Smooth-Calling your Button: Always a Mistake? NL

[Collin Moshman]

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If he autopots vs. your limps and you fold more than half the time he profits. You gonna mix in enough decent hands to call half the time?

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Let's assume you play limp/raise poker (no button open-folding, maybe you limp around 25% -- generally your weaker hands, but not always -- and raise the rest), and it takes you four times of being raised out of the pot to realize Villain will auto-raise those times you button-limp. Assuming you fold each of these four hands (as your starting default is to limp weak hands you'd otherwise be folding in raise/fold poker), you have lost an additional 2 BB (losing four 2 BB pots instead of four 1.5 BB pots).

After losing those 2 extra BB's, if you call/reraise 50% of his OOP raises those times you limp rather than raise (not necessarily your top 50% of limping hands, you can still mix up your play), your expectation for subsequent limps is positive iff:

0.5 x (-0.5 BB) + 0.5 (P) > 0

where P is your expectation of playing a large pot in position against an opponent holding the random distribution.

If P > 0.5 BB these subsequent button-limps are +EV. If you are at all decent playing HU, P should easily exceed 0.5 BB.

Of course, this is far from conclusive, since ...

1. Your expectation for raising these limping hands may be higher than 0.5 BB (although this is non-obvious, since in raise/fold poker, your folds are 0 EV plays, and so you must believe raising has -EV if you are choosing to fold instead).

2. Villain may readjust to your increased in-position raise-calling frequency ... what he would do, and the effects of such an adjustment, on your limping EV is difficult to say. For instance, if he begins checking more often, this benefits you those times you were limping weakly, and hurts you when you have a better hand.

3. You start out losing those 2 BB to obtain the knowledge you are facing 100% OOP raises, which could be significant in a turbo SNG.

Perhaps cwar's point cuts to the chase a little quicker: r/f poker is an easier style to play with fewer meta-concerns, particularly if multi-tabling or playing a quicker format such as the turbo SNG.

-- Collin