Aces utg

Well the only hand we beat that is happy to pay us off is KK which presumably 4bets preflop, so my inclination is to xb flop and let villain hang himself with our nut bluffcatcher.

We are representing AA/KK preflop. If we were bluffing with T9s or A3s or whatever, we would cbet this flop. The board strongly blocks Qx. If he has that, he has it. I don't see how anyone would start bluffing after you limp/3! and checked back this flop.

Bet $50.

id check back. bet KK.

I also limp preflop as per my style.

I typically like to offer fairly poor IO of 8:1 preflop, which would mean a raise closer to like $90. Our raise size offered still fairly poor IO of about ~12:1, but that's still about 50% better than what I'd prefer. Although we are in position with the biggest overpear and obviously want action.

SPR is 2.6 and thus stacks can be gotten in at any time. Board is completely drawless so there are no draws to charge. We'd much rather call off our chips versus bet them off (since his betting range is much wider than his calling range). So I think I'd mostly start with a check back or perhaps a very small bet. Would definitely call a turn bet if flop checks thru and then evaluate river (probably betting if checked to and soul-reading but likely calling if bet into again if this player can be splashy postflop).

GcluelessNLnoobG

I raise the first time vs. a straddler I think is splash-y -- they are usually more than happy to 3bet. Limp/re-raise is so transparent. If I did limp/re-raise, I'd go closer to $100 with all those limpers.

As played, I check -- maybe he will stab at the turn.

limp raising is so face up just raise like a normal person

To expand on this...

It's hard for him to have Qx on QQ3rb, when we double-block all his AQ combos, and all his worse QX combos mostly fold to our limp-3B pre. Maybe he continues with KQs, but that's about it, and it's just two combos.

The limp-3B is so strong that he might not 4B KK. He's almost certainly not 4B'ing worse PP's. So his range is mostly just big PP's, including the one combo of QQ that hit the lottery.

He's not folding KK. At least not yet, if we bet 1/3 pot or less. He might find a hero fold if we barrel turn. Likewise, he's probably not letting go of JJ yet, and maybe not TT.

Our limp-3B range pre is super-strong, but it's not just AA/KK. It could also be AK/AQ, and AQ is hard for us to have with two Q's on board. So we can get value from KK, JJ, and maybe TT. It's also possible he's sticking around with AK, hoping for a chop.

What's weird about these post-flop situations when we limp-3B with AA pre is that we're going to hate a lot of turn cards if V calls our flop bet. Any K, J or T might make him a boat, assuming he didn't out-flop us with trips or quads.

So when we're going to have a hard time betting future streets, I want to c-bet the flop, hoping he calls once, and pray for a turn brick that we can barrel. But even on a brick, I'm barreling small, and if I think V is capable of bluffing rivers if we check back, I might just check-back the turn to bluff-catch the river.

Obviously it's a disaster if V out-flopped us. But that could be mitigated, if not avoided, had we just opened for a raise in the first place. If we open and V 3B's, the rest of the hand plays itself, when we 4B, and V either folds or 5B-jams, but if he flat calls we're just getting the rest in on any flop.

I don't really like preflop with this hand, as you are too face up. The play Sklansky gave in his book, limping behind as the 4th limper in HJ with a maniac behind raising most hands is reasonable, because it doesn't look as much like a big pair when you limp/3!. I don't mind the play as a bluff or with AK or something. It is so stereotypical to do it with AA and you can get called by pps set mining, knowing what you have. Depends on how bad the players are though. If they will call with high cards and then call down if they make a pair, it may be OK.

Guy put in a hugenormous 15% of his stack preflop. Good luck being profitable setmining (let alone anything else).

Also, we got somewhat unlucky that the raiser was the last guy after the world of limps. Sometimes its the first guy after us that raises and gets a world of calls, where our limp/reraise (even if it literally never gets action) is still massively profitable.

Also, we completely negated everyones positional advantage on us (as position doesn't matter nearly as much in low SPR pots).

And if you're worried about being too face up, simply add AK to AA/KK and now you've actually got more combos of A high than you do pocket pear.

Gbutyoudoyou,forrealzG

You need to add a lot more than AK to make this not transparent. So easy to play against post that I'm calling pretty wide, especially for this sizing -- mainly because the players who do this are often scared money when deep and willing to gii not matter what when shallow.

Downbet. Seems mandatory to extract value from middling pairs.

To those saying our limp raise is face up, we can do it with A5s or 88 if it seems like a good opportunity. I don’t raise much from utg.

I do it with trashy off-suit aces, as a bluff, but typically only when the raise comes from a LAG in EP.

