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COMMON HYPER SPOTS AND STRATEGY
facing a limp
i posted this a while ago, and whilst i would do somethings different [i'd jam any Ax i'm not iso raising non all in with] the basic advice holds:
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cribbled some thoughts down on playing a serial limper for a player on another forum, thought peeps might find it beneficial / interesting. the other player was very fustrtated by players limping all their hands, stabbing when checked to on all flops and always calling an isolation raise.
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 stuff. checking 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]
good luck and dont worry about limpers.
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limping your button
limping is good for you. that's right cash and MTT heads, in HUSNG's limping is a must. for the geeks out there, at the equilibrium we limp a TONNE at hyper stack depths.some benefits to limping:
we get to keep stack to pot ratios high. this means we can barrel streets, get to see turn cards and generally play good poker in position with a wider variety of hands.
we get to play more hands from the button. if we only minraise or fold we are left with either being really vulnerable to 3bet shoves or folding buttons. neither is much fun
i advocate an aggressive strategy involving LOTS of button raises, but as you get better, incorporate limping ranges deep, and definately as we get shallow. DO NOT OVER DO LIMPING IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE FORMAT
i posted this a while back, and again i wont dwell to much on the basic advice:
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100% would advocate having a limping range, i would go as far as saying it is a leak not to have one. you can use limping ranges against the best players as well as average villains and utter droolers. limping has a number of advantages and beneficial side effects. i'll briefly go over some of these so you can design your own limping ranges v different player types:
you can manipulate your other ranges:
by limping monsters, middling hands or trash you can cap, polarise and merge your minraising ranges respectively. these can all be advantageous against certain villians, especially when stacks start to get shallow.
you can play more hands in position:
against passive players you can enter lots of pots and get to act last post flop. by limping you can keep pots very managable against players that dont get out of line post. even very shallow against the right opponents, you can enter more pots in position without having to dilute your minraising or jamming ranges.
against aggro 3bettors you manipulate their risk / reward on jamming over your button action.
if you minraise wide against a loose aggro 3 bettor then he can jam over you profitably with a wide range of hands. i havent got the numbers to hand, but if you are minraising 85% of hands and only calling 22+, A9+, Kj+, QJ then pretty much any two cards can be profitably jammed over your raises.[ if you are 3xing a wide range then the risk reward is even greater for him].
limping achieves two things. one it means you can polarise your minraising range and have proportionally many more hands in your minraising range that want to GII v a 3bet jam. also he has a poor risk reward on jamming over your limp. he has to put his entire stack at risk to win your one BB. so hands that want to see flops in position can be limped and can comfortably call a small isolation raise. if someone jams over your limps then this brings us to:
inducing:
if someone exploits your limping range by jamming wide then limping monsters becomes INSANELY profitable.
lowering variance:
we should always be focused on the ev of an action. if the ev of limping is greater than folding then we should limp and vice versa. however agaisnt the average opponent the ev of limping, minraising and jamming many hands is roughly the same. however limping creates smaller pots and is much lower variance. agaisnt some players we may want to take a lower-variance line if the ev of two actions is pretty similar.
i could go into this more, but will sum up by saying that intelligent, exploitative limping ranges are very profitable, not just in themselves but also in regard to the advantageous manipulation of your minraising and jamming ranges that result.
always adjust to your opponent and his adjustements, always be aware of how changing one range effects your other ranges and dont listen to people who say limping is ALWAYS bad. its summat MTT players struggle with when playing HUSNG's imo. their two sacred mantras are:
thou shall not limp
thou shall only shove or fold <12bb
both of which work wonders in MTT's but are utter pony in HUSNG's
so, yah limp. but do it for a reason and with malicious intent
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Comments
because HUSNG's and Hyper Turbos are THE NUTS. a thrilling form of poker that is strategy-heavy, psychologically intense and played at a blistering speed requiring rapid transitions.
a lot of people will have enjoyed them for the first time because of the recent promotion and posts like this:
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On the plus side i have found a far more enjoyable game than the DYMs i was getting so bored playing.
