Smooth-Calling your Button: Always a Mistake? NL

[Collin Moshman]

Hi Guys,

I just watched jsnipes's video (from the Sticky) -- excellent analysis and highly recommended. One thing I noticed, however, is that his pre-flop button strategy was strictly raise/fold (with all raises to 3 BB except the misclick). So weak top pair hands such as Q 5o or J 2s were folded. Part of this may be the two-tabling, but from what I've seen on this forum, the consensus seems to be that smooth-calling your button is a weak play. (Please correct me if this is wrong.)

In HOH Vol II, Harrington's first rule of head's up button play is: "At least call with any two cards." (He does, however, qualify this statement by mentioning that if Villain reraises consistently in response to button limps, you should discard the bottom 20% of starting hands.)
(p. 377)

I tend to agree. Getting 3:1 odds with position, it seems to me that a chip investment of 1 SB is nearly always +EV.
This is particularly true when the stacks are deep. So consider a hand such as T 5s, J 2o, and similar hands where you don't want to play a big pot despite having position. I am usually smooth-calling here.

He also states: "With two high cards, I strongly prefer a bet of twice the big blind. I'm not committing many chips, and I'm trying to encourage action from a player holding ace-x, king-x, or queen-x, whom I may have dominated."

I tend to agree that min-raising or 2.5 BB raises with non-premium top pair hands, such as Q 9o, is often a decent play.

Thoughts?

-- Collin

[cwar]

NLTRN or Cash, very important distinction, Harrington is also talking about a situation where there are antes.

[jay_shark]

We talked about this at pocketfives when the book came out and many disagreed with his recommendations for changing his raises .

He is blatantly wrong in saying that you should only raise twice the BB with your better hands and 3 x the bb with your good but not great hands . Sure , if you're playing against a brain dead poker player (which there are lots) then his strategy is really good . On the other hand , it's not world class advice . Any good player can exploit his strategy and fold every time he doubles the bb because of his propensity to play premium hands this way .

I prefer keeping all your raises the same . If you do decide to vary your raises , then it should not be dictated based on the value of your cards . It should be as random as possible .

Secondly , I think he's mistaken in suggesting that you should always at least call on the button . This definitely depends more on your opponents than anything else . He did mention somewhere that if your opponent raises a lot then you can fold your very worst hands so I can't be too hard on him :P .

For the most part I think it's a raise or fold on the button but this isn't always true . If you believe that this player will likely fold to your raises pre-flop but that he is a terrible post-flop player , then it's actually a good idea to limp with hands like a-8 , k-10 .Sure you may win 1.5 BB's by raising but you may incur him to make additional errors post-flop which exceeds 1.5 BB's .

[PrimordialAA]

The general consensus of most of what i've learned from this forum and otherwise is that raise/fold at 75bb (10/20 in NLTRN) and 50bb (15/30) deep is typically how this should be played against MOST opponents, however as stacks get shallower it is much to your advantage to be able to utilize the limp in position

[creedofhubris]

It depends how much your opponent sucks. The more he sucks, the better idea it is to limp.

The problem is that a lot of people use limping as a substitute for raising, and that's just throwing EV out the window.

[Stealthy]

[ QUOTE ]
It depends how much your opponent sucks. The more he sucks, the better idea it is to limp.



[/ QUOTE ]

Can you expand on this a little. Are you simply talking about limping if villains will never raise your limps when you hand is weak. Or does it go further to include the weaker villains who never fold pre to raises anyway and will not fold any part even to 2 barrells. If it does include the latter it would kind of make sense to allow you to play small ball with your weaker hands whilst punishing them with raises and value bets with your stronger ones.

[KakiTee]

game flow very often more important.

[Collin Moshman]

OK, let's be a bit more concrete. Stacks are moderate-deep (50 BB+), no ante (agreed cwar, that is an important distinction). Early in the match so no real reads. You have J 4o on the button. What is your play?

I dislike the raise here, since you are building a pot with an easily-dominated hand that plays poorly post-flop. But getting 3:1 immediate odds with position and an average hand heads up, I dislike the fold as well. If he checks behind and checks the flop, you can make a 1-1.5 BB bet and usually take it as a steal. Occasionally you'll connect and get value. And if Villain isn't so compliant, you at least get some info. E.g., if you limp several times early in the match and routinely get raised, then you have lost only several SB chip investments, and you can now limp some of your better hands and let him make the bigger mistake of building a pot OOP with an inferior hand.

So getting 3:1 with position, if you don't have a raisable hand (e.g. a low offsuit jack), I would say that limping is generally a higher EV play than sacrificing your button.

I would like to see the counter-argument that folding is the higher EV play in these siutations.

-- Collin

[teteatot]

if it weren't an option to 3 bet pf, or rather, if a particular villain never 3 bet pf, i think i'd agree. but giving away more information pf by limping some buttons and raising others reduces the chance you'll be able to play a 3 bet pot with position and a good hand, which is very significant.

[soop]

Usually I am on the pro-limping side of these arguments, but I will play devil's advocate here.

You can't look at these things in a bubble (i.e. individual hands), because limping only weak hands is obviously a bad play against all but the most brain dead opponents.

So if you limp here, you have to limp some good hands as well, which will lower your EV on those good hands. Thus limping J4o doesn't just need to be profitable, it needs to be profitable enough to make up for the EV you lose when you limp AA.

edit - i had this all typed out before seeing teteatot's reply which basically says the same thing.