LIMCASH looking for a strat vs a weird style

[Guruman]

i've run into a few players lately who have been giving up a lot pf and on the flop, but have me spinning on the expensive streets.

general traits:

out of position-
relatively tight and straightforward.
folds some hands pf to raises.
folds to cont bets enough to make cont betting 100% acceptable.
checkraises pairs and big draws.
loves to screwplay/sexy mid pair and better.
shows down lots.

that much i don't have issues with.

in position:

limps probly 90% otb with a wide range of garbage and primo hands.
tends to raise flop if donked, checkthrough otherwise - again with a wide range of trash and primo in both circumstances.
very aggro on turn. if we checkthrough the flop he'll raise a wide range of turn donks. almost never calls, folds only occasionally. Is capable of checking through again with a wide range of made and trash hands.
very aggro on river and will raise a wide range of made hands and bluffs.



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I encountered two seperate players on two diff sites playing in this manner, and it was beating me pretty handily.

In the heat of it I tried my best to identify and attack the flaws in this strat, but its difficult to do when running badly while the villain is on a heater. With that said, here's my rough analysis of what this strategy does and how to attack it:

with hero in position:

A standard pf range seems to still be right since villain is folding a lot to flop cont bets.

Once we get past the flop villain is willing to run lots of in and out of tempo checkraises. i should be more willing to showdown when in these situations, and should probably be checking through more often with the marginal stuff that i want to showdown. This gives away more free cards than i'm used to, but with the reward of sidestepping bad folds.

I should also be valuebetting and threeballing top pair or mid pp and better.

The tough part comes when i have air or a draw. typically with a good 8 or 9 out draw you'll tend to bet when checked to on the turn because to take the free card is to induce the bluff and you'll buy the pot often enough on the turn to make it worth it. In this case we're more likely to end up paying 2 bets to try to hit because we'll get checkraised by a much wider range, so it may be more correct to take the river card and run a re-bluff occasionally. This is always difficult for me to execute.

when out of position:

It seems as though villain's biggest mistake is allowing our hand to realize lots of its equity for free by giving away cards. His natural counter to this is to rebluff or valueraise lightly when we donk, thus forcing us to have a hand to start betting. This is a particularly effective strategy against me because i have a tendency to attack weakness from out of position a bit too indescriminately. I bet/folded a few times before really hating the position i kept getting put in and decided to re-adjust.

Maybe I don't have enough heart to play vs this guy out of position, but bet/threebetting pure air in an artificially small pot from oop seems like suicide. The best strat i could think of at the time was to go into superstraightforward mode and just wait for hands to start betting with. This made me too tight i think, and also made me predictable as hell. Suggestions here would be great.

overall i got pwned by winning the min in position and losing too much oop. Better countermeasures appreciated.

[Teh1337zor]

too inflate pots raise more often from BB, so they are not "artificially small". Lead almost any flop like a cont bet and 3 bet with draws/Midpair more often.

[sweetjazz]

Guru, are these opponents checking behind 90%+ of the time on the flop and turn when checked to? If that is the case, you absolutely must resist your urge to semibluff any hand that has outs and take the "free cards" you are getting. It becomes similar to a no limit situation where you might have a profitable semibluff, but it's better to take a free card instead in case you make the nuts and win a huge pot. Here, your semibluff probably is not profitable (especially if your draw is weak and you have to fold to a raise, so you often don't even get a chance to hit your miracle card), and you'll win a very small pot, but you might get to bet/3bet the river if you hit.

You should play really straightforward against this guy out of position. For me, he is giving you a ton of free plays in your BB. One of the reason you lose a lot in your BB is because you can profitably call a preflop raise, but often have to check/fold the flop. Or you have a hand like 73o that cannot even profitably afford to see a flop. Seeing free flops with your bad hands is a boon for you, and your main goal should be to put the right amount of money in the pot. It's fine to lose a bunch of small pots if you are winning the majority of the big pots and getting more money in when you're ahead than when you're behind. Figure out whether the right type of hand to raise preflop against this guy is J9o [makes decent pairs and also makes effective bluffs on Axx through Qxx flops] or A7o [makes more transparent made hands but has showdown value against someone who bluffs too much]. (Of course these are balancing all your legitimate raises.) DON'T BLUFF THIS OPPONENT, espeically out of position. From your description, he is very aggro on the late streets and is going to make bluffs too expensive (given that the pots are small before he gets aggressive). Instead, look for ways to make light value bets/raises. Don't be afraid to check made hands that are not very vulnerable (e.g. Kc 3h on Kd 9c 4c flop) in the hopes of inducing more action on the later streets. If you flop bottom pair (e.g. 4h 3d on a Th 8s 3s flop), be willing to play it passively. He may check behind better hands and you may induce bluffs on later streets. Your equity is pretty low on this flop even though you "connected" with the board, and you have bad reverse implied odds and your opponent is either gonna get a lot of value out of his made hands or gonna get extra equity from bluffing. It can be frustrating to flop nothing 4 or 5 hands in a row and then feel like you need to "protect" your bottom pair, but instead you should use it as a bluff inducer [because it is indistinguishable from the many hands you are checking intending to give up].

