set of 44's,

Raise co dont limp, as played fold pre. Also is he regularly raising to $20? If not, id be at least somewhat suspicious of AA. As played im betting turn small like $40-50, and id do the same if i had the flush or if i was bluffing it.

The preflop limp is call or OK. I would generally raise smallish, to often get a free turn card to try to hit a set and to be able to represent something cbetting on some flops.

Pre is kinda table dependent. My usual is to raise. Don't hate the overlimp. Like the flop bet when checked to.

The check call could be a high PP or flush draw, as I would expect most Aces to bet. Could be a slow play of aces, possibly AK.

I like a small bet here, perhaps 60. If raised probably folding.

Just bet again, you're not losing to many flushes when the Ac and Qc are both on the board. Plus BB might not have raised pre with some of the smaller suited connectors.

Very good preflop hand reading. A+ response as usual from a top notch coach. I am also on team bet the turn again for value.

Keep betting to get value from V’s KK/JJ/TT, especially those that have a club.

Preflop is slightly meh only going 3ways and against someone who can be loose with his preflop raises (meaning he often won't have something worth stacking off with postflop when we bink). Sizing is also large and we have RIO... although we are in position getting max IO of 20:1.

Think I'm ok with flop and just hope to get action.

Turn is a weird spot, imo. Did he really check/call Ax OOP on a drawy board? Cuz most players don't. Most also don't flop a flush draw and check after raising preflop. So he mostly has underpairs that sometimes have a club. If he was slowplaying AA or got there with QQ, we don't want to bet. Underpairs without a club are unlikely to call a bet on the turn, although ones with a club might. I think the question boils down to whether we get one more street from underpairs if we check back, and if not maybe it is best to bet now. Course a stoopid spot if we face a check/raise.

Geither/or,imoG

I also bet now. Consider checking back river depending on the runout

I would bet 100 ott in the event we have to check back the river to get as much value as we can now just in case. FD's are only a small fraction of his total range, and we're not really deep enough to start worrying about it imho.

It's $12 to call, 20:1 is $240 and we have $400 vs a guy who's range should be strong (meaning if we flop a set we're likely to get paid off) plus there's another caller in the hand too.

in a high rake 1/3 game making a small raise has to be more profitable than limping. in a game where nobody is paying attention to raise sizes im guessing raising to like $10 or something is the play. obviously this is super exploitable but its 1/3.

tbh im not sure any hand is profitable as a limp in this game. in a limped pot such a huge % goes to rake.

Its $17 to call, and yes even with the correct sizing we are still (barely) deep enough based on the 5%/10% rule but V likely having a big pair could mean getting set over set as well. Its not a terrible call. My preferred line is raise, and after limping my preferred line is fold, but its fine.

Please explain because to me this sounds a horrific idea

I'm fine with pre -- I raise sometimes, but I don't raise the 3bet.

Flop is good. Bet turn about half pot.

its horrible if people see through it and 3b you light. im not convinced most 1/3 players see through bet sizes.

if everyone calls though you have tripled the pot size and probably got yourself a 4 card flop with a disguised hand with implied odds to win a bit pot, where if you flop a set and cbet a small-medium size mulitway you will probably get callers from multiple people drawing dead (this wont happen in a limped pot).

that said limping obv fine too, you only hit a set 1/8 times after all. make it a 4 card flop and it becomes like 1/6.5.

Yeah i mean not saying hes right about sizing differently but i agree with nittyoldman that part of the reason why limping is bad is because youre playing pots that often get raked 10% for the full pot, and its hard to gain enough in skill edge to counteract rake in pots that are raked 10% (even more if theres a promo going on, and the promo isnt a high hand you can hit or something)

Lets see a spot where youve got 2 limpers in front, you limp, and it limps from sb and BB, so 5 ways to the flop $15 in the pot but it gets raked $1+1, so you paid $3 to win $10, so you need 23% equity for this to be profitable.

Running a sim against 4 Vs who all have a capped 40% range, you have about 21.4% equity, which means you gotta make up 1.5% of the pot in implied odds. Obviously pocket pairs tend to have positive implied odds, but in today’s typical $5+3 raked hands, youre gonna be dealing with getting raked another $6 (!) out of the next $35 put in postflop.

So lets say flop comes Q64 ($15 pot -$2 rake = $13), you make a pot sized flop bet of $13 and get called. Now the flop is ($40 -$6 = $34), meaning almost 1/3rd of your profits from the flop call has been taken as rake, with another $2 coming out of the next street if called. so you dont need 1.5% worth of implied odds, youre gonna need far more in order to counteract the rake.

Wow, great discussion about preflop. This place has gotten better since I was last here...

Turn is a bet, and has to be a very easy bet given reads.

We can START talking about whether it's too thin on river but turn vbet is mandatory.

I play in a 1/3 NL game that is likely raked higher than most others here (10% to $9 + $1 BBJ drop + $1 high hand drop + typically $1 tip). Obviously rake sucks. But I'm totally fine overlimping speculative hands in position against the world as they still give us awesum IO. Even winning a smallish $90 (not impossible to do given a 5way limped pot has $15, so SPR of 5 against a $90 stack) would be 30:1 IO without rake; yes, rake devastates this win to just $78 in my game... but that is still some rather awesum IO of 26:1.

