Preflop bingo as chip leader

lol what an insane spot.

I think I would fold here? It has to be pretty close (happy to fold 66, happy to call TT). Having the BTN and blinds behind you sucks but the limpers are also really concerning? If they have any clue at all they should be trapping here anytime they have a real hand.

I would be happier folding from LJ. In the BB, I would really try to study the limpers for some kind of live read (and I'm not a live reads guy at all). Would think a typical LP fish would be telegraphing his/her actions in this spot. Much more likely to call from BB.

I’m confident it’s a fold with 5 other players left to act, including two limpers.

Would have to do some math to figure out what the exact range is from which positions…

1 - You know that "chip leader" is a meaningless term in cash right? The question is only how deep you are against the active players.

2 - This depends on how likely the limpers were to believe V's claim he would shove blind. If likely, this is an easy fold. If their range really is their limping range, a pretty easy call. If V is semi-drunk and tilted and limpers have been paying attention, at least one of them should be prepared to call, and you should be flipping at best.

3 - This also depends on how well you'd be able to cope with the hit, both in terms of tilt and in terms of the opportunity cost of no longer being 200+BBs deep vs some of the Vs.

4 - My position matters less to me than the limpers. I'd be even more inclined to fold the LJ and slightly more likely to call from the BB, but not much. Sans limpers, that effect would be greatly magnified.

Wow, I shouldn't have been so confident.

Assuming each of the limpers have a 15%+ limping range, we can call 88+/AQo+/KQs/ATs+. A third player could profitably enter with 4% of hands (99+/AQs+/AK), but would have <33% equity with anything else. (It doesn't hurt our EV when they call any wider anyway.)

We'll have no less than 65% equity against ATC (70% w 88 specifically) and can expect to be heads up against the shover no less than 50% of the time (about 40% against the limpers and 10% with anyone else left to act; less than that if we have broadway blockers), and we'll have 25% equity in a 3-way pot with 88 specifically (a bit more with the unpaired broadways).

Note that there is no equilibrium here and we are entirely at the mercy of the EP limping strategies. There's no more important time to read the table than when someone claims they're going to make a blind play. Gotta watch the main villain and make sure they actually do it blind, gotta see who was paying attention when they made that pronouncement, who's surprised to see the player shove, who's pretending they're surprised, etc.

Use preflop live tells to gauge the strength of the limpers and the players behind you. Hero fold if you sense strength from any of them. Shove pre if you sense weakness via live tells.

It would be good to have some reads on the limpers. Also good to know if V has previously declared he'd act dark and followed through on that declaration, such that the limpers in this hand would be more likely to believe him.

Probably worth considering what our strat would be in the EP limpers' positions. If we believe V will jam $500 dark, I'd think we'd never have any raises, and our limping range would have to have decent equity against not just any two cards, but against the ranges of opponents who might call the $500 jam from LP.

This may be going too deep into the weeds, but if the LP calling range only has to be stronger than any two cards, then the EP limping range needs to be at least a little stronger than that, which means our continuing range here, when there are two EP limpers, needs to actually be a little tighter than if the EP players had simply folded.

I somewhat look at this like AK vs QQ in a pre-flop shove scenario. Even though QQ is a slight favorite, I'd rather call a shove with AK than QQ, because AK blocks AA/KK and has a good chance to improve, whereas QQ is drawing to 2 outs when it's behind.

Here, even if 88 is flipping against V's range of ATC + the EP limpers' somewhat better than ATC ranges, I'd rather have a suited wheel ace or KQs, something with more potential to improve to a hand with more showdown value, that blocks some better holdings in the EP ranges and unblocks some worse.

88 here isn't much different than 22-77. We're basically set-mining with no implied odds, which doesn't make a ton of sense.

Not sure about this. 88 is 69% against the ATC range and a lot of the time we are going to get HU against that range. A5s is 60% and KQs is 63%. It's not really set mining because our hand is so good against the blind jammer's range. 88 also dominates some hands in the limpers' ranges as well.

I understand that the blocker effects are going to make a small difference, and that KQs is going to be dominated less often (A5s is going to be dominated a ton), but surely that isn't worth 6%+ in equity?

I could very easily be entirely wrong here. My post above is a combination of gut feeling and trying to think through the situation logically, taking into account the psychology at work, as well as the poker math.

I would think that theory would want us to have a very tight range to call a 167bb shove, if V looked at his cards. Not really sure how the math changes when we assume V hasn't looked, but assume that the two EP limpers have looked. So my thinking is that we should approach this almost as if the two limpers have already committed to calling, because they should have no raises in their ranges, and they could just fold out any hand worse than Q7o.

Like, what would we do with AA here? Re-jam, or flat call? Our equity goes down when we flat and both limpers call, but we'll still be a favorite, and it'll be a bigger pot. I'm not sure how well 88 is doing in a four way jam scenario, against one opponent who jammed dark and two who re-jammed after limping in.

/thread

One of the most absurd hands I ever saw was when a guy who had been doing weird straddles/raises for 10+ minutes straddled $15 (at 1-2) and at the same time announced he was going to shove (~$300) when it got back to him. After the cards were dealt he got 5 calls and then 5 folds when he shoved.
IIRC I tank folded A9o to the $15 two spots to his right assuming someone had to be trapping better and was tilted when everyone folded.