This type of opponent is beatable, but he induces a high variance style and he could be playing pretty well [depending on how he specifically is implementing his strategy].

[Guruman]

i've continued to run into players that employ this type of game and continued to get pwned by it.

admittedly, i run pretty badly given how often i get to see the turn with my [censored] hands for free, but that doesnt mean that they arent playing well.

so far i've counted 5 seperate villains on diff sites that play a similar style. there must be some literature on it somewhere.

I'm also finding that straightforward is super exploitable when they decide to bet/threebet as a pure bluff in spots where i have something weak like bottom pr.

interesting style for sure because i'm still giving waaaaay too much action when they catch monsters. maybe they're just catching a lot of monsters right now. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[sweetjazz]

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I'm also finding that straightforward is super exploitable when they decide to bet/threebet as a pure bluff in spots where i have something weak like bottom pr.

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Why are you raising bottom pair intending to fold to a 3bet? The weak pair / A high hands are the hands you should be using for bluff induction.

I think variance is causing you to misjudge the value of straightforward play. The trick is to play straightforward most of the time, and make the occasional zig or zag in the right spot. You should hand reading against this guy, but once the pot gets big, your hand reading is primarily deciding between calling down or raising for value. You don't want to be bloating pots with bluffs against such a player. If he runs good, you're going to showdown a lot of second-bests and that's life. But when he's running bad, you'll see him putting lots of bets into small pots trying to run over you.

And just because you are straightforward doesn't mean you don't have options. When you flop a good hand OOP, you can sometimes go for check/raises when he bets. Other times you can bet out to try to induce action. When you flop a top pair weak kicker hand, you can sometimes check/call it to the river (and either check/call or check/raise the river depending on what falls), even though you will usually raise earlier to induce more action. If the guy bluffs a lot, you can mix up check/calldowns with a hand like 85 on a Q83 flop with some more aggressive play (say a turn check/raise if the turn is a 7) trying to induce a bluff 3bet.

Basically, you want to sometimes overplay marginal hands to try to get more value out of your opponent, but obviously you want to avoid overplaying it most of the time (or else you set yourself up to be pwned by an observant opponent). By sometimes overplaying marginal hands, you give up a little EV in the hand [usually, sometimes his frequent bluffing adds EV] but you induce more action when you make strong hands [so your overall session EV goes up].

I can't really say more w/o specific knowledge of the opponents. Some of these tricky players are pretty good HU; others look good when they run well but give it all back really quickly when the cards fall the other way.

[Guruman]

ok, after a bit of reflection i think i'm getting a better grip on what's going on here.

first off, the person that i played today was playing very well and had no excuse to be playing down at the limits that i was at. It was just a $5 LHE HU tourney and i was playing super low so that I could try some stuff out cheaply and vs supposedly weaker competition.

Of course, i never got the chance because this guy never raised pf.

since he limped 100%, the following situations began to occur:

1)I found myself with lots of marginally made hands in small pots on big streets. I had no idea where I was because he was limping big hands and trash alike.

2)Villain was capable of racing to showdown with all of his own marginal made hands. He was content to check behind Ahi or Khi on every street, and he'd call any bets that came his way. This means that the only hands he was betting were made hands and pure bluffs, which is an awfully nice mix to have.

3)villain was capable of threebet bluffs vs my flop checkraises and then followthroughs all of the way to the river. This made checkraising with bottom pair or Ahi draws difficult, because it was going to be expensive to showdown and his range was consistent with both big hands and air.

4)villain almost never raised when i donked the flop. it was either an immediate fold or a call with the intention of calling down or raising the river. He got max value out of top pair a couple of times from me this way when I had a made but slightly weaker hand.

5)villain played very straightforwardly vs me when he was oop. I generally either raised or folded pf, and he generally either checkfolded the flop or called down. I don't remember him checkraising much from oop.



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the net effect of all of this was that i was lost when oop and he know exactly where he was when he was oop, which was a major advantage and the mechanism by which i've been getting pwned.

I attempted to make the initial adjustment of just playing very straightforwardly when oop: checkfolding whiffs, betting or checkraising made hands and huge draws.

The problem is that I naturally whiff alot when I play poker, and my opponent re-adjusted by bluffing instead of giving free cards when i showed i was capable of resisting induction and betting for value.

Now its not as though I could tighten up any because I wasn't being given the opportunity to fold pf. This meant I had to either start rebluffing or calling down super lightly. I elected to kind of return to a standard oop strategy of checkraising pairs and draws, donking some with pairs and on scary boards, and slowplaying top pair and mid pp until the turn.

