pot odds to continue. Just looking at btn vs bb with sb fold and no rake for ease of understanding (you actually need more with rake), a 2.5x open you need 38.4% equity to call, whereas with a 10x open, you need 47.6% equity to call.

Since you want to mostly raise hands that are ahead of their range (i mean, really you need enough EV vs their continuing range + FE), that leaves you with an extremely thin band of hands that prefer calling, and most likely the best choice is to simply never cold call. ESPECIALLY when you arent in the BB.

Also because live games people always call, you want to err your range towards a linear value range than worrying as much about the removal effects of having an A or K.

You also can play crazy tight but theres really no need to.

FACING A RAISE:

I would essentially never flat in this game and play a very linear 3!ing game. A good rule of thumb for linear 3!s IP is that you can 3! half as wide as their opening range. Obviously you want to be a little tighter OOP.

A good starting assumption is that they're opening ~20% of hands (ie: typical HJ opening range), so you can 3! 10% of hands (88+/suited BWs/AQ+ and a few other favorite hands). That might be conservative in such a splashy game, but maybe not if they limp a lot and only raise for 10bbs+. If you're seeing a lot of K2s/Q9o/53s/etc from certain PFRs, you can adjust from there.

HOWEVER, there's a baseline for how much you can abuse the player in front of you before you're repopping it so wide that it's likely one of the players left to act waking up with a hand that's in the top half of your own range. In a game where people are fearlessly repopping it and getting it in light, you will get exploited (accidentally or otherwise) having a 20% 3! range in MP because an EP opener raises 40% of hands. I don't know these exact baselines off the top of my head.

FACING LIMPS:

My rule of thumb for dealing with limpers is that my baseline ISOing range IP is my RFI range for whatever seat I'm sitting in (so that I can't be owned by the players left to act), but no wider than the limper's own range. So if the limper limps 20% of his range and I'm OTB, I'm ISOing with my standard HJ opening range. If a limper limps 45% of their range and I'm in the HJ, I'm still opening my standard HJ opening range. If they limp 40% and I'm OTB, it's open season.

My presumption is that even though the bottom of our range is behind the limper's range as a whole in equity, we should way overrealize our equity in position with an uncapped range and the betting lead.

My rule of thumb for ISOing limpers OOP is similar to the linear 3!ing strategy above: I ISO with any hand that's in the top half of the loosest limper. I think the 10% range above is a good starting point. It's a little conservative in the described game to assume people are only limping 20% of hands, but if there's a sea of limpers I'd want to have a pretty good feel on what every single limper's range is likely to be before I expand it too much.

Obviously it's hard to know these exact percentages without a HUD, but it should give you an idea of what to look for and how to adapt.

SOLVERS:

I've never owned a preflop solver myself, but it would probably be extremely helpful for quandaries like these. You can lock in certain sizes, nodelock ranges, etc and come up with optimal adjustments from there. You can even nodelock your own strategies, see how they're performing against the bot and/or against your opponent's presumed ranges. The only reason I say that it would "probably" be helpful is because I have no idea if the RAM and time required to solve each spot makes it impractical to do a lot of tinkering.

I'd love to try it out some day, because I get some inklings from some of my postflop solves that, for example, my BB ISOing range is too strong versus IP's l/c range because I just end up range betting almost every board with two cards higher than a 5.

Thank you for your answer venice!

I know my winrate sounds pretty good, however, for one, the game plays more like a 2/2 or, on some nights, even a 2/4 game because of the insane preflop play. So the winrate expressed in bb is skewed. Secondly, as mentioned, even though I am winning much more in this live game than online, I feel less confidence there. I know that what I am doing is "working" but I don't know if there is a strategy that could be working even better. Also, I am just curious for the sake of learning what, in theory, the optimal response would be. I am "new" to the game and I want to improve so that in the future I can also profitably play bigger games.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts Dan!

The amount of 3betting and also the morphology of 3betting ranges depends heavily on the player in this pool! It is a player pool of around 20-30 players who regularly play in this game. There is rarely any newcomers, so I have decent reads on most of the players. The general population tendency, however, is just 3betting a strong linear range without a sufficient amount of bluffs. Also there is people overcalling hands like JJ or AQs over a RFI and 2-3 callers! This can make it difficult to squeeze. Furthermore, some particular players like to limp full range, including AA and AKs with which they then reraise. The whole thing is a minefield to maneuver.

