Christmas in July: Overlimping with KJo in the CO
At Christmas in July at MGM Springfield, the cardroom fills with loose-passive fish. In preparation for the game, I made this post about whether to overlimp with hands like KJo in late position. GG of course advised limping, and some agreed. More seemed to agree with Mlark that one should raise KJo over limpers.
UTG, LJ, HJ, and blinds are all loose passives. Button is tight passive. 1/2. Effective stack sizes are 150-325.
OTTH
UTG, LJ, and HJ limp. Hero with KJo in the CO?
It's *exactly* a hail mary. For 1bb. In position. Against a typical LLSNL line up. This is *terrific* risk vs reward value.
As for Kxxx checked to us a second time, we can easily make a comfortable value bet now on the turn. Everyone has told us we have the best hand here 98% of the time. Make a small bet, get paid off, and we just made enough bbs to wager ~10 more 1bb hail mary wagers in position waiting for that blue chipper.
GpokerisezG
most players who limp KJo aren't folding flops of K92r just because UTG lead out for pot or more. They're gonna be milked all the way to the river.
That's what 1/2 players do from UTG, they limp hands like KQ, QJ, AQ, AJ and even AK (because they refer to it as a drawing hand).
Yes, those hands are included, but it makes a big difference if they are VPIPing 15%, 20% or 50% from UTG.
It's like being on the Button Heads up and open folding or open limping KJo because it might be dominated by part of the BB's 75% calling range.
It's like being on the Button Heads up and open folding or open limping KJo because it might be dominated by part of the BB's 75% calling range.
There are also times when UTG has AJ and we raise the CO with KJ and he limp calls. Flop is Q96. He checks, we cbet, and he folds.
We can still beat dominated hands by raising and with initiative in the hand, even though we're dominated but when we limp we're the ones who are now forced to play fit or fold. I prefer to limp with hands that can make the nuts and win big multiway pots, not with RIO hands.
There are also times when UTG has AJ and we raise the CO with KJ and he limp calls. Flop is Q96. He checks, we cbet, and he folds.
We can still beat dominated hands by raising and with initiative in the hand, even though we're dominated
I would have zero issues leaning towards a raise in this spot versus just 1 limper for these reasons. However, against 3 limpers and with loose blinds, there is just not nearly as good a chance at getting ourselves into this situation (especially without an outlandish raise size).
Again, this is very similar to postflop strategy. With a bunch of people in the pot, we need much better hands to bet with (especially for large amounts) than we do HU. The same type of thinking can be applied to preflop regarding the strength of hand needed before attacking 1 limper versus a field of limpers, imo.
GcluelessNLnoobG
I would have zero issues leaning towards a raise in this spot versus just 1 limper for these reasons. However, against 3 limpers and with loose blinds, there is just not nearly as good a chance at getting ourselves into this situation (especially without an outlandish raise size).
Again, this is very similar to postflop strategy. With a bunch of people in the pot, we need much better hands to bet with (especially for large amounts) than we do HU. The same type of thinking can be applied to pre
I was still referring to 3 or 4 limpers including UTG (the early first couple limpers are the most important ones in the hand, the rest are just dead money) by raising it's just like sweeping the dollars up from the sidewalk but I was referring to if UTG was the only one that called us pre since he's gonna have the strongest range of all the limpers by far.
Most of the time when we over limp pre we're just folding post flop anyway when we miss which is about 80% of the time (assuming we're not bluffing post flop with king high in a 5 way limped hand).
If we raised pre and two older fit or fold LP players called and then they both fold to a cbet (and it's even better if someone calls a quarter sized cbet on a wet board then folds to an overbet ott since we now know he's weak) we make a lot more money more often then the one in a million times we flop a straight and lead out only to watch everyone fold.
If you're comfortable over limping in these spots (which to me is horrible, but that's jus tme) go for it there's more than one way to skin a cat in poker everyone plays different which is what makes poker a challenging game.
