Overlimp and Isoraise Ranges

Overlimping AJo on the button against typical low stakes limpers is just terrible.

Overlimping a small pp, Axs, a suited connector or mediocre high card hands is fine. Some of those hands can be raises or limps. You should also be raising a lot looser on the button than from the blinds.

Position is so important when constructing ranges. I'm almost never overlimping before the HJ; if a hand is strong enough to limp before that then it's strong enough to raise, and if it's not strong enough to raise then it should be folded.

A lot of people complete from the SB with a very wide range when the odds are say 6/1 or better. I very rarely do this - I just don't trust myself with Q7s to put nothing in postflop unless I hit 2p+ lor a flush draw.

My LP overlimp range will depend on a lot of things - exact position, number of players in the pot and so on - and is rarely fixed so I might just raise things up depending on my mood - but is probably going to be 77-22, most suited connectors, quite a few suited one gappers.

I'm trying very hard to drill myself out of playing mediocre offsuit Broadways as a limp behind. If you get involved in a limped pot with QTo then you're just trying to play fish-vs-fish and telling yourself that you're a better fish than they are is probably delusional.

And yes AJo is a raise all day long - that's what we all learned years ago in chapter 1 of whatever book we were brought up on - your bread and butter is raising these hands because you want the pot to be big when you're ahead and small when you're not. With AJo you'll make huge profits when you get called by AT and flop the Ace...and that's not close. Some things still hold true.

OK

Not a single chance, ever.

To be clear, I meant 22 is terrible for set value at 20bb.

Of course there's a chance.

Open limping is generally bad. Overlimping is very standard because limpers are generally weak recreational players who make tons of mistakes and you are getting a great price. It's a big mistake to never over limp.

Your range is capped, sure. But that's not a huge deal. You playing against recreational players. I wouldn't be super worried about being exploited.

Low pocket pairs are quintessential over limp hands. They perform very well multiway. If you iso raise 22, the chance you get called, pre, hit a set, and then win a huge pot is going to go down. In that case, you want more recs in the pot, especially if there are deeper players who might limp behind. More players to hit top pair etc against your set.

On the other hand, if you have a hand like KJo, I am going to want to iso raise a lot more. With that hand I want to either take it down pre or get it heads up postflop, recognizing I am rarely going to play for stacks with that hand, but I have a better chance of having the best hand postflop or generating a fold the less multiway it is.

Where we draw the line between overlimping and iso raising depends on how strong the limpers' range is and how sticky they are. Some recs are limping hands like KQo, JTs, AQo, in order to limp call and avoid having to face a 3bet. Others are mainly limp folding. Against the stronger ranges that like to limp call, I would probably focus money being more top heavy. 88+, AJo+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, KJo+. Maybe a little tighter or a little looser depending on how tight they are. But if we are getting lots of limp folds, I think we definitely want to be widening up a bit. ATo, A5s, A4s, KTo, J9s, T9s, etc, whereas vs the tighter, stickier limpers I might overlimp.

With 22, it is OK to make a smallish pot builder raise or overlimp. You want to keep as many players in as possible, so better immediate odds for a set. Isolating and getting it HU is a disaster.

With Axs, the hand plays OK HU, but you want to keep the money really deep more so than with a pp, because you want better implied odds for flush over flush and more people is with random suited cards that can make flushes.

With like 98s or ATo, you can raise, but your hand doesn't have that much positive expectation. If you make top pair with say ATo or KJo, people will not have reason to think their kicker is beat in a limped pot, whereas if you raise they should be more worried you have premium high cards. There is some point is raising suited connectors to balance your range, so you don't always have high cards when you raise, but low states players aren't likely to be that aware of that, even subconciously.

Overlimping is fine as long as you make thin value bets on middling connected textures or get people to fold their weak pairs + gutters when you whiff.