GcluelesshighrakedgamenoobG

i might actually start experimenting with small pot building raises in position with a range of speculative hands, not cbetting when i whiff of course. curious to see how that goes. maybe ill get 3bet light and have to fold, maybe ill win big pots.

ill flop a lot of middle pairs with T8s type hands. guessing the play there is to check back a lot too.

This is more or less the idea behind punishing limpers with ISOs with good multiway hands rather than joining the limpfest lotto. It builds the pot and serves as a sort of blocking raise against light ISOs, while "earning initiative" (which is just a way of saying repping AK/QQ+ so you have FE in HU and some 3-way pots on BW boards and aren't so vulnerable on low and connected boards). Building the pot is actually pretty important because SCs and mid-to-low PPs are actually quite ugly RIO hands in MW limped pots 200bbs+ deep.

All this is is why people have moved in the direction of ISOing smaller with their whole range than the old school 6bb+ ISOs, why people have gotten less polar in this spot, have started finding a fold button with lower PPs and SCs from MP-.

IOW: People have already been running your experiment over the last decade+ with quite some success 😃

I think the RIO point is the one that seems to go over a lot of people’s head. Implied odds are a net zero to the table, meaning for any hand with implied odds, theres must be others with equally as much reverse implied odds and yet everyone seems to play MW because on top of their direct odds (which they often dont have), they give themselves implied odds.

The best example of this is the “odds to call in the big blind” phenomenon. Youre at 1/3, someone raises to $15, 4 people call, and you look down at 82o in the BB. Ive seen even pros on sites like pokercoaching say you should never fold in this spot. Youre paying $12 to win $72 (removing $6 of rake) meaning you need 14% equity, and you probably have under 10% direct odds, but uh… you gotta give yourself implied odds for those times you hit 2 pair vs aces! Even though youre out of position and will have a really tough time realizing your equity when you hit a pair.

Echoing some of what others have already said, adding my own reasoning:

PRE - I prefer to raise here, in the CO, with a low PP, over the limpers.

While calling isn't terrible, you're opening the door for the BTN or blinds to put in a squeeze. Even if no one raises, there's a good chance the BTN and blinds will call, so we'll be going to the flop with a hand that doesn't have much showdown value, and isn't likely to improve, in a multi-way pot, with a player in absolute position behind us, and we'll probably end up out of relative position, when someone stabs at the flop in front of us.

I'd rather raise, to hopefully fold out the button, ISO the dead money in the pot, and go to the flop with a disguised hand and uncapped range. If everyone folds pre, and we avoid the rake, all the better.

As for the raise sizing - I dunno about going $10, if the standard raise at the table is $15, but I agree we don't necessarily need to go huge, like $30. With two limpers in front of us, depending on reads and their positions (like, is there an OMC in UTG, likely to limp-3B with AA?), I'd typically raise my usual size - $15 + 1bb per limper, so, $20, which should be enough to not look fishy. If I was on the BTN and the CO raised $15 here, over two limpers, I'd be 3B'ing a lot.

If it's a typical 1/3 game, we'll probably still go multi-way, which isn't the worst outcome, if the alternative is raising to $25 or $30 and only getting called by stronger hands. As long as we "buy the BTN" by raising from the CO, and get IP for the rest of the hand, we accomplished one of our goals.

NittyOldDude is right, in that most 1/3 players aren't good enough to pick up on variable bet sizing tells, especially not pre-flop. Most of them stop paying attention as soon as they fold. So, if we had AA, as an example, and if I thought a $25 or $30 bet would still get 1 or 2, even 3 callers, then I'd raise bigger, for more value.

FLOP - I LOVE the donk-lead for 3/4 pot with middle set on this flop texture, ace-high with two wheel cards, and a FDFD on board. I might even bet full pot, if I thought it might trigger someone to spaz-raise. But anything from 2/3 pot to full pot is fine as a c-bet.

Again, most low stakes opponents aren't going to know what to make of our donk lead, or how to react. They won't know it's thick value, and will be more likely to assume we have an ace, or are setting our own price to draw, albeit, an absurdly high price, if we were drawing.

I'm not worried about the BB having 53 here. And set over set is such a low probability. In fact, if BB did have AA, I would have expected him to raise to $30 pre, or at least $25, not $20.

TURN - I'd bet again. In fact, I'd probably bomb it for 80% pot ($120), when the Ac and Qc are both on board.

What KXcc hands does he have that raise out of the BB pre, and then call a 3/4 pot bet on an ace-high board? KJcc? KTcc? K9cc? Maybe he's as wide as K5cc/K3cc, but that seems pretty wide pre.

V is going to have WAY more AX in his range. We have all his suited AX crushed, unless he's got 2P and is drawing to a boat. He'll have a lot of AxXc, like AxKc, that will never fold to anything less than a pot sized bet.

RIVER - as long as it isn't a fourth club, another ace, or another Q, jam the rest in.

def raise pre. By limping and then firing postflop we're repping what we have. Essentially we want to play our nuts like a bluff and our bluffs like the nuts, not the nuts like the nuts. Flopping a set in a limped pot is just like starting your own fireworks show saying "weee look at me, I flopped it! Wont someone please give me action?!"

Well, based on your most recent post in the Winrates thread (i.e. a bunch of ridonkulous hands illustrating how truly horrible LLSNL players are), are you really worried about not getting action?

GcluelesshorribleliveNLnoobG