Should we be donking vs fish+tag?

What you are missing gobbly is that against 3 or 4 opponents, you will lose more than half the time by default. So letting those players in makes no sense to me. People throw the word ‘fish’ around pretty often on this forum, but anyone can and will beat you if you let them in.

Yes I want to be heads up against whoever calls and no, it’s not more profitable against a crowd, no matter the make up. You haven’t changed my mind yet, but it’s ok.

We couldn't care less how often we win a hand or not; all we care about is how much money we win overall. The times we let in the fish and stack him (which he certainly seems prone to doing tonight) will more than make up for the times we lose a little bit in a bunch of other spots.

Take setmining for instance. There's a bunch of limps to us on the Button and we just see a flop with everyone else with our small pocket pair. We'll probably "lose" (i.e. one whole bb) ~90% of the time. And we'll probably only "win" ~10% of the time, and maybe only a big pot like ~1/3rd of those winning times. But overall, even though we're a "loser" the vast majority of the times, we'll still come out a winner $ wise long term (the only thing that matters).

ETA: I mean, it's really as simple as this. We have a fish who's limped in who's been stacked 3 or 4 times already tonight and is stuck fricken $1000 in a 1/3 NL game... and when asked if we'd like to invite him into a pot when we have TT our answer is "no thank you, I'd rather he not be in the pot"?

GcluelessNLnoobG

Respectfully, I'd argue that we're not necessarily shutting the fish out if we raise, because he can call, and we need to put some value on what we're adding to our win-rate when our opponents do fold.

Over-limping and either losing a small pot or winning a big pot post flop are not the only possible outcomes. We can also raise pre, and lose or win a bigger pot post-flop, or we can limp, and win or lose a smaller pot post-flop.

But if we raise pre, and they both fold, we win without having to see a flop (or pay rake). And by raising pre, we're increasing our likelihood of winning the (now bigger) pot post-flop, whether we improve or not.

There are plenty of more speculative hands we could over-limp in this set-up. I'd argue a lot of the lower PP's and all the SC's make better over-limps than TT.

I’ve been hearing this argument forever. My response is almost always the same.

When we 3bet with a hand such as TT, and we win the pot without making our set, how often are we winning the pot by winning a showdown as opposed to betting postflop for protection and having Villain fold away his equity?

Why bother raising any hand, with that sort of reasoning? Why not limp AA if our goal is just getting to showdown?

I wasn't even trying.

He's a 1/3 live reg..... Like you're on 2p2, by default you should be infinitely better than he is.

Seriously what is this gibberish? It's like you're entirely incapable of playing postflop poker. Vs 1/3 players who it genuinely doesn't even matter if they are a reg, a rec, a fish or a whale. They're all awful.

Poker is a race to the fish' money. The way you play, you'll always finish last in that race.

I don't know the percentages nor are they relevant. I do know that I have enough confidence in my game to not have to worry about being outplayed by the average 1/3 pool with TT in a 3b pot and certainly am not playing TT as a pure setmine at this table.

You consistently post very good advice. Respect.

Wrong.