High Only Hands Preflop: SHORTHANDED

[Heron]

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I normally just limp with high-only type hands. If the game is normally tight and aggressive you may only be able to play these hands in position when you see it will be a multiway pot. If the game is more passive you can limp from up front knowing you are likely to get three or more opponents.

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Admitedly, I'm kind of a L08 n00b, but this seems completely wrong to me. Why do you want a multiway pot with a high-only hand? Shouldn't you be raising to try to eliminate other high-only and mediocre high/low hands? Plus, when you limp you'll have little idea of where you're at on the flop, even if it only has zero or one low card.

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I also want to play multiway pots cheaply with my high-only hands. As chaos said above we'll get playable flops only about 1/4 of the time. The guys with low-only hands will fold then and those with sets, flush draws, two way hands (in case the flop has one low card) and optimists will stay. With a hand like KQJT rainbow I happen to think that I'll win something like one hand out of 12 to 16 and I will not always scoop when I do. Hence I should collect at least 6 to 8 big bets per winning hand to get at least even, provided that I always can play the hand for one bet preflop. For this I need customers. As long as the hand develops well I usually can't expect to get more than one bet in per street. When there's action I'm likely going to chop, split or lose.

[Rush17]

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What's the consensus on playing these? I'm talking about hands with 4 high cards. Games are generally taggy, with most pots being open raise. Most hands contested 2-3 handed.

Does it change anything if there is one or two limpers in front of us? Does it change anything if one of the cards is an ace?

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I like these hands in shorthanded games because you'll routinely see a lot more value betting (and a lot more pots won)with flopped pair/s due to the simple reason that you don't have that larger field to worry about, which means, less draws against your flopped TP/TK(for example).

I think these hands do play better from the much later positions (or of course, if you happen to get it dealt to you from the blinds)in a full ring because you'll need the value that comes from playing a high-only hand and the only way of knowing if the value is going to be there is by seeing how many players have entered the pot before you.

Having an Ace in the hand is HUGE...as it always is. You know how many times an Ace flops or let's just say you and your opponent both flop the top pair...well, if you don't have the Ace to go with it, it could mean the difference between scooping...to getting scooped. Also, I think it's important for the hand to be suited, too. It needs as much help as possible because we can't make a low!

And yeah, it makes a difference if there are two limpers in already because if the limpers are solid/tight, it means that my Aces are being eaten up which does take away some of the value.