I am kind of oscillating between opening and squeezing very wide because I can outmaneuver the opposition postflop and tightening up drastically; I feel like both have benefits but I just don't have enough "data" to back up which strategy is higher EV.

I am not under any pressure from the organizers. However, table image is important because, as I have mentioned, it is a stable pool of about 20-30 regs who all know each other very well and play on weekly basis.

Thank you for the insight Tomark!

I have thought about this from a similar approach. But assume someone open raises to 10bb+, in theory, you wouldnt really have any hands which can call, even in the BB. So I agree that cold-calling should generally be avoided. However, how do you factor in equity realization into this approach of building your preflop range purely around pot odds? If I can flat an EP opening to 10bb from MP with 22-66 knowing damn well that behind me at least 2 more people will cold call aswell, and that if I hit my set, chances are I will stack someone who just puts it in with a flush draw, isn't that worth something? On the other hand, how do you even begin to accurately estimate your equity realization in a 4 or 5-way pot with players who might all have different types of range morphologies?

Thank you!

Thank you for the in-depth answer RaiseAnnounced!

Regarding facing a raise and agreeing with Tomark, I think your point of never cold-calling makes a lot of sense. I also agree with 3betting a top-heavy linear range, anything else just doesnt make a lot of sense against calling stations. I have heard about this rule of 3betting half the range you presume villain to open; however, I struggle with applying this as a squeeze strategy. In this game it is a much more common spot to face limpers and a 10-15bb squeeze over these limpers or an openraise of 8-12bb and multiple cold callers rather than an open raise and the action being folded to you. If I assume EP to open with 20% and MP1, MP2 and CO all cold-call with (not necessarily) capped ranges of 20-45%, how much should I squeeze, and what sizing? In these situations I usually raise 1.5-2.5x pot and if the initial raiser then calls the other 2 cold-callers feel they are "priced in" and also call. I know it sounds ridiculous but this is the game dynamic.

Regarding facing limpers: Do you have any tips on finding an adequate Isoing sizing? How to find the balance between not getting any folds and Isoing yourself against a range thats probably stronger than you would like it to be?

Regarding solvers: Yes, from my preliminary research RAM really does seem to be the biggest bottleneck to this whole idea... If anyone here has experience with SimplePreflop I would greatly appreciate a comment on the average solve time and practibility of "playing around" 😀
If I do happen to buy SimplePreflop in the near future I hope I will remember you in order to let you know about my experience with it Mr. RaiseAnnounced!

Yes, you are correct. I suppose i was simplifying too much. My point moreso is that your incentive to call basically doesnt exist. I would construct a 3 betting range based on position and your perception of V’s preflop range (and to some degree Vs postflop skill level), i probably wouldnt worry much at all about board coverage or blockers though.

Id probably use 3.5x the raise IP 5x OOP, +1 per cold caller. I assume it wont ho 4-5 ways in that situation, but if so id go even bigger (and tighten up more)

As for cold calling 22-66, no, these are reverse implied odds hands. If you were to cold call to go MW youd wanna have Axs Kxs.

When people cold call in front of me with a range that I can get value against with the hands I was already considering 3bing anyway, I tend to just see that call as a juicer and continue ahead with the same 3!ing strategy (except a little larger obviously). I don't know if that's maximally exploitative; that's something you'd have to play around with in a solver.

More calls do affect your flatting range (call slightly less with offsuit broadways, call slightly more with pairs and coordinated hands), but as we've said we won't be doing a whole lot of that here anwyay.

I think raising ~pot IP and ~1.5 pot OOP is plenty for both squeezes and ISOs.

Many will take more of a "when in Rome" style of raise sizing and figure if everyone's raising 10bbs then you can too without people instantly putting you on aces. The same people will also claim a benefit of doing this will make for less family pots, so apparently even they don't really believe that ranges are truly inelastic. I for one welcome the family pots: let them get priced in, the preponderance of the EV is going to go to the person in position with the strongest range and the initiative. Win less pots, win more money.

I don't think any of us truly know the answer to which is higher EV, and it would take a preflop solver to settle the dispute.

I also failed to consider that SimplePreflop probably doesn't have as many of the features as the postflop solvers I'm accustomed to using. You may not be able to nodelock, adjust for multi-blind games, etc. So that's something you'll want to research as well.

You'd be better served asking those questions in the SimplePreflop thread on the Poker Software forum. Not a lot of people are going to have experience with that specific software here.