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deadmoney314

Well, here's a shot at trying to start a fresh new thread. Suppose you spot the sucker early on because s/he is seeing nearly every flop. For those of you with HUDs or PT these are the suckers with 50+ vpip (over a good many hands). For others, you may notice really shoddy hand selections turned over by the fish at showdown or in HH (which as a good player you are constantly monitoring). Now that you have this information, how do you adjust your starting hand requirements?
For some of you, there are hands that you would play for an open raise in late position but because there is an EP limper you might be tossing them and seeing a lot less flops because of this scenario. Others might try isolating nearly every time thinking postflop play will give you an edge against a calling station--eventually your opponents may catch on and not respecting your raises.
My suggestion is to play as if this limper had folded. So if you would open raise with no limpers in front with your holdings, you should still act as if it was open. If you would have limped but not overlimped against a typical player, now you should overlimp. The reasoning behind it, assuming of course that your starting hand requirements are far tighter than 50-70+ vpip, is that the calling station is basically posting a "semi"-blind.
The hands your loose opponent is limping in with may not include the very worst of hands such as 72o j3o T5o, but s/he is coming pretty close. It is also a good way to double the cost of the calling station to see flops with the worst of it when you have an open raising hand (like JTs in the CO). Your hands will on average be superior to the fish and you should have an advantage of both position and postflop play to get value out of the calling station. In fact, most pots like this will be a contest between you and another player or two while the fish is adding extra money into the pot that the rest of you fight over. You will also find yourself getting many free cards as calling stations prefer check/calling to betting/raising. This means even the hands where you start behind, you maximize your chance of outdrawing stronger holdings because of the weak postflop play.
This way it doesn't seem like you are always trying to isolate the fish where others might be able to catch on and set up counter strategies. The idea is to ignore the loose limper preflop and to think of it as a good ratio of a lot more $$ in the pot in relation to the risk of another hand in contention.
The situation gets trickier when the loose passive opponent is loose aggressive instead. Similarities arise but it is a discussion for another thread.
Comments, thoughts, strategies welcome.

UFO1947 · Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 2:55 pm Post subject:

i don't have pokertracker, what is vpip?

Chrysiptera · Pair Joined: 18 Sep 2006 Posts: 34 Location: USA

deadmoney: interesting post..

The problems I see with this:
*Could hit 2 pair, or low trips if the board pairs 6's or something
*The limper could make unconventional straights, and is likely to play most suited cards, beware flush

Ignoring them outright, of course not! Certainly think less of their presence though..

-Chry

deadmoney314 · Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 4:15 pm Post subject:

byamamoto1 · Bay Area Bidness Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 2189

Dead, the only thing i can see wrong here is the fact that by ignoring the limpers infront of you, you are raising with more of a marginal hand, thus putting more money of your own into the pot with an otherwise marginal hand. the two limpers surely will not go away for 1 more bet, and you'll get callers staying in with much weaker hands. i think a play with AXs might work, as you may draw in the lower flushes while building a potentially big pot, but hands like JTs will just build a bigger pot for you to lose when the guy with K4s stays in. these players at lower limits will not fold to an extra bet preflop, especially if they have already limped. you are vulnerable to them flopping trips, two pair, etc. while you've still got your hand that hasn't improved. also with your raise you're not going to get any info on players behind. a guy in the bb who normally would have raised with AJ flat calls your raise and if a J high board flops, its going to be tough to get away from.

the isolation is fine, if you can isolate. the problem is that at the low limit levels, isolation preflop is almost non-existant. even isolation after the flop is very difficult. this theory i think would work at higher levels, but at the micros isolation is near impossible.

Riddim · Moderator Joined: 04 Dec 2005 Posts: 8137 Location: Sweden

I think treating the limper as air is pretty horrible most of the time when it comes to our raising range in LP, since it is partially based on the chance we have of winning the blinds without a flop. With any limper in the hand, this chance is gone, and with a calling station it is not even likely that we can win the pot on the flop when we miss. A hand like J-Ts welcomes multiway pots, so why not just limp behind?

griffinlord · Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 1:15 pm Post subject:

It depends, of course.

Hmm, I think it increases the number of hands I'll try to limp with.

Axs is pretty weak unless you have a lot of folks in the pot. With the fish limping in regularly I'll be able to play hands like this more often because I'll have the odds to do so.

I don't think I try raising to isolate unless I think it will work and I have a reasonable hand--one that is likely to be better than the fish's average.

Post-flop is, I think, where you see the big change. Since fish will play any two pretty cards you need to figure out if they hit the flop or not and with a passive fish that's very hard to do. Basically you are playing against two big blinds both with a chance of hitting a bbspecial.

deadmoney314 · Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:01 pm Post subject:

byamamoto1 · Bay Area Bidness Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Posts: 2189

dead i wasn't disagreeing with your strategy, as i know i do not have as much experience as you at the FL tables. i was just stating my uncertainties and what was not clicking for me. i appreciate you clearing up some of those things with me and will certainly consider it the next time i play some limit hold'em. its actually nice to have a real theory or strategy discussion on this forum for a change.

deadmoney314 · Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:29 pm Post subject:

Riddim · Moderator Joined: 04 Dec 2005 Posts: 8137 Location: Sweden

I really liked your last post, since it cleared something up in my mind. The OP gave me the impression that you thought we should raise with our opening hands simply because the limper didn't matter very much. Now I see that its just a matter of the correct decision in the new situation usually being the same as in the old one for various reasons. When it comes to the blinds not folding very much, I'm usually at a table like that too. The fact that they still will fold every now and then still adds value to our raises though, so I think that there'll usually be a bunch of marginal holdings with which we'll be better off limping behind with or folding now that we're going to have to see a flop. To me this seems to be especially true when we're fairly likely to get a call from one of the blinds as well. Otherwise we could raise to chop up the blind money, with us getting a bigger share than the calling station because of our advantage in terms of skill and position. Also if you mean having the lead when you say that we have tempo, that doesn't really matter one way or another against most calling stations in my experience. They just keep calling regardless of previous action. I think I might come back and add more to this later, because I find this discussion very interesting.

deadmoney314 · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:02 am Post subject:

I also like your last post Riddim as it shows there is an improvement that can be made to this adjustment and I very much agree its great to get a table where people are afraid to defend their blind with anything but premium holdings. Like I said, I'm sure there is a more optimum solution and FLHE is all about finding optimum solutions to complex problems with an emphasis on solutions that can be used on the fly (especially if you multi-table).

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