UTG Opening Range: When do play J9s, T9s, and 98s?

How many people? Nine handed I think it's 77 plus. JTs plus, aqo plus. And maybe a5s a4s for some bluffs. So your range is slightly slightly too loose rather than nitty. Then as it's fewer ppl, those suited gappers and lower suited cards come in and maybe more suited wheel aces ajo 66 55 etc

Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk

In a full ring live game where a lot of the time it goes multi way, my UTG range looks like this:

77+, KQo (50%), AQo-AKo, A4s-A5s, A9s T9s(50%)-AKs
65s-87s (50% usually the spade and club combos, to simplify splitting them)

It really doesn't matter because your winrate for those hands will be close to 0EV either way. The better you are postflop the more you want to play the marginal preflop hands.

fold J9s, T9s, 98s ep. i dont think A-rag suited plays well in EP either.

Depends on the raise size vs stack depth, how good we are post-flop, and how sticky V's are post flop.

Based on the recent pervasiveness of Sklansky theory, I started experimenting with some open limping with some of the more marginal parts of my range in a very loose passive 1/3 session I played last night, with what I thought were reasonably good results. So maybe develop a balanced UTG limping range.

Going to the flop with a higher SPR when we have a more speculative hand can't be a bad thing.

One thing I might recommend is having balance when it comes to your re-raises from EP, whether you're RFI'ing or limping.

Sent from my SM-G781U using Tapatalk

OP,

What is the rake structure like in your 1/2 NL game?

I do limp some of the marginal stuff occasionally in early position if the table is just super passive and everybody is limping. If a couple of the more aggressive regs are there then no. I dont worry about balancing it because none of the passive players are paying attention anyway in a game where i can get away with it.

OP, is your 1/2 NL game 9 handed or 8 handed?

I dropped down to play 1/3 last night after getting beaten up at 2/5 recently. Need to rebuild my bankroll a bit.

It was astounding to me how much limping I was able to get away with. Like, at 2/5, I'm rarely going to over-limp from the CO, but last night, I was open-liming UTG, and very rarely got punished for it.

I did find that it's best to have some sort of balance though. Like, I limped JJ, but also limp-3B with some weaker hands that just weren't going to play well post-flop, multi-way and OOP.

I open all of them UTG, 100% of the time. Everything down to 54s and 75s. And all pocket pairs. In a live low-stakes game where no one 3-bets and you have a huge post-flop edge, you’re gonna want to play a lot of hands.

If we want to play a lot of hands, wouldn't that mean we should be limping more, rather than raising?

limping would be better than raising these hands in EP

You can just do this in the later positions. You don't want to play a lot of hands oop or sandwiched in the middle.

Even if it's just people flatting a lot behind you it's going to make your 54s open lose money.

I disagree about the board coverage comment. I do agree that these UTG opens with J9s/T9s/98s can be troublesome in some situations especially 9 handed games.

But I think these hands can be opened UTG sometimes profitably in the right situations especially 7 handed. It also depends on the tendencies of the lineup at the table. If you are in a really good situation, you can play more loosely.

6 rake and 3 promo to 60 plus tip because dealers don’t get a wage.

7 to 9, no food allowed at the table so often chips with no player

That’s good to hear. I hate playing 9xs UTG.

Part of our edge is playing tighter ranges and being in position. Taking 45s to the streets utg defeats both objectives.

I think your range is too loose. I agree with limping some of these hands, even from UTG, unless you have aggressive players behind who raise a lot (at my game, I'm that player, lol). As someone else wrote, it's so easy to limp in these games and see a lot of hands -- it's fantastic when you can outplay them post-flop.

(To explain, I have no problem limping from EP, but I raise a lot from LP.)

Let's talk about a hypothetical just to illustrate a point.

7 handed. 2 big spots in the blinds with loose passive style. 3 tight passive recs who play too tight (2 of whom are straight up nits) to our direct left.

Hero should definitely open-raise a wider UTG range especially J9s/T9s/98s. Everyone is basically trying to fry the two big fishes, but the 3 tight passive recs are being too conservative about it. Imagine that the two big fishes have timers over their heads like a video game. Sooner or later, they will bust. It is basically a race among the other players to see who will bust them first and receive most of their stacks. We should be looking for all the profitable opportunities to VPIP against the big fishes to fry them before others can fry them.

J9s/T9s/98s are not that strong, but they should give us plenty of profitable value betting situations and drawing situations if we end up IN POSITION against the big loose passive spots in the blinds. If necessary, we can take free cards and realize our equity against the blinds by checking back IN POSITION.

Normally, players to our left will give us problems for our J9s/T9s/98s by 3betting us occasionally and flatting our raises a fair amount. But these 3 tight passive recs especially the 2 big nits will not give us much resistance in terms of 3bets especially but also very little flatting.

It's like a speed limit posted on the freeway. If there are police officers patrolling the area (you can eyeball this or use Waze/Google Maps to scout for police speed traps), then you should do the speed limit (don't play looser than the normal tight ranges UTG to try to fry the fishes faster). But if there are no police officers patrolling (use your eyeballs and even your software to know that likelihoods are low for getting ticketed), you should go at a higher speed over the posted speed limit to get to your destination faster (play looser than the normal tight ranges to fry the fishes faster before they get busted).

In this speed limit metaphor, the three tight passive recs to our left are lazy police officers enjoying their donuts and coffee and not even bothering to patrol the freeway to ticket speeders. They are going to let us get away with speeding higher than the speed limit because they aren't in the mood to ticket anyone.