The latest Malmuth/Sklansky book (which is admittedly definitely not solver approved) makes lots of arguments for open limping at LLSNL. It also wonders why open limping can possibly be considered bad if overlimping isn't (as the result it is trying to create, i.e. seeing a cheap flop with morans, is exactly the same).

Gnothatin',justsayin'G

I mean you are probably the expert here. I'd probably even have bought/read the book if it was Malmuth/gobbledygeek.

I guess I'd say the problems I see with open limping are:

1. Rake. I recently pointed out to a self confessed tournament player that his limp CO/HJ with A9s and bet on the flop meant he just gave 40% of the pot to the house.

2. Calling mistakes are the biggest and most common mistakes at 1-2/1-3 (even 2-5, but less so and differently).

3. Limping stuff like T9s just encourages people to overlimp A2s and then call on T92 (because it's only $15 and they have a pair) and you have no idea wtf happened on "T92 A".

4. It's probably fine/good if you want to just have fun and play the lowest stakes game forever, but at most 2-5 games it happens so much less often (and people raise behind so much more) that it feels like a bad skill to become good at if you want to move up.

5. It's hard enough to get GTO wizard to tell me how I'm playing bad already, having a lot of my hands be open limped would mean I could almost never use it.

And, again, you are at least one of the experts and #4 probably has too much ego in it and we should all get better at it anyway ... but you asked.

the difference between over/open limping seems rather obvious to me, with the latter you are giving up EV, compounded by the fact that you are now OOP.

Mason's book which I've skimmed through seems too heavily predicated around the idea that 1/2 players are so monumentally bad that you could probably teach your dog to win. There have been complaints that their sample size was too small however I refuse to believe the authors could make such a mistake.

There are players in my 2/5 games that play like they prescribe, essentially only 3betting or raising AA/KK and limping well beyond any balanced range of +EV hands. They also often have a deep stack and I rarely see them suffer big losses. They just get in there with something like J8s and either get paid when they hit or suckout. These players DONT do well vs aggro TAGs who use a more traditional approach. In fact they seem to get annoyed, complain if those people sit at their tables and often look to switch. Lastly I cant attest to their true success but none of them appear to be pros despite often sitting with 500BB stacks. For those reasons I suspect that they do suffer some big losses that just go under the radar or their overall volume is so low they treat the game as a hobby.

It's a strat that works when it works but needs particularly ideal conditions.

In poker, there's a ton of stuff that works, as long as your opponents don't implement the proper counter-adjustment.

1) Already addressed earlier in thread (yup, rake sucks, especially in small limped pots with a drop that are taken down with a single flop bet... but it is still possible to generate a huge pot with bets going in over multiple streets where rake doesn't suck quite as much).

2) A calling mistake preflop for lol $ with equities all rather close isn't nearly as big as calling mistakes postflop for much bigger $$$ and much bigger equity differences.

3) Not sure I understand the example? Oh noes, I got someone to put money in postflop with 5 outs? And now I'm somehow going to lose a bunch of money with second pair / no kicker?

4) Maybe it's because I play in a room which has more-or-less only had ~one steak since 2010, but I've never been a fan of this argument. I don't revolve my strategy decisions around a steak/game that I don't play in / likely never will, and instead make strategy decisions for the steak/game I do play in.

5) As admitted, their book definitely ain't solver/GTO approved. FWIW, I believe their open limping range from various positions is *way* too wide (even arguing that it may be correct to be the loosest player at the table, although to be fair they do qualify conditions that are required to do so). I mean, I'm a nit at heart so I'm definitely not limping almost any speculative hands that far OOP.

But to be clear, I'm not taking a hard line here. If you have a raise-first-in policy, that's fine, you do you. But just cuz someone else has a method that does something different (sometimes open limping, not having a raise versus fold mentality, etc.) doesn't make it horrible / -EV.

