Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Poker-FullRing:Playing the Blinds Verse Limpers
What follows is a situational, small-ball tactic that I call Stealing Limps Out of the Blinds, or SLOB. It's not exactly a MT2R original. It's a known idea in the poker community, but one that I haven't seen shared in a nice theory post.
It is directed at Stars games from 50NL to 200NL and for players with a TAG/sLAG image. These games are full of weak-tight and weak-loose play.
One can easily be a winner with never using this tactic.
That does not mean SLOB is not important. It can dramatically increase one's winrate in fullring. For instance, I have run net positive out of the small blind over my last 50k hands at full stack fullring. That's right, even with the dead money posts, I have overcome them to run positive.
So, enough preamble, and on to the meat.
You are sitting in one of the blinds and the entire table limps and/or folds to you. Two things matter:
1) Your cards
2) Who has limped
DO NOT USE SLOB against tricky/aggressive postflop players.
You want to see limpers that are very weak-tight and/or predictable postflop...
you want guys that are 14/5/1.1 or 40/4/0.8 or whatever.
You also like to see a low WTSD number, a high fold to c-bet, and a high fold on flop.
Only use SLOB if all the limpers fit into these categories. The good news is that it will often be the case that all limpers do match the categories as the more aggressive/tricky post-flop players are rarely the type to limp preflop too much (*there are exceptions).
Now, you get to your cards.
With a normal raising hand, raise. LDO.
Now, here comes the counter-intuitive part for many.
With hands that play well postflop in multi-way pots and/or OOP, just limp/check.
Hands such as 44, 76s, A4s, etc should be limped/checked.
With hands that don't play well, unleash the dragon and raise with garbage planning on a c-bet 90% of the time.
T7s--raise
K5o--unleash the dragon
J7o--raise all day
92o--ok, you can fold, but it's not that ridonk to raise that, too.
WHAT???!!!
Raise garbage and play a hand OOP against hands that already entered the pot???!!!!
YOU BET!
Yes, you are OOP, but there are two considerations working to overcome that:
1) Your opponents already declared they don't feel like they have enough to win the pot by limping. Seriously, construct some hand ranges on what your opponents are limping, but not raising. For most, it's not pretty. Who cares if it's more than what you have? They don't know that. They have to sometimes give you credit for something as you'll be raising your typical range from the small blind as well. Plus, most aren't even paying attention. Even the Hudbots will see your 'normal' stats and not realize how 'wide' your range is in the situation. Basically, your opponents have added some 'dead money' to the pot for the taking.
2) Your opponents play predictable/hit-to-win poker postflop. If they are ballsy enough to call your preflop raise. Most will wimper like a little school child if they miss the flop. They are looking at their cards and hoping to hit something verse the obvious big hand you hold raising from the small blind. I c-bet in these spots roughly 90% of the time. It doesn't even matter what two cards you hold. It only matters if they hit the flop well. The opponents put you on at least top pair. Obviously, this is why you don't use the tactic verse aggressive/tricky postflop players. You don't want to face bluffs and re-bluffs for many chips.
SLOB is a small ball tactic. You pick up the limps. You pick up the limps and preflop call. You aren't looking to play for stacks unless your garbage hits something (these cases are beautiful, but beware when your garbage is showndown and the table sees it
).
I repeat, don't use it with good postflop hands in multiway pots like 44, 76s, A4s, etc. You don't want to turn a hand that can win a stack into K5o playing small ball.
It is directed at Stars games from 50NL to 200NL and for players with a TAG/sLAG image. These games are full of weak-tight and weak-loose play.
One can easily be a winner with never using this tactic.
That does not mean SLOB is not important. It can dramatically increase one's winrate in fullring. For instance, I have run net positive out of the small blind over my last 50k hands at full stack fullring. That's right, even with the dead money posts, I have overcome them to run positive.
So, enough preamble, and on to the meat.
You are sitting in one of the blinds and the entire table limps and/or folds to you. Two things matter:
1) Your cards
2) Who has limped
DO NOT USE SLOB against tricky/aggressive postflop players.
You want to see limpers that are very weak-tight and/or predictable postflop...
you want guys that are 14/5/1.1 or 40/4/0.8 or whatever.
You also like to see a low WTSD number, a high fold to c-bet, and a high fold on flop.
Only use SLOB if all the limpers fit into these categories. The good news is that it will often be the case that all limpers do match the categories as the more aggressive/tricky post-flop players are rarely the type to limp preflop too much (*there are exceptions).
Now, you get to your cards.
With a normal raising hand, raise. LDO.
Now, here comes the counter-intuitive part for many.
With hands that play well postflop in multi-way pots and/or OOP, just limp/check.
Hands such as 44, 76s, A4s, etc should be limped/checked.
With hands that don't play well, unleash the dragon and raise with garbage planning on a c-bet 90% of the time.
T7s--raise
K5o--unleash the dragon
J7o--raise all day
92o--ok, you can fold, but it's not that ridonk to raise that, too.
WHAT???!!!
Raise garbage and play a hand OOP against hands that already entered the pot???!!!!
YOU BET!
Yes, you are OOP, but there are two considerations working to overcome that:
1) Your opponents already declared they don't feel like they have enough to win the pot by limping. Seriously, construct some hand ranges on what your opponents are limping, but not raising. For most, it's not pretty. Who cares if it's more than what you have? They don't know that. They have to sometimes give you credit for something as you'll be raising your typical range from the small blind as well. Plus, most aren't even paying attention. Even the Hudbots will see your 'normal' stats and not realize how 'wide' your range is in the situation. Basically, your opponents have added some 'dead money' to the pot for the taking.
2) Your opponents play predictable/hit-to-win poker postflop. If they are ballsy enough to call your preflop raise. Most will wimper like a little school child if they miss the flop. They are looking at their cards and hoping to hit something verse the obvious big hand you hold raising from the small blind. I c-bet in these spots roughly 90% of the time. It doesn't even matter what two cards you hold. It only matters if they hit the flop well. The opponents put you on at least top pair. Obviously, this is why you don't use the tactic verse aggressive/tricky postflop players. You don't want to face bluffs and re-bluffs for many chips.
SLOB is a small ball tactic. You pick up the limps. You pick up the limps and preflop call. You aren't looking to play for stacks unless your garbage hits something (these cases are beautiful, but beware when your garbage is showndown and the table sees it
).I repeat, don't use it with good postflop hands in multiway pots like 44, 76s, A4s, etc. You don't want to turn a hand that can win a stack into K5o playing small ball.
# posted by bonycamel @ 6:20 PM 
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