Raise it up pre, don't limp unless there is a known maniac behind you. Population is passive so getting value is key.

As played, SPR is ~2.5 so if you decide to xb make sure you size up ott. Can always bet otf and xb ott, then bomb river...

Sent from my SM-A146U using Tapatalk

Reasonable approach, but I don't limp trashy offsuit aces.

I tried it once with KJo when I thought the raiser was weak from his sizing and frequent raises. Raiser flopped well, but didn't bet it, worried I had AA/KK or something.

IMO, some limping with the some limp/reraises with a somewhat balanced 3! range is good play. If it is AA/KK appears to be face up AA/KK, it is terrible play.

I esp. don't mind limp/raise vs. straddling gambling guy. Although he didn't raise that big, so we should probably go a little bigger instead of a little smaller ... saying that everyone else folded, so it's not a big deal.

Flop is whatever, you can check back and let him bluff into AK or bet small and let him bluff/bluffcatch into AK.

50/100/shove gets all the money in, and we kind of want to get all the money if we can on this board if we think the player has anything they can call down with.

But if he's as wide as we suspect then he's often got nothing here so a better plan might be to get whatever we can, and thus. check back.
The only big problem is if V has like 44 and isn't going to put more money in for us unless another 4 comes out, also if V knows what he's doing then checking back flop and trying to get all the money in later looks a lot more sus than just betting.

Bet red chips first. Save your bigger chips for the river, three blacks into a mountain of red would be ideal. This for the same reason that limit games use small denomination chips relative to the bet size. Villain isn't thinking about pot odds, the bigger the pot looks the more attached to it he'll be. To stack him without a cooler on a board as static as this, you're likely to need some sort of psychological manipulation. Doing table talk well is hard, but anyone can physically bloat the pot in this way.

What would your guess be as to how many pots are limped versus raised in your typical LLSNL game, in your experience?

What percentage of pots would need to be raised before you would consider limp/reraising?

GcluelessLRRnoobG

I'd say 20%. Heck, in my games it's much less if I'm not the one raising. And I'm never limp/raising unless I'm against a maniac who I know will call/raise me -- and even then I usually just raise the first time because he's usually going to 3bet anyway 😉

I know it works for you, but it doesn't work for the guys I play with -- at least they aren't getting any money from me.

It's not a play I'll make often. It works well in specific situations where the one good / aggro player is close on our left, and the rest of the table calls too wide.

How big is the player pool where you play?

Further down you asked the question about limped vs SRP pots and at what point would someone start developing a limp reraise range -

So my question/concern with this is the assumption of strength as default for pretty much everyone when itÂ’s an up front limp reriase. I would deviate from that assumption if villain starts VPIPing / inelastic ranges etc etc

The issue though is most players donÂ’t pay enough attention so in the example of having AK in this limp/de range do they even notice?

And then do you never have AA for a raise up front or do you mix frequency?

Probably 75%+ of the pots in my home games start with an open limp, but more importantly: it is exceedingly rare for players to put in isolation raises.

As for your second question, incorporating a limping range into your game makes things more complex and I personally prefer to play as simple of a strategy as possible.

If I had to, I would limp/reraise 50% of my AA combos and then limp/reraise all combos of A5s. We could probably get away with also including A4s since a limp/reraise screams so much strength.

Sent from my SM-A146U using Tapatalk

I guess everyone's game will play differently, but this is certainly not my experience in LLSNL games.

To get a more confident accurate evaluation of how my game actually plays (instead of a very inaccurate guess off the top of my head based on no facts whatsoever), I actually did a test. I waited for the table to become "run-of-the-mill", with no maniacs throwing things out of wack, but not an OMC table with everyone reading a book either. And for an hour I'd then simply keep track of how many hands were raised versus limped. And I did that for 10 sessions in a row. Small sample, but at least something based in facts. And I've done that test twice, once in 2017 (when considering my Super Nit method) and once again in 2025 (after my tables had dropped from 10 handed to 9 handed). Both results were pretty much the same, in that about 2/3rds of hands are raised preflop (so about twice as likely to see a raised pot versus a limped one). And this is at tables where there ain't a maniac / action I considered unfairly abnormal. And my second test in 2025 didn't do one sample size past 3:30pm in the afternoon. And this is pretty much what I would have guessed simply using the eyeball test.

To be honest, based on my tests and my eyeball test of every game I've played it, I find it very hard to believe anyone is sitting in a LLSNL game where even 50% of the pots are limped (in my 20 sample test, my lowest samples of raised pots were 48%, 47% and 40%). But, if you're confident that is the game you're indeed sitting in, I guess it is what it is.

GcluelessLLSNLnoobG