An analogy of been thinking about lately is asking Google for directions. It gives you one route at 25 minutes, another at 27 minutes and another at 28 minutes. Just cuz you don't take the first route doesn't mean you've made a terrible mistake. They're all fine, simply take the one that suits you best.

GlotsofdifferentwaystoskinacatG

+1

GcluelesssuccinctnoobG

I just don't understand why you wouldn't want to make the pot bigger when you're ahead.

Because AK is a drawing hand son.

Some quick thoughts:

- we're often not ahead
- big SPRs favour good players and punish bad players; small SPRs narrow the skill gap a lot
- getting in the limp/reraise is printing money (you'll have to decide for yourself if its more EV than opening, especially when factoring in the times it whoopsie limps around)
- folding someone out of the hand for small $ preflop is a disaster if they woulda lost huge $$$$ postflop
- we might be perfectly content keeping the pot small preflop OOP to difficult players (even when we think we have the best hand preflop)
- having our open 3bet forces us mostly to fold at a lot of non-large stack sizes; limping often allows us to overcall a raise and see a flop / realize some equity
- raising the best hand in EP to go 5ways to an awkward small SPR offering the world terrific IO might not be your idea of a good result

Not saying there aren't arguments on the side of opening (and there clearly are).

Gnothatin',justsayin'G

FWIW, I 've been reading a book about exploitative poker and the author said something that really opened my eyes. He said that if you are raising and no one is 3betting you, you are making money.

Sure enough, I went on my online database and filtered for pots I played in which I raise and no one 3bet and I am winning at a clip of 100+ BB/100. Then I filtered for limped pots in which I raised and I was winning at a 200+BB/100 rate.

The fact that you 're winning by open limping and overlimping doesn't make it the most profitable way.

Think I'm confused by your stats? (is there a typo or two in there?)

And as I say, I'm definitely never going to take a hard line and declare one way obviously more profitable than the other. I'll simply take issue with those who say there are (and especially those who ignore the fact that one shoe does not fit all, as you should probably mostly lean to putting *yourself* in spots that are good for *you*).

GcluelesstatscomprehensionnoobG

There isn't a typo. You really win that much. You just lose all the other times you fold or someone steals your blind, you get 3bet etc.

First line is with regards to us raising and not getting 3bet.

And second line is all times raised (including getting 3bet?)... where we're winning twice as much?

And where is the comparable to times we limped?

GcluelessstatscomprehensionnoobG

Second line is times we raised when there were limpers and we didn't get 3bet.

I don't limp so I don't have stats for that. But go put a decent sample online and tell us what happens.

FWIW, looking at pop stats, i first filtered for open limping and overlimping.

Population loses at a rate of 58BB/100.

Then I filtered for what happens when population comes in for a raise. Population wins at a clip of 38BB/100.

Oh you may say, people who limp tend to play wide ranges and are fish. People who raise tend to be regs who play snug ranges.

Ok. So then I filtered for people limping and overlimping and playing in raised pots.

The field loses now at a clip of 156BB/100.

So does this mean that population loses an additional 100BB/100 when limping and playing a raised pot? No, because the original filter included those situations.

If I filter for limped and overlimped pots in which no raising occurs, field wins at a clip of 7BB/100. Field basically wins at the expense of the BB and the SB in those situations, although it needs to be mentioned that when you limp, the BB which is the greatest source of free money in each pot loses at a smaller rate.

So basically, when you force limpers to play a raised pot, they are losing an additional 160BB/100.

This is a bad retort, IMNSHO. Both of the following statements could be true:

1. gobbledygeek is the end boss of live $1-2/1-3 9max.

2. gobbledygeek gets crushed at online $0.05/0.10 6max.

Gg should go play 2NL which is the lowest stake online and the closest to 1/3 live. He then should play a decent sample of hands doing what he's doing now and an equal sample of hands in which he plays the same way except for substituting all of his limps for RFIs and ISO raises.

But on my subsequent post, I looked at pop stats and there you can see how poorly limpers fare against raises.