500NL LIVE: KK UTG+1

[Cry Me A River]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, if there is a lot of open limping in your game, then you have already lost. Open limping is pretty much totally unoptimal poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

You said this to explain what you said....but this needs to be explained. I really disagree. I think that makes perfect sense in limit poker, but not in NL. We're not playing for the blinds here.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is incredibly situational but as a default play open raising is usually better than limping. But almost everyone handcuffs themselves by playing by rote and always doing one or the other. It also really depends on the rest of your game, your image, whether you play mostly small ball or big, etc.

[Renton]

agree to disagree

[1p0kerboy]

[ QUOTE ]
We're not playing for the blinds here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't you want more money in the pot when you steal it on the flop?

[ActionStan]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, if there is a lot of open limping in your game, then you have already lost. Open limping is pretty much totally unoptimal poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

You said this to explain what you said....but this needs to be explained. I really disagree. I think that makes perfect sense in limit poker, but not in NL. We're not playing for the blinds here.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is incredibly situational but as a default play open raising is usually better than limping. But almost everyone handcuffs themselves by playing by rote and always doing one or the other. It also really depends on the rest of your game, your image, whether you play mostly small ball or big, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nicely stated.

[ActionStan]

Sure. If you can effectively steal.

I think limping UTG, which is mostly for the baby pairs you want to see a flop with, depends mostly on the quality of the button relative to your UTG. The stickier/better the button, the less I want to open raise with 22 and try to steal the pot on the flop. I still want to see the flop, though. How you play UTG depends sooo much on the relative CO and button players. I have a hard time accepting the "only open raise" mantra when your playing full ring. It does make more sense 6 max, though. Yes, no, I'm full of crap?

[Sunny Mehta]

All,

I will just make a couple points, as I feel this debate is starting to run its course.

First off, let's say you want to play a certain range in EP and would ideally love to get, say, 10bb into the pot, but feel that everyone would fold most of the range you want to play against to a 10bb raise. Then you realize that the button has the tendency to raise a wide range if you limp AND will call a small reraise on top of that. So you plan to exploit him by limping and making a small reraise to 10bb. Those of you saying button is somehow justified in his isolated decision to call your reraise based on his initial decision (mistake) to raise after you limped UTG, is globally shortsighted imo.

Secondly, I believe many of you are way overestimating the implied odds required by your opponent to play this situation profitably, even given the isolated decision. Almost no one in this thread has cited anything in the way of math to back up some of the implied odds assertions made. (Save for CMAR who did give a little bit of implied odds math, however he missed/overestimated a few things in what is a very complicated decision tree.)

We will have more to say in V2, but allow me to give a few observations...

You estimate implied odds by looking at what you stand to make on average in a given situation over all possible outcomes, not *the most you can possibly make in one particular outcome*. So, saying "OMG the raise is ten percent of my stack therefore I'm getting 10-to-1 in implied odds!" is incorrect. When you call 10 percent of your stack, your implied odds are usually much less than 10-to-1. I know many of y'all know all that. But perhaps what you don't know is that, even if you held the BEST POSSIBLE implied odds hand (pocket sixes) in terms of preflop-to-flop play, and your opponent held the BEST POSSIBLE hand to pay you off (pocket aces) and you both did in fact get all-in EVERY TIME you flopped a set, you STILL wouldn't have enough equity to make 10-to-1 profitable.

Do the math. You'll be surprised. (The things most people get surprised at is how much set-over-set cuts into equity, as well as how much the sucking-out-equity an overpair has even when the underpair flops a set.)

In addition to the above, if we then pile on the fact that ranges are almost always wider than AA and 66, the implied odds situation is even more grim.


[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

-S

[1p0kerboy]

My response to Sunny's post.

[marccus85]

bigger rr pf (80-100) then im ready to stack off against a set but we see AQ and KQ here too often live