Overlimp and Isoraise Ranges

Ok, I think I get it. Both lines are for when we raise and don't get 3bet, with raising over limpers being twice as profitable as opening (and both situations being profitable). All fair enough.

But in order to compare whether open limping/overlimping is more (or less) profitable (at least for you), you'd have to compare versus a similar sample size. (ETA#1: I see you've followed up with population stats on winners / losers, again, all fair enough). Course ~impossible to do live, so I guess we just each have to proceed the best we see fit.

ETA#2: And yeah, I'm on on-line pokrz virgin and will remain that way. TBH, not really sure how helpful it would be unless you found a game that was ~exactly equivalent to the LLSNL game you were playing and were able (and willing) to try out / compare vastly different methods over large samples quickly (which I definitely don't have the desire or time for). So in the meantime I'll just have to draw the best conclusions I can for me at my piddly ~13K hands per year rate (lol, ldo).

Gggodlucktoallofus,imoG

Very much been enjoying this thread so far. It's something that comes up periodically on the forum.

This is the first time I'm contributing to such a thread after playing a lot of volume online (to go with my years of live experience).

Now that I have more experience online, the "never limp" crowd's arguments make more sense to me, but I still don't agree with them. I have limping--both open-limping and overlimping--as a piece of my repertoire that I sometimes don't use and sometimes do. And what it really depends on is the lineup in which I am playing. In essence I guess what I'd argue is that those arguments people are making, using game theory- or data-type language, for why you shouldn't limp, are probably valid but not sound (hopefully I don't have to explain the difference). I play in a lot of lineups online (but not all lineups!) where limping any hand is just losing money. But the reason is that in most lineups I play in--especially 6-handed tables--there will be mostly regs who already know that my limps aren't the same as when a fish limps. They'll turbo-muck just as often as if I had open-raised (or sometimes limp behind me). So limping in that case, when people know not to raise behind me with a wide range, is just keeping the pot small unnecessarily.

There is a hidden premise here that I feel it's worth bringing out because it contrasts sharply with GG, who has been the biggest advocate for limping in this thread. That is, when I limp, especially in EP, my goal is almost never to play a limped pot. My goal, almost always, is either to 3bet over someone else's raise, or call someone else's raise, which keeps the price of seeing a flop cheap. And that does one other thing that no one here has really mentioned: it maximizes the chance that I will see flops with passive fish.

Let me make this more explicit. Imagine that we're in EP in a 9-handed game and we pick up 88. I don't think anyone would advocate open-folding this hand, would they? Now imagine that both blinds are loose-passive fish, and the CO and button are decent, not particularly good, but fairly aggressive regs, and effective stacks are 120BB. Should we raise this hand or limp it?

Well, many people are going to want to raise. The downside of raising here is getting 3bet. Getting 3bet when we hold 88 in EP is never good at this stack depth, but in this particular configuration we especially don't want to get 3bet. That's because if anyone, including the two aggressive players on the button, 3bets us, it's very likely to knock out the fish in the blinds. We do NOT want that.

On the other hand, the downside of limping is if no one raises we will be playing a limped pot, which we also do not want. But with aggressive players behind us, the likelihood that the pot is unraised is small. Furthermore, and I think this is important, I would rather play a limped pot with the fish in the blinds and whoever else limps with us than play a 3bet pot out of position with the fish having folded. (Both options are inferior to playing a single-raised pot with the fish calling that raise, but we're comparing downsides here.)

So with the given lineup, I'd rather limp. Not because limping is theoretically better, but because I'm adjusting my play to maximize the chances I'll be able to win big bets postflop from the fish at the table. After all, that is our main source of winnings, isn't it?

One final thing about this. Some may say, "Well, if you only limp certain types of hands you can be exploitable." When I'm in a lineup where I expect unaware players to raise my limps behind me, I'll limp a mix of speculative hands and premium hands that I can 3bet with. The idea is the same in both cases: I do it when I think there is a high chance that the pot will not be limped around. If I can get in a 3bet with a premium hand after someone else raises (and especially if other people call in between, which we all know would happen extremely often in live games) that's my best-case scenario.

Vernon, since you 're playing online and you are implementing a mixed strategy of limping and raising, we have a great opportunity.

Please indulge me and go to you your database and filter your stats based on whether you openlimped (and overlimped if you 're doing so)or raised. How many BB/100 do you make in each situation? You can then filter for hands in similar situations, as in: How many Bb/100 do you win when you raise with premiums (AA, AKs, KK etc) as opposed to when you limp with them?

I know that a possible counter-argument is that this comparison is not like for like, but it's one of the best real natural experiments we have at our disposal.

I am genuinely curious what it shows, because your example presents the best case scenario for limping.

FWIW, yesterday, I created a custom size that shows the average pot size.

In limped pots without raising, the average pot size is 9BB.

In raised pots where people have limped is almost 3 times that, 26BB.

But that's in online poker where the default raize size is around 2.5BB and rarely above 3BB. In live poker, where the default size is 4 or 5BB, the average pot size should be 36 to 45BB.

The data shows what simple intuition had us believe before we looked at the data. Raises make for bigger pots and more money to be won especially if you do so from late position.

Trust me, 1 cent/2 cent online is very comparable to 1/3 live, if anything a smidge more difficult but really not that much.

Now, you only have to play as many hands as you 've played live. Since you 've played 6000 hours live, that's the equivalent of 180-200 thousand hands.

If you 4table online- which is not that difficult, you can play 600 hands an hour. So basically, it will take you 300 hours to play as many hands online as you 've played in 15 years live.

You can then play another 300 hours in which you never limp and only raise and see if there's any difference in results.

It goes without saying that variance should be extremely high for both samples, as is for live, but it can still be a fun, little experiment.

I guess it's possible you'd previously practised a/some skill(s) that are related to 4 tabling online, and thus. found the skill easy to pickup.

But my experience is that transitioning from one table live to 4 tabling online would be difficult, even more so to commit to 600 hours of it.

I think the Geek knows his game, and is, in fact, crushing it. I am well over arguing that he should make any changes to what works for him.

I couldn't imagine playing in such a small player pool and winning at the rate he does.