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HUSNG: playing v a limper
thoughts, discssion welcome, innit:
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first of all DO NOT GET FUSTRATED. their limping strategy is GREAT for you.
they are gifting you equity over and over. you have 63o they have A8o, what would you rather they do? you WANT them to limp. instead of auto surrendering your blind you get to see a free flop that you can hit - and even if you only ever put money in on 33x flops you still do better than if they had raised.
+ they play small pots in position with no betting lead
+ you play big pots in position with the betting lead.
+ they play big pots out of position without the betting lead.
+ you play small pots out of position where no-one has taken an aggressive action
you can see who is doing better here.
we make money in poker by playing hands differently to our opponents - even fish probably make as much money with AA as does phil ivey as most people play AA pretty similarly. wherever our edge comes from, it doesnt come from AA KK type hands. we make money by playing marginal hands differently, or more specifically more profitably. the reverse is also true. we can make money by forcing opponents to play marginal hands less profitably.
nowhere is it more true than v a serial limper.
consider the times when we have 98o in the BB compared to their 98o in the BB.
we can check behind, see a free flop in a 2bb pot, have the option of stabbing or deciding to play fit or fold.
they have to either surrender their BB or play a 4bb pot without the betting lead where they will often be check/folding.
sumarry:
dont worry, be happy v serial limpers. even without a strategy we are doinfg better v them than they are v us
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you say "if i check they stab"
dont check so much then, or just check/raise more!
they are limping 100% and stabbing 100%
ask yourself how often a 100% range hits eg:
K49r
947
AK6
flops. not very often. you can stab a lot v limpers.
if you flop a gut shot or open ended draw eg:
56 on 34K / 73T type flops then you have equity but no show down value. STAB! look to take the initiative.
summary:
their range is weak on many flops, exploit this by stabbing, esp on dry flops where it is hard to make a hand.
their stabbing range is weak on many flops, exploit this by check/raising both for value and as bluffs.
stab when you have equity but little showdown value or made but vulnerable hands.
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you say they limp/call 100%. raise for VALUE then.
be careful isolating limps. often you'll here people talk of 'punishing' limpers, or "i raise to stop them limping". we have already seen that it's fine for us for them to limp. when stacks are short then it is worth going after that dead money, but in genral we want to be intelligently raising limps to exploit that range.
raggy aces are not good for this purpose. they will call with eg J7, T6s etc and those hands do just fine in position versus our A3. the Ace is a massive part of our percieved range, and when our percieved and actual ranges are the same out of position its an easy game for villain. so much better to raise strong aces, and raise them big too. if our usual isolateing raise is 3x go 4x as we wont get value on Axx boards, so we want our value pre flop. we can also bundle some nice bluffs into this range. stuff that plays well on low to middling flops when we are called. this part of our range benefits from the bigger size in three ways:
+ extra fold equity from bigger sizing
+ credit on A and K high flops
+ we are disguised on low / middling flops. here our percieved range is vastly different from our actual range, so we can do some fun stuffchecking back rag aces also allows us too eek out extra value on Axx flops, as the ace is not a big part of our range
raise hands that will get called by dominated hands. KQ, KJs, KT etc all fit the bill. J9, Q5 etc can be dominated and are rarely dominating so are probably best checked behind versus this type of limper. raise smaller with the KQ, KT, QJ type hands along with your big pairs. hands like T9s JTs can also be raised but you do want some good hands that flop well in your check back range too. but experiment with different isolating ranges for sure.
summary:
raise for value with hands that can dominate calling ranges.
adjust the size accoring to your hand [against fishes this is fine, but you can still psuedo balance as discussed above]
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good luck and dont worry about limpers.
Comments
Top posting !
I would think that we can apply the same concepts to 'battle of the blinds' in 6-max - and as I don't play a lot of HU that's useful to me. SB keeps limping = good news :-)
yeah i suppose it does apply to six-max, the major difference being that when the SB limps into your BB you also have the addded benefit of being in position pre AND post flop. you have even less to worry about in that case.
but i'm not much of a MTT or cash player so others might be better able to offer advice there.
personally though, if there are other limpers then you dont have position on them, but there is the added money in the pot which may be worth squeezing for. certainly in the mid-late stages of an MTT three limpers into your blind can mean a pot worth 15% of your stack. i've found it profitable to make big moves from the BB in those situations with the right reads.
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and it is reads that are the most important consideration. the opening post was written in response to a limper who limps near ALL their range [AJ, KQ, 99 inc] who near ALWAYS calls an ISO raise and near ALWAYS stabs on the flop when checked to. people are often annoyed and fustrated with this type of player and the aim was to show that it's nothing worth getting fustrated over and to give some basic strategy advice to deal with them when stacks are deepish.
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a lot of limpers, however, DO offer fold equity when they limp, and so we should definately widen or value range against them and include some more bluffs into our isolating range. the value of raising borderline hands like J9 or Q7s goes way up when we have fold equity alongside our pot equity, even if we are out of position.
also when stacks get short then it is definately worth going after the pot and we no longer checkback our Ax and decent suited kings as they become jams v a wide limping range when shallow.
just apply reads and adjustments to any advice, basically.