Heads Up here we come on a far more regular basis. Just got to iron out my very loose river calls then onwards and upwards.
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make me smile. hopefully new players will get off to a flyer.
all forms of the game are enjoyable when you start to appreciate their nuance. this guide will hopefully plug some leaks, improve people's overall strategy and act as an intro into self-study and improvement.
i no longer play here so i dont mind giving this info to the community. some of the stuff is to fix basic leaks that non-specialists make when transitioning , some of this will seem crude and un-nuanced to some [and to me to be honest]. but this is all stuff i wished i knew when embarking on my Hyper journey. also writing these things helps me think and focus on the game.
hopefully you can design your own ranges and use tool like icmizer to model players you face.
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what will be discussed:
Playing Ax IP and OOP against regs and recs.
Playing small pairs 20-25bb deep
Limping: what to do facing limps, and why limping is BOSS, yes BOSS i tell thee!
how to do better than NASH in the end game.
phew, lets get cracking:
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Playing Ax.
25bb deep Ax is a MASSIVE hand. but it can be both overvalued and undervalued in equal measure. The big dilema is when to flat and when to 3bet, and do we jam or bet non-all-in?
With small aces, we really need fold equity. we arent really jamming for value except when villain calls with eg KJs, and even then villain isnt in bad shape. this means that we have to estimate villains opening frequecny and calling frequency. if someone is minraising 85% of buttons then he has WAY more hands that will fold to a jam than someone raising 50%.
lets use ICMIZER to look at how to play v different villains.
25bb deep.
villain min raises 50% of hands and limps 25%, folding the rest.
he minraises we have A4o.
action?
here's a visualisation of his opening and call-off ranges:
here's the hands we can profitably push:
we see that pushing A4 LOSES us 4.4 chips on average. not a good result. notice that even A6 is marginal winning us only 2.78 chips. some players will raise fewer hands, some will call off wider. but against unknown recreationals it's not a good idea to push baby aces. A8+ is a solid cut off. [note also that huge added value of being suited].
So if we dont push then can we 3BET non allin with A4? this is a big error in my opinion. we are going to get flatted by hands that can realise their equity very well against us. we wont get value on ace high flops and will be playing out of postion with our hand bascially FACE UP.
our percieved range when we 3bet is Ax. here we have Ax. the hands that will flat us: T9s, J9, Q7s etc etc all do great against us in position when our percieved and actual ranges are one and the same. much better to flat these Ax.
A4 plays just fine post flop. we dont have to play fit or fold [NEVER PLAY FIT OR FOLD OOP btw, it's a terrible affliction in hypers and one i suffered from for a long time]and we can contest flops with a mere A high.
also we can credibly represent value on eg J89ss as our percieved range contains many middling suited connectors. and on Ax flops we have a disguised monster where villain will be incentivised to rep our hand as Ax IS in his percieved range and not ours. the difference in our percived and actual ranges on different board textures allows us to bluff and value bet really effectively.
flat small aces against unkowns / players that dont minraise with a high frequency
be aware that 3x raises are weighted to strong Ax
dont non all in 3bet with small aces.
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lets look at a different villain:
here we have an aggressive reg. he will minraise 85%. here are his opening and call-off ranges 25bb deep:
here are the hands we can push [get ready!!!]
WOW! we can push ANY TWO CARDS v this reg. [here's a little secret, you CAN profitably shove any two cards v most hyper regs. they will adjust and make it VERY unprofitable for you to do so though if you try it too much. but if you do find yourself against a HUSNG gorilla who raises every button, you can shove VERY wide, just watch for adjustments]
look at A4o, we go from losing 4.4 chips to winning 29, thats over 1bb in expectation. HUGE. we have great card removal from his calling range and playiing OOP v a good reg is no fun. so shoving is SOOO +ev v good regs. i'd also advise shoving some suited bluffs too.
