blonde poker forum

Live Cash

4,5,or 6 limpers say, u have 22-77 in the blinds or indeed in late position, how about making a "potbuilder" raise to say 3-4x that you know everyone's gonna call but builds the pot for when you hit a set? So long as no1s limped that may limp raise, and so long as no1 in the hand is capable enough to realise you never have a strong hand here (ie. every 50/1 table ever). this last assumption is paramount.

Seems like a good idea? Much easier to get 100bbs in when the pot is say 25ish and its only cost you £2-£3 extra. easier than £7 pots you can never get stacks in really vs calling stations. instead of betting say 5/14/30 you can bet 15/33/shove. easy game.

what are the downsides in this?

If you are playing players that bad and you have 5/6 limpers say, you can bet 5/6 OTF, pick up a couple of callers (super likely on flops seen 5-way in a 100NL live game). 21 on the turn, jam the river (should be ~pot). Doesn't seem like a great idea to be bloating pots from the blinds where your chances are far more reduced of getting all the money in the middle with your position. In deeper games, its probably more profitable, not so much in a 100bb 0.50/1 game. See your set cheap and make them pay big.

Plugging ABC leaks is far more profitable than finding funky ways of getting small extra edges in those games. If you are at a table of good/competant players where you might have to mix it up a bit to win big, fair enough. But not in the 50/1 table scenario discussed.

(side note: i've written that post after 0 hours of sleep at 8am, so i accept 0 responsibility if it makes no sense)

Uh, 7.5 out of 8.5 times you don't make a set

+1, obv there are far more times where we will be throwing it away on the flop or we become non believers and decide to continue in the hand with one over etc. Unless you flop sets 30%+ of the time i honestly think it is pretty bad at the lower stakes.

how can it be a bad play if you're set mining? Honestly its a fine play, prolly slightly -EV in the short term as you will be chk/flding a high % of flops but the play is fine imo as long as there are a few fish in the hand, wont make a lot of diff vs good players

it is just a bit pointless tho, i mean the thing about live cash with weak players is the pot can be whatever size ou want it to be any time. if there is 8 in there you can bet £8 get 2 callers, bet £22 OTT, 1 caller and £60 OTR and bam uv nearly taken 100bb's off him and he hasn't noticed.

basically the 3/4x that you miss out on pre flop to build the pot to make on the flop/turn when you make a slightly larger bet size than normal. They haz pair they will cawl, they haz nothing, they will fold.

It's an interesting idea and i see what you're saying. May be useful at the end of the night when everyone is >200bb's and super stationy. Generally at 50/1 though if people decide they're peeling they don't give a f**k what sizing it is so I don't think it's that tricky to just go pot/pot/shove when you do have it. If we're only 100bb's effective i don't think a 3x pre will make that much difference to getting stacks in most of time.

Uh, you've missed the point

Dont like it - bad idea.  Makes your hand less profitable imo.  If players are that bad that they will never reraise  pre then it should be easy to build the pot once you hit a set.  Also the fish will reraise the times they have aces/kings and then youve just made it a lot more expensive or not possible to set mine and crack their big hand.

Dont think building the pot in ssnl live is gonna be a problem. In deeper, nitfish-infested games then boom yes (because we can win it a lot of the time post anyway (when it goes 2/3way) and we get some camouflage on our range). fk im gonna patent that.

Camoflouflaging your range with Alex Martin

I'll buy that book

So you would raise small/build a pot in live cash game with premiums? If not then we aren't balanaced at all right?

I like to raise biggish in live cash games and think that if we are going to camouflage any range at all then it should be our limp/limp behind range.

agree with players that bad you don't need to really set up the pot for an easy get in stax river shove.

if i was gonna raise id prob make it more tho like 7-8 both for value/taking pot down there and also prob a good spot for our image on the table in general as some kind of super lag nutcase.

also in 50/1 you'd have to make sure eveyrone is at least 120bb stacked, and tbh in that game it full of 30-60bb players.

think in general we will just level our self tho with stuff like this.  see a flop for cheap.  flop set.  profit. 

It might boost your total winnings but if anything it's going to decrease your EV overall.

If you hit a set you need someone to flop something to pay you off.

The less players in the pot the less likely that someone will hit something of sufficient quality to pay you.

As soon as you raise you're decreasing effective stacks so decreasing your payout.

There's other reasons to raise but pot building isn't a good one imo.

A lot of the responses do seem to be missing the point. OP doesn't expect or want a single person to fold, nor think it's that neccesary to be balanced in your standard live £.50/1 game.

Exactly this ^

No-ones ever folding, and no1 will exploit or even notice my very unbalanced range.

If you're at a table full of mugs balancing your range here doesn't matter. They don't know wtf is going on.

yer, basically balancing ur range in a weak game with regs you wont play enough hands with for them to adjust properly (if they adjust at all, if there is a correct adjustment/if they make the correct adjustment) is sub-optimal. anyone thinking balance is important here is way off the mark i think.

^  play every hand optimally in a vacuum and ul be fine @ live pokers and if you cant do this then ffs stand up and sit in a better game

I disagree, I think even from playing 50 hands with someone if they do something different in a similar spot then I can have a read on them straight away. I've played a tonnnnnnnnnnne of live cash in 2011 and think the reason why I'm doing so well is because people aren't balanced. I actually think that thinking you dont need to be balanced in a live cash game is a pretty big mistake if you have 1-3 decent regs on table.

But the main assumption of the entire thread was that no-one on the table was decent. Balancing on most of these 50/1 tables is pointless. The ones with decent regs on yeh, u need to adjust and can't do  stuff like this.

Not so sure about the blinds but in position this is great. Give the stacks are even somewhat deep you shouldn't be limping your set mine hands even in the middle of a cascade. You want to drive out the button and get all the OOP limpers to call. The preflop raise gives you a pretty big psychological advantage (check to the raiser nonsense) as well as making you far more money when you do flop a set.

Thinking about the blinds I think it's works there too. You won't be picking up flops postflop nearly as much but imo raise pre then cbet into 5 players gets less respect than complete/check then suddenly wake up and donk into 5 players even the biggest fish should get suspicious in the second instance. You'll still get paid off some cos lol fish but it's rare you'll get 3 streets. They've seen a preflop raiser bluff AK for 3 streets on a 5 8 2 flop after raising pre but they've rarely seen someone donk bluff 3 streets in a limped pot. Even the mouthbreahers can recognise patterns.

Say you're in he BB for £2, if you make it £7 expecting everyone to call you need to make 8 * 5 or £40 more than you would just limping every time you flop a set. I think you do.

Also add in the fact that any play that differentiates you from the standard reg lines has value. Forget about balance live poker is about exploitative play but showing up with something unexpected every now and then works wonders.