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A few pretty standard boring situations
Just give the number, what you would do, and why.
All situations are readless, 100BB stacks, 10nl, 6 max.
1.
UTG limps
UTG+1 limps
CO folds
Hero is BTN with (a) QJo/ (b) KJo/ (c) KTo/ (d) 89s/ (e) 77
2.
UTG folds
UTG+1 limps
CO limps
BTN folds
Hero is SB with (a) QJo/ (b) KJo/ (c) KTo/ (d) 89s/ (e) 77
3.
UTG limps
Hero is UTG+1 with 66
4.
UTG folds
UTG+1 limps
CO folds
Hero is BTN with (a) A2s/ (b) A8o
sorry i know these are pretty boring but just wanted to know what you guys would do in these situations that crop up all the time.
Also, in general how do you react to limpers, for example if you would normally raise a hand like 78s or any ace on the BTN if folded round, would you still raise if players had limped before? How does this alter hand ranges and calling/raising?
Comments
2. make up sb, or raise to 3/4/5x . making up sb may seem weak but you are oop and i dont have a prob with seeing a cheap flop.
3. raise to 3/4/5x, possible limp on agro table
4. FOLD! I hate raggy aces, position or no position. Obviously on a very weak table i would consider raising here tho with any two (including raggy aces)
the important thing is vary your play. in pots where people have limped you might pick up the loose change, so raising on button very important /> if you see a flop you can use position to take it down if you miss.
simples, and im not a cash player. but, this is pretty standard as you say.
1) Raise all hands.
2) Limp in.
3) Villain dependant
4) Fold
All the hands are villain dependant though tbh, generally would do the above.
The isolation theory is a very important concept in NL holdem so il try and explain it the best i can.
The reason we isolate is to play a pot with a particular player or players, so if a weak player limps in we want to isolate raise to try and get the bad player heads up so we can take their money lol.
The three advantages which make isolation work are:
Card Advantage- When a player limps a hand like J5o, we get a ton of valueout of hands like JT, QJ and KJ, If we raise too loosely to Isolate, we risk sacrificing all of our card advantage. So if we raise J5o and get called by J9o,we’re actually at a card disadvantage. This does not become a massive problem as the better our positional and player advantages, the more we can sacrifice card advantage. However, if we start playing junk hands that give up too much card advantage, it may not be +ev to play them even though we have a big skill advantage . So we can’t isolate with any two cards but we can widen are range depending on how bad they are and how good we are (skill advantage).
Positional Advantage- postional advantage is massively important as it allows us to create a big pot when we have a big hand, hand reading becomes easier, easier to pot control with medium hands and allows us to bluff more effectively.
Skill Advantage- The worse a player is the looser we can isolate as they are going to make massive mistakes postflop which we can take advantage of.
The most important advantages out of these three is skill advantage follwed by positional advantage and then card advantage, this is at 100bb deep as the smaller the stacks the more card advantage becomes important and the deeper the stacks the more important skill and positional advantage becomes important.
When we start to loosen up are range we want to start adding hands like k7s instead of 76o as we want hands which gives us good equity postflop, which mostly are high cards and suited cards.
This concept means that we constantly need to be thinking of who were intended to play against, understanding the isolation theory lets us target different types of players and take advantage of their mistakes, this allows us to play 15% of are hands against good players and 40% of are hands against bad players.
This higher you play in stakes the more this become important as everyone is fighting over the bad players money, at lower stakes most of the players are bad and passive so it does not matter as much if you miss some isolation raises but if you want to crush the games then you need to take every +ev opportunity you get.
Against loose passive players hands like JTo,KTo,QTo etc work well because they will call you with hands that you dominate like J5 and Q8 for example, big suited hands work well aswell like K7s and Q9s as they have high card value and great postflop equity.
The only example where i might limp which i can think of is if i hold something like 75s in the sb with two limpers already and a loose passive player in the bb, my hands probably not good enough to isolate with so il just complete and take a multiway pot which this hand works well in.
What alot of players get wrong is their opening isolation range pre as they dont think enough about the player who there playing against, you hear loads of players saying "i always open A6o from the button" or "opening 85s is standard from the button".
This is not correct as opening A6o is bad against a good player as this hand turns into a reverse implied odds hand as the only aces they will be calling with generally dominate us and when we hit an ace its going to be hard to get paid, also A6o doesnt pick up much equity which helps us to bluff profitably.
Against a loose passive player A6o is good enough for a raise as if the board come AJ6 and they hold J8 we can sometimes get three streets of thin value, also against loose passive players we go to showdown alot more, so the ace high holds more value.
The 85s is good against a good player as they fold alot of their blinds, when they do call were unlikely to get to attached to are hand if we hit an 8, also we dont usaully get to showdown against a good player so it does not matter that are hand is 8 high and the main reason is this hand picks up equity pieces like gutshots and flush draws which allows us to bluff (pot equity+ fold equity= bluff).
On the flip side against against a loose passive player we get to showdown more often with are 8 high and although we might pick up pot equity we cant bluff that much as we usually have hardly any fold equity as thats what loose passive players do...they call.
An example of this is when i opened 63s from the button against a loose player and they called with 64o, in this hand you can see im totally crushed preflop by a junk hand lol.