It's hard to make pairs, and 88 is pretty high ... seems _really_ sus that 2 people have good hands that wanted to limp/call (esp. UTG+1), but if people will randomly call KT/QT or whatever we aren't doing great.

Also once saw a very drunk guy go from the pit to a random 1-2 table and buyin with $5k chips or something stupidly big ($500 max), then do absurd stuff like raise to $50 pre. and shove flops. Got a surprising (to me) amount of preflop calls and flop folds.

For another relevant point of experience, I once saw a blackjack player randomly play any2 for an hour or so and then announce he's leaving next hand and was going to shove blind ... shoved ~$150 at 1-2 UTG (6 or 7 handed), was called by KT two spots to his left (who was deeper with a bunch of people behind him) ... which I thought was kind of loose at the time, but everyone else assumed the caller was stronger so maybe it was great.

How clueless are the 2 limpers? They would have to be the 2 most clueless players in the room for me to call in any of the 3 spots.

GcluelessNLnoobG

The limpers might have a monster, but more likely they have a medium strength hand they were thinking of raising but want to see if the speechmaker is FOS by getting in to the pot cheaply and nine times out of ten they will limp-fold...or they just weren't even listening and just play their usual lumpy lumpy game. I might prefer there to be fewer than two limpers and I might prefer to be on the button but fundamentally we have a strong hand in a dream situation. (You might see a hand like 99 folded by the blinds as well). You likely have plenty enough equity to call.

Most limpers are.

This is a bad way of thinking about it. Ranges are wider, but not that wide.

I'm not sure I can articulate perfectly how this is different from a 1-3-6 game where only one person is putting the straddle on, but I'm very sure it is.
The simplest argument I can think of is: If everyone adjusted to use your strategy then H can have a massive edge by only calling QQ+/AK or some similar tight range from any position.

This would be the correct way of looking at it IF we didn't already have the informational advantage of seeing how UTG and UTG+1 acted. We have to play significantly tighter because UTG and UTG+1 have both taken an action they would only take with the top x% of their range, we're in the bottom x^2% of scenarios.

This is true for any game where there isn't parity in the rules about paying blinds. If you never had to pay your blinds because other people kept being generous enough to pay your blinds for you, then you'd be able to profit by open shoving AA face up and open folding everything else.

However, optimal play would not be any different from a standard game, and you would stand to gain far more by playing exactly the same as if you do have to play the BB and SB once every 9 hands.

If one person's voluntarily paying a $500 blind while you only pay $4 worth of blinds every 9 hands, you are in an extremely high positive sum game where many strategies will earn >0$, but that doesn't mean those strategies are optimal.

Result:

LAG is not thinking about this correctly. Position and effective stacks vs the limpers are much more important here than being "chip leader."

UTG had about 550, UTG1 about 650. Both losing loose passive players.

So yeah, the fact that you're "chip leader" doesn't mean much, as anything that is calling V's shove for $500 is def calling yours for $550, and almost certainly $650. Your shove would not ISO. It would be basically the same as a call.

it doesn't really matter with these stacks but you actually need to be more cautious as chip leader since the penalty for running up against another deep stack player with a better hand is more severe. basically the reward is the same but the risk is greater.

Not sure if you're picking up on what @garick is saying, or what I was saying earlier.

When the whale verbally declares he's going all-in before action is on him, and UTG / UTG1 both limp, our assumption should be that they heard him, and believe him, and that they're just limping in with the intention of calling his all-in.

So, starting with UTG, he's got to have a range that's better than ATC, at a minimum, but if he's thinking, he should have a range that is doing well in a multi-way all-in jam scenario, because once the whale jams, players behind who see that UTG limped are likely to assume UTG is also calling, thus creating better than 2:1 odds for them to call.

Once it gets to UTG1, his range has to be better than UTG's.

So, even though UTG and +1 have just limped, when action gets to us, we have to figure they're both calling the jam, and if we call, the BTN and blinds might also come along, getting very good pot odds.

So our calling range here needs to be good enough to hold up in a six way pot, or at least a four way pot, at a minimum.

88 may be doing well against the whale's ATC range, but it's not going to be doing very well against every other player's range here, when we're calling next to act, but we know that UTG and UTG1 look like they're going to over-call behind us. I think you made the correct decision by folding.

I think my calling range from the CO would just be QQ+/AK, figuring that UTG and +1 might be as wide as 99-JJ and some AXs.

I don't know what the BB is doing getting in there with A4s. If the BB folded, I think +1 has a good call with 77, once UTG folds.

I think UTG and UTG1 were just clueless but it was hard to judge in the moment. I felt like BB being competent made the issue less clear as well as he might know I'm up to no good, he may just call with KJo for ex thinking he might be ahead of me.

Who cares about BB?? He has a random hand, BB could be Phil Ivey and i’d still be more worried about the limpers.

If I was 350 to 500 eff vs all the other players left to act I would most likely call unless like some posters said why are people limping if someone announced he's going all in. If he's done it before and chickened out that's one thing but not if the limpers are aware of what's going on, and if I'm 2K deep with people around 1500 deep, I would just fold instead of risking to run it into 99+ and face a jam pre but that's just me me, it's just my style. I don't like to play bingo for stacks usually.