AA in a no blind game

[tommo]

suppose you are playing a variant of nlh with very deep stacks. There are no blinds but the betting is capped preflop (no cap postflop) at 2% of your stack size.

It seems to me that if somebody only raised preflop with AA, that it would be easy to play a somewhat large range of hands in position and outplay them. But this would conflict with the idea that in a no blind game you should just wait for AA. Perhaps the only real playable strategy would become "only play AA when on the button"?

Just wondering what your thoughts are.

[Praetor]

the idea that you should just wait for AA in a no blind game certainly does not apply if there is a preflop cap of 2%

[LouisCyphre]

Can I buy in for 50 times the biggest stack?

[tommo]

[ QUOTE ]
Can I buy in for 50 times the biggest stack?

[/ QUOTE ]

for the sake of argument assume everyone always has the same stack size

[tommo]

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the idea that you should just wait for AA in a no blind game certainly does not apply if there is a preflop cap of 2%

[/ QUOTE ]

thanks praetor. Why is this so clear? Maybe I'm being a little dumb this morning, but I'd love to have some of the reasons fleshed out for me.

[Jamougha]

fold preflop

[LouisCyphre]

Why would anyone be willing to be the first to enter the pot with anything less than AA?

[Triumph36]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
the idea that you should just wait for AA in a no blind game certainly does not apply if there is a preflop cap of 2%

[/ QUOTE ]

thanks praetor. Why is this so clear? Maybe I'm being a little dumb this morning, but I'd love to have some of the reasons fleshed out for me.

[/ QUOTE ]

it would be easy to come up with a game theoretical strategy that would exploit this player - e.g. raising a certain % of flops, calling a certain % of flops, bluffing x amount of rivers given a certain board texture.

[tommo]

[ QUOTE ]
fold preflop

[/ QUOTE ]
good point. One of the optimal strategies would certainly be to fold 100% of your hands preflop.

[ QUOTE ]
it would be easy to come up with a game theoretical strategy that would exploit this player - e.g. raising a certain % of flops, calling a certain % of flops, bluffing x amount of rivers given a certain board texture.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not so sure. It's a shame that this game is so complicated or we could outline your strategy more clearly, and hopefully show whether or not the AA player can avoid any (range versus range) mistakes postflop. I suspect that if he is playing out of position, that he cannot. While if he is playing in position he can.

Keep in mind that when you call the AA-raisers raise preflop, you are getting 1:1 on your money.

Clearly you cannot take a passive strategy postflop i.e. you cannot say "I will call with x% of hands and if my hand has correct pot equity I will call his bets postflop".

you also cannot adopt a simple value betting strategy "I will call with x% of hands preflop and if I ever have a better hand I will bet or raise enough to make calling with AA a mistake". As the AA player will simply fold if you ever bet or raise postflop.

Thus any strategy involving playing hands other than AA (or folding 100%) of your hands, must involve a lot of bluffing. But if you are to bluff profitably your opponent must know that you are playing hands that are beating his AA in postflop scenarios. i.e. if you only play AA against his AA (and we assume he knows this) then you can never bluff him postflop. but if you play 66 and AA then you may be able to bluff him with your AA whenever a 6 flops.

I have to think about this last strategy a bit more...back in a couple of hours

[sMethod]

[ QUOTE ]
fold preflop

[/ QUOTE ] this almost made me laugh