This got me back into all kinds of trouble again though, because all of the sudden i was putting money into small pots with no idea of where i was at again. I found myself raise/folding in some spots where I knew it was a bad idea to be in that position at all - especially because I made a couple of light calldowns that revealed big multistreet bluffs from the villain in good spots.

He didnt bluff too much. He bluffed just about right, and it was tough to match up with from oop.

so after all of this rambling here's the next thing i'm going to try when i face one of these guys:

1)continue to play standard poker from in position:

Every one of these players has been very straightforward and predictable when oop. They give up a little bit there and pf in exchange for the big rewards they reap postflop from in postion when i spew. I have to stay consistent at retaining my in position edge above all.

2)emulate their passiveness from oop and actively adjust tightness:

this means i need to be checking and calling with weak made hands like bottom pair and Ahi, and maybe just check/calling with some draws and bluffing whiffs out of tempo on the river. This should have the net effect of mirroring and neutralizing the oop strat that they have been employing against me while keeping me out of trouble postflop. The diff would be that they're checkfolding bigger pots on the flop than i am. It also allows me to realize the most equity with my hands that I can from oop.

The combination in position aggression and out of position looseness and passiveness should force my opponents out of thier comfort zones - specifically making them play more hands from oop and in bet/fold situations from in position.

[Guruman]

jazz,

another smallish pattern i've detected from these types of players (and this last one in particular) is the tendancy to not start bluffing until after I do. this generally means that checking doesnt induce bluffs, betting does. The disadvantage is that I need to actually make a hand to exploit this, which i'm bad at. The further disadvantage is that I miss value with weak made hands because they don't bluff at them as much when I check to induce. Additionally, it allows them to play faster with more marginally made hands like mid pair and to do so safely because I'll end up showing down a slightly worse range.

Once I play a session vs one of these guys where I'm even remotely happy with my play I'll post it up for critique.

thx for the thoughts on this. I feel I have a lot to learn from getting beaten in this way, and that I should be picking up tricks if they're out there.

[chesterfieldking]

If this guy is limping 100% you shouldn't feel obligated to put money into the pot oop with non made trash hands that you fold pf to a raise if you flop bottom pair etc. If you are getting a free look at every flop you shouldn't ever need to bluff oop, ever. Play your big draws passively, chances are you will be getting a lot of free cards. When you do hit the flop hard you will want to mix things up between donking and check raising. Its ok to check fold J5o on a 589 board. Unless of course this guy is trying to pick up every pot postflop and is firing multiple barrels with many junk hands. Find a range of hands where you feel comfortable raising his limps and firing 2+ barrels UI.

Once you start crushing these guys open limping 100% doesnt really leave much room for improvement without completely changing their style and they might just start making bad adjustments when they are oop. I definately share your frustration with these opponents as I find among other things they are the most boring to play against.

[StellarWind]

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in position:

limps probly 90% otb with a wide range of garbage and primo hands.
tends to raise flop if donked, checkthrough otherwise - again with a wide range of trash and primo in both circumstances.
very aggro on turn. if we checkthrough the flop he'll raise a wide range of turn donks. almost never calls, folds only occasionally. Is capable of checking through again with a wide range of made and trash hands.
very aggro on river and will raise a wide range of made hands and bluffs.

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Cliff notes: he plays without looking at his cards. The more action you give, the more action he gives back.

This is the worst strategy in the world. Bet and reraise your good hands. Bet and call your fair hands. Checkcall legitimate draws. Checkfold the rest.

[sweetjazz]

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jazz,

another smallish pattern i've detected from these types of players (and this last one in particular) is the tendancy to not start bluffing until after I do. this generally means that checking doesnt induce bluffs, betting does. The disadvantage is that I need to actually make a hand to exploit this, which i'm bad at. The further disadvantage is that I miss value with weak made hands because they don't bluff at them as much when I check to induce. Additionally, it allows them to play faster with more marginally made hands like mid pair and to do so safely because I'll end up showing down a slightly worse range.

Once I play a session vs one of these guys where I'm even remotely happy with my play I'll post it up for critique.

thx for the thoughts on this. I feel I have a lot to learn from getting beaten in this way, and that I should be picking up tricks if they're out there.

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I don't understand why you are bluffing at pots OOP at all? Your opponent is limping preflop, meaning there is a measly 1 BB to steal. Moreover, he is checking behind a lot, giving you free cards on a frequent basis. I'd probably make a stab at an occasional pot on the flop (say with 96 on a 755 board), but often just check/fold against this opponent UI on the turn. These infrequent bluffs are meant more to balance my value bets and induce weaker calldowns than they are to make much profit on their own.

For what it's worth, I think you'd probably learn a lot more posting a session where you think you played badly or were upset by how it turned out. I am sympathetic to not wanting to post when you don't feel like you played your "A" game, but it'd probably do some good.

In general, I think you are vastly overrating this approach in position. Your opponent is either running good or you are making fundamental mistakes in playing small pots OOP. It's possible you are trying to win too many of the pots and putting in too many bets trying to steal them.