Pre flop check up posts.

[QUOTE=
KTs is a raise from any position. I typically limp the other two although don’t think raising is terrible.[/QUOTE]

I don't think I am opening with KTs UTG or UTG+1 8 handed but would take more feedback on this .

Some spots I am realizing I don't actually know what I'm doing in limit. Table is 8/16 pretty loose and action-y, although not extremely aggressive. I ended up seeing flops with both, in spoilers just for context on how it ran out.

1. Open T9s from MP, HJ calls, reasonably snug face-up CO 3-bets, BB cold 4-bets, back on us. On the one hand T9s is not a great hand, on the other we probably get 7:1 and it should have a lot of equity against multiple double-Broadway hands.

2. A9s from MP over a limp, we call, call, V who was CO in the other hand raises, I think two cold calls through the blinds, back to us? I struggle with "plays well multiway" versus only 11% just to flop a fd and being very lost multiway if we flop an Ace. Is top pair meh kicker just a sigh calldown usually?

Raise pre

1 call the cap

2 raise pre but yeah of course call a single bet getting back to you closing the action

and it’s hard to give you one prescription on post-flop because so much can happen, but yeah generally if we flop an ace we’ll probably get to showdown.

And I assume call a 3b from that V if I do raise?

The main driver of my post is I feel like I am spewing with these somewhat marginal hands preflop that then get me to chase gutshots, TPNK, whatever-else OTF and usually give up or lose at showdown. In NLH, I feel like there's a lot more freedom to make the pot big when you make a big hand (and a lot more fold equity to play with), which better balances the small percentage of the time you actually flop best multiway - and also a lot more strategies to avoid playing many medium or large multiway pots from out of position.

Is the answer here just "play sensibly, roll with the variance, and ~27% of the time I should be winning 4.5x my bet (or whatever)" so these spots can be +EV with a top-tail distribution? Hard to pick up on that at the table.

At every decision point you should make the best decision. If it’s +EV to raise pre because the limpers have a bunch of garbage in their range, then do so. It’s true the guy behind us can 3bet, but he can also fold with a hand he would have limped in and made a random two pair with and we end up winning with a weak pair of aces instead. Or he calls the raise and there’s a huge pot and you end up making the nuts and people are chasing you because the pot is so massive (which they may have all folded in a limped pot instead). So good things happen when you play aggressively in limit.

As far as why you call when he 3bets you, again you’re just making the best play in that moment at that decision point. You’ll be closing the action and getting really good pot odds.

No, not really seriously considering it, but I think both of these hands illustrate the pattern that feels like a leak to me: I open (or overlimp) and get raised from LP and "have to call" after some other loose players all calling and the odds more or less require it. This leads to a situation that feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar coming from NL, where I am playing a capped range from out of position and have very little fold equity to back me up due to bet sizing and the fact things are usually multiway at loose tables. The only analogous spot I can think of in NL is defending the big blind, which is usually heads-up instead.

To wit, it feels like A9s should be playable from MP here. But open or limp, if the snug player behind me happens to raise and I flat on the way back to me, I'm now in for 2-3 bets and not even sure what I am hoping for. 11% to flop the FDFD, which is really just a commitment to call down with less than 50% equity - only about 4% of the time in total do we make the nut flush by the river. And versus Villain's range, I really don't love just pairing the Ace. I agree that calling is kind of required when it comes back to us, but it is hard not to feel like this is a good-money-after-bad scenario.

By contrast, in NL, if I open A9s and get 3-bet, it's not getting cold called six ways to Sunday and it's a snap fold for me.

It's quite possible that the numbers just work out here - LP villains won't always have hands, sometimes we'll bink 2p like in the actual hand, last night I had a similar hand (chose to raise) and ran out quads-over-boat, and on average it's plus-EV to play it. But I'm new to fixed-limit and trying to intuitively learn the flow of the game, so when I keep having to chase down low-equity draws because of the pot odds, I step back to question whether I should have played the hand in the first place. It feels pretty common to play a hand for 2+ bets pre and then get stuck chasing a gutter, overcards, second pair, etc.

Specifically for T9s, are you saying it's less attractive to play at a loose table, especially if we are very unlikely to buy the button by raising? MW OOP feels hard to win without showdown, as there's usually someone who flops something and will call down.

And perhaps a related broad question on these hands - it seems like after limps that it is reasonable to develop a split raise/overlimp range, with move overlimps the more players in front who have limped. Is that right, and is it mostly folds becoming overlimps or is there a class of hand that turns from RFI to overlimp as well? It's frustratingly difficult to find this kind of content specifically for limit.

Nothing fancy here - I called one bet on the flop, turn checked through. Then BB (original 4-bettor with AA) leads the river, I fold having missed everything, and CO (original 3-bettor) calls and is shown aces full. So only out 0.5BB beyond the original 2 from pre.

Capped ranges can’t be punished as hard in limit, and generally the people at 8/16 are never going to ever exploit you for having a capped range.

If you have a mediocre hand that is worth a limp, but you know it's going to be raised by someone behind you, it sometimes will be better to fold. That's why it is often a good idea to watch the people behind you for signs that they're planning to raise. But if you're already in, you just always have to call a single raise. Sometimes you will fold if it is 2 or 3 bets back to you.

In a loose game you definitely will sometimes be putting a decent amount of money in on the flop and the turn when you have low odds of winning, but the pots you win will be very big. That's why there is more medium-term variance in LHE than NL.