Look also at small pairs. massive expectation, and we can do a lot better than set mining. in fact NEVER set mine in hypers, you can jam small PP's very profitably over just about any opponent. we'll talk about small pairs next.
jam Ax v wide openers / regs.
for the purpose of this discussion 22-55 will suffice as small pairs.
i'd advise 3bet jamming 22-77 readless for a newish player. it's massively + ev v both regs and recs. Non allin 3betting is yucky as we get flatted by hands that have 45% equity against us and we are out of position and most boards will have at least 2 overcards. take our fold equity first and the pot equity we have when called make it a very profitable play.
we now have good 3bet shoving ranges v recs and randoms:
recs A7o+ A5s+, 22-77
regs A2-AK, 22-77 some suited bluffs.
experiment with ICMIZER and develop your own style.
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22-55 in position 25bb deep
i'd recomend open shoving 22-33 readless against regs or randoms. the important thing to know is that this play is UNEXPLOITABLE. even a PERFECT calling range cannot profit due to the amount of folds we get. [see chubukov]
as a comparison: when, for example, we min raise AK one of the best responses we can hope for is to induce a 3bet shove, hopefully with a hand like J8s that would otherwise, if flatted, have been able to get away at some point in the hand - or worse, bluff us off when we both miss. or a hand like AJ that we dominate.
note that AK DOMINATES both some hands that shove for value [AQ, A8 etc] and some hands that will flat [KQ, KJ etc]
of the hands that will reasonably shove, 33 dominates only 22, A2 and A3. [22: only A2]
of the hands that flat, 33 dominates only A3 [when its not shoving], and there are virtually no flops that we love.
but lets examine expectation of jamming v the flatting part of villains range: when villain folds a hand he would flat we win 1bb. the expectation of flatting middling hands will be basically break even, we wont get anywhere near 1bb in ev when he flats T9, Q7s etc etc. again, take the fold equity.
shoving also induces errors from villains. it might surprise you to know what hands can profitably call when 33 shoves @ 25bb [get ready for this...]
ZOIKES! look at T9s, over 2bbs better than folding, HUGE! but look at AKo, that LOSES 1.5small blinds when it calls. A3o loses 144 chips, over 7bbs when it calls!
have you EVER played a villain that will call with 94s but fold AKo to an open shove?
even if he does call perfectly he's only calling 41% of the time, so you auto profit from fold equity. add that to the fact that most villains will fold when its correct to call, call when its correct to fold, AND the benefit of fold equity v villains flatting range, then it's clear just what a BOSS strategy open shoving these small pocket pairs is at ALL stack depths.
44-55 is more a matter of post flop confidence. there are more hands that can be dominated in both 3bet shoving and flatting ranges and there are more favorable flops that you can contest. but it's good to know that you can open shove them and it is insanely profitable to do so.
22-33 open jam
44-55 as you improve, take more flops, but if you play an end boss you can always shove em
we can do WAY better than shove or fold. NASH is -ev for the SB above 6bb and we can do better than -ev innit. infact it's VERY unprofitable for the SB at 13bb, to the tune of 12bb/100 if i remember correctly.
first of all lets look at hands we can shove v an average calling range 13bb deep:
fisrt the calling range, and then the hands we can shove:
here's what we can push v this range, notice the outlined hands:
first off we know all the green hands can be shoved. so we should NEVER open fold them at 13bb since we have at least one better option. the red banded hands though all profit from fold equity. that is they all get better hands to fold. these are great hands to open shove. box in all small aces and small pocket pairs and you have a great 'out of the box' shoving range 13bb deep [against bad players you can reduce the variance by limping or minraising, but again, we have a good defaullt range we can fall back on against good players].
shoving small aces is great 13bb. when we minraise A3 there are so few flatting hands that we dominate as villians are very unlikely to flat 3x. with A9, however, we can dominate K9, Q9 T9, J9, 89, 79s etc and it also dominates a lot of Ax that jams, flips agaisnt more pairs and can contest more flops than A2-A5.