Typically a hand like T9s is still going to be profitable in a loose game, but not if you're in the worst position in a short-handed pot and have no fold equity. If the pot happens to be multiway because several people had what is generally considered to be a reasonable starting hand, you're going to have low equity preflop but high implied odds for when you occasionally win with a straight or flush. If it's a game where most hands are multiway, and people are playing hands like Q6s, J4s, even for a raise, the value of your T9s goes down because sometimes you will make a flush and lose to one of those players, where in a tighter game you're likely only losing if someone happens to have the suited Ace.

This isn't exactly the same situation, as everyone had a reasonable hand, but I still think it's interesting. -
Just yesterday I had T9s in the small blind and called a single raise from the SB in a multiway pot (this is one of the weakest hands with which I will cold call in the SB).

I flopped an open-ended straight flush draw with the Q and J on the board. I checked the flop and was considering back-raising, but it came back to me for two bets and I didn't want to shut anyone out, so I just called. The turn was a blank and I checked and called one bet. The river was another blank, or possibly paired a low card on the board, but it got checked through so I got to see the hands of at least 3 other people. I immediately turned over my hand and said something about I couldn't believe that I didn't hit with so many outs. But actually if I had known what the others had I would have folded on the flop. Someone won the pot with one pair, but the BB had A4s of the same suit, so I couldn't win with a flush (unless it was a straight flush). And another player had T9s of a different suit, and had picked up a backdoor flush draw on the turn, so was freerolling against me. So it turns out that I had only 2 outs to win the whole pot, and another 4 outs to win half the pot.

Thanks - I suspect that this is the thing I am really needing to adjust to, as if results are drawn uniformly from {-1, -1, -1, +4} it's plus-EV but a brief unlucky streak can be a pretty long string of losses. My 8/16 games are still pretty loose-passive, just with more raising (versus the none I saw at 3/6) and more willingness to call down with second pair so going massive LAG isn't printing like it did at 3/6.

I had read statements like this but I don't think I internalized it properly. In four sessions of 8/16 I've already come very close to the biggest intra-session gains and losses from this year playing 1/2 NL, and last session I went on a brief heater and won three racks in about 45 minutes (and lost a decent chunk of that in the rest of the session).

The other hard thing is that in NL it's pretty easy to go home and know which hand(s) had the key decisions which determined the session's outcome, whereas I'm finding that much harder in LHE.

~~

One more preflop sanity check, Hero has AKo in the BB:

UTG (playing reasonable ranges) opens, folds around to BN who calls, SB calls (both are a bit looser). Hero makes it 3 bets, UTG raises, BN and SB call. We actually have a 5-bet cap which is weird, so I capped it there. Pointless or a mistake from such bad position, or normal? UTG feels very strong making the 4b.

That's why live NL is kind of a snoozefest. You're just waiting around for a cooler situation that dwarfs all the other hands in importance. There's going to be mega 2-rack pots that you will be able to look back at and say that winning or not winning that pot made or broke your session, but generally LHE is a pretty linear game in that you're going to lose--within a pretty small margin--the same amount in every hand you lose, and the pots you win are generally within a pretty consistent range. The big plus side is that very rarely is one cooler just going to ruin your session like it will in big bet.

And yes, I'd cap the AK. You just want to get the money in with premium hands in these multiway situations.

In the hand you describe, I would definitely cap with AK. I think the river call is fine, but one thing to consider is that your hand looks exactly like AK and you will sometimes get called by weak one pair hands like this--particularly in big pots. I find that a lot of older TAG type players are very reluctant to overcall with weak one hand pairs in these sorts of spots, but you will find plenty of people who are loose and passive and reluctant to fold any piece in big pots.

I think a raise with the AK in the river would have been better than a call. But I could be clouded by results.

Yeah, don't want to get too OT, but that occurred to me too when I was posting the HH.

4-8 game 8 handed. happened twice with same Villian. V is somewhat loose but can be aggressive, he also plays 8-16.

He opens EP, 2 callers to me in the SB with ATo, clown BB is 95%calling.

I am ranging him here AQ+, 99+. Maybe AJo or ATs+. I folded both times. BB same fold?

Your range based on his profile doesn’t make sense.

Got in a marginal spot in the SB and realized I wasn't quite sure what ranges apply here...

Somewhat LAGgy MP opens, tight passive CO calls cold, decent-seeming BN calls. Hero looks at ATo in the SB, and BB is pretty passive.

Instinctively, this feels like a 3b-or-fold region and near the tipping point. I folded, but I am wondering what's the correct worst off-suit Broadways to be playing here, do you flat any offsuit cards from the SB, and how does this change overall having more or fewer cold callers? What about defending the BB? In particular, unconnected offsuit cards feel exceptionally poor OOP multiway.

You’re gonna be out of position multiway. There’s nothing wrong calling pre in sb in this configuration.

It's never 3-bet or fold with two players already in.

I would fold this one though.

He is loose in that he would limp here with worse and be aggressive post flop.

So I specifically meant along the left edge of a range chart, or are you flatting some offsuit Aces here? KQ/QJ like hands do seem more tempting to flat though.

I'm not sure which hands you're referring to here.

I definitely fold QJo (and KJo). Usually call KQo, AQo, AJo.

Left edge is offsuit Aces from top down, so AA at the top, then AKo, AQo, AJo, etc.

So you do cold call with AQo and AJo, huh. I would have thought AQo was worth three bets for sure, but I guess I need to remember that raising this late has exactly zero FE so it's just a question of building the pot which we might not want to do OOP?

This is definitely not a 3bet or fold situation. I would call basically any offsuit broadway here, though you could convince me that KTo/QTo/JTo are supposed to be folds. I'd 3bet with AKo and AQo. (The caveat is that I play in LA midstakes games that are generally pretty loose and aggro; if I were playing at Bellagio or on the East Coast, I would assume ranges are quite a bit stronger.)