[i'd recommend shoving A2-A6 and 22-66 upto 15bb also].
why not shove KTs suited then? well first off it doesnt get better hands to fold. even worse it gets worse hands that would otherwise flat to fold. this is really bad for us. we dont need to play shove or fold until 6bb, and even then i'm doing different things. but with a hand like KTs, we want for example T9 to flat, we welcome bluff shoves from 67s and we are indifferent to junk which is folding anyway. we can minraise call pretty wide at these depths, this might surprise you:
we have JTs 13 bb deep and minraise. we get shoved on by the following ranges:
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the nit: he only shoves value hands that beat us:
A2+, 22+
the chancer: he shoves a wide value range, but likes to expoloit our minraising by bluffing with middling suited stuff:
22+,A2+,K6s+,K9o+,Q9s+,QTo+,JTs,97s,96s,85s+,75s+,65s
the maniac: he shoves wide and liberally, hoping to get us to fold often:
22+,A2+,K4s+,K7o+,Q8s+,Q9o+,J9s+,J3s,J2s,JTo,T9s,T4s-T2s,95s-92s,85s-82s,75s-72s,62s+,52s+,42s+,32s
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against which range can we call profitably?
the answer is that it is a CLEAR call v all 3 ranges, including the nit range that comprises only hands that we will need to hit against [and a lot of stuff that has us crushed, TT-AA, AJ, AT]
the reason is when we minraise we invest 2bb to the pot. when villain shoves we need to call off our remaining 11bbs to win a pot of 26bb. this means we need 11/26*100 = 42.3% equity v villains shoving range to call. we have that with JTs. add in pre-flop fold equitym and how well JTs flops when faltted we can see why it is a great hand to minr / call off with.
KJ, KQ etc all benefit from getting dominated hands to either call or 3bet bluff. please dont shove them deep stacked. i could really go deep into this endgame stuff, but i will leave it as a voyage of discovery for the new player. experiment with minraising and limping ranges right down to micro stacked 5-6bb play. look out for passives that will flat hands that would call a shove. this should RADICALLY alter the way you play some hands [ie all big aces should be shoved agaisnt a villain that flats A3 @ 14bb. he will get this hand in v a shove, dont let him off the hook. alternatively you might now want to minraise T7s instead of shoving it, as better hands that will call a shove will now flat, allowing you to steal pots you would otherwise lose / minmise losses].
shallow stacks are a rich and fertile ground for experimentation, adaptation and learning. SHOVE FOLD STINKS. be better than NASH.
gl
There isn't a cats chance in hell I'm reading all that but top stuff, and I tip my virtual hat.
Brilliant post, thanks.
I'm probably not alone in thinking that your knowledge of the game puts me to shame. I can get to a level of playing 15bb in an MTT competently more or less, and that's about it!
wp sir.
Incredible.
Thanks, Teddy.
Outstanding stuff
apart from this "i no longer play here"
folding loses you less money than calling
we can prove this a couple of ways.
when we call an open shove @ 25bb we are calling off 24bb to win a pot of 50bb
so we need 24/50 = 48% equity to break even on the call.
AKo has only 46% equity. so we fold.
if we do call then we have 46.6% equity in a 1000 chip pot. so we expect to end the hand with .466*1000 chips
= a chip stack of t466
if we fold our bb we end the hand with t480 chips
since 480 is greater than 466 you should fold if you know villain has 33
95s has 49% equity v 33. i'm not suggesting calling open shoves with 95s and folding AKo, but if you knew villain was shoving 33 then yes you absolutely should fold AKo and absolutely call 95s
thats the power of shoving low pairs in hypers, people will call when they should fold and fold when they should call, and even if they do call correctly the amount of folds you get mean it is a 100% guarenteed +ev action long term. bossssss!