blonde poker forum

Have been thinking about this a lot lately, was discussing this with a horse last night who does it a lot, I never really do it myself. Was wondering what you think of it as a strategy.

So folds round to us in the sb, we have 20-25bbs, and either limp/jam, limp/fold or open fold.

Limp/jamming range: all pairs, all Ax, K8+, Q9+, JT that sort of thing
Limp/folding range: K2s-K7s, Q5s-Q8s, 78o, J9o that sort of thing

Been talking to my backer about this recently, well more strategies in BVB situations, interesting, no real input to give here, other than would you alter this depending on player/dynamics, and if so how?

Works fine unless the big blind has AK

did you see my thread vs lfmagic alex? i thought about it considerably since and implement it frequently.

If BB is active, I'd say raise/calling is better with the better side of your value range. I think limp/jamming should be used when looking to add fold equity to your hand. Small pairs and J10-KJ are probably good hands to limp/jam with, but not so much your 99+ and Ax hands.  

but then you need a r/f range too for balance?

in b4 lol balance in mtts, but you do play vs the same regs a lot on the french sites and (not talking about french regs so much, but other english regs eg moorman, vamplew, etc always playing against them, a few blondes - doobs for eg, not to mention all of team eureka play on there)

guess if we're r/calling say 77+ and A9+ we'll need a similar combination of hands in our r/f range, like a selection of K2o, Q4o, J6o sort of hands?

no i didn't, link?

Am i right in saying that even if you play against someone loads there still won't ever be a decent enough sample for sbvbb, to draw the player to your table first, then getting them directly next to you each time then playing enough hands that are folded round to the blinds surely isn't going to happen enough. Their decisions are probably going to be based roughly on how you play from other positions too. So i think balance shmalance in this spot.

Also, I prefer open folding more than raise/folding with this many bb. That's not to say there isn't a time and a place for the raise/fold for example like the K2o that doesn't play that well when our limp/shove gets called but still not open folding a K bvb. It can be opponent dependant as always too as to which of these lines you take.

+1 lol GG

ye limp/jamming ftw. Use it alot. Like it.

Haven't read responses but basically yeah. Hands that are too strong to r/f but not good enough to r/c. If bb checks stabbing like nearly every flop. Balance your limping range too if you like.

Surely limp jamming with the weakest part of your range is going to make life so sweet for your opponent in the BB? 

yeh this is my problem with it. and also I hate the thought of everytime we get a hand good enough to r/call say A7+ 55+ we're now limp jamming and letting him get away from all the hands he'd 3b jam if we'd just opened.

This

Yh obviously practical implementation is far more relevant than theory for this type of strategy, however you defo have a theoretical problem with this strategy, by having no limp/call range you basically allow him to take EVERY hand he would fold to your open and profitably open it. Obviously there is a chance you have selected your range perfectly so he cant open 100% and call off X range and not make money off his open but thats pretty hard to determine.

Obviously most people will assume that you will be limp/calling some and wont just ope 100% but even in a spot where balance and theory application isn't that important I just can't stomach implementing a strategy that allows someone to profitably play 73offsuit against me.

As a reverse on the "balance schmalance" argument why do we need a limp/fold limp/shove strategy, as surely limping K6s and AQo are both worse vacuum plays than just opening?

Everyone is thinking about this from the perspective that the villain knows our EXACT strategy. Where-as 95% of villains and all the button clickers in the galaxy out there who will just 3x fold QTo/T9o etcetc when we limp shove 23bbs with A3ss, seeing our limp as ''weakness''.

Obv, you could play perfectly vs this strategy and maybe exploit it but only if you know the exact way someone is implementing it.

And and soon as you believe villain has figured it out/can exploit it. You change again?

Think this is a good point.

When you were bvb vs bedi I felt like he could/was exploiting that strategy fairly easily, so perhaps you needed to adjust there. but yeh vs randoms its gonna work really well.

how do you know who's figured you out though?!

Dont do it vs anyone with a braincell/that you have say 500 hands on would be fine boundaries imo.

Lol well think that's a small sample tbf Al. A9o vs AKo basically goes in however you play it? BvsB with 24 bb eff. I won the last 2 pots before that with no s/d.

But I guess just trial and error. Going to be v hard for random good/bad/amazing villain to figure out exactly what your doing with the vvv small shallow BvsB samples?

Think mostly the villains not to use it against are the ones who have a good idea of the exact ranges. Still feel it's going to be hard to exploit fully.


Also, if you realise that the villain is trying to exploit you... Can't you fight back? For e.g If villain is opening 100% 73o for eg, you just shove basically all the hands your limping with? And if you figure out there only raising to induce, you can also shove perfectly vs this range and fold everything else you would of previously shoved?

I don't need to know your strategy to play the limp fold game perfectly. 

I'd actually much rather do it vs people I thought weren't idiots.

In this spot, with antes you could be getting 5-1 to just call pre so you when you are limping you probably don't need to be winning the pot that often to make limping profitable and it probably only becomes difficult to balance if you include a raise/fold and raise/call range as well so vs someone good then just completing or folding everything and never opening could work pretty well. Obviously vs people who aren't playing well or that you never play against you don't need to worry too much about balance.

There is a video Sauce123 made recently playing 6max and he opens nothing, just limps or folds everything, when its folded to him n the small blind. It's mostly in the context of 100bb and deeper spots in cash games but the spot does come up against a 20bb stack at one point and a lot of the reasoning seems to apply reasonably well to these spots. (Some of it maybe even more so since you're getting a much better price to just limp with antes)

Please, tell me more. By 'perfectly', I assume you must know OUR exact ranges?

The point is in terms of a perfect strategy, your ranges aren't really important in terms of constructing a perfect unexpltable / balanced / GTO strategy. All that matters is that there is no way for you to exploit his strategy.

The old "balance doesn't matter here" argument is really annoying because whereas YES it's an MTT, and YES BvB samples are really small if you wanna play an exploitable strategy - like the one suggested ITT then as vacuum savvy as it might be it's just not REALLY right.

You're way better forming a "unexploitable" strategy and developing loads of different exploitative adjustments for different scenario's alongside it (how you change for different players in the BB). That's a much much much better way to play then just coming up with a really flawed GTO strat that has loads of eexploitative merit and saying "well it's a comp so we dont need to worry about that"

If you're going to do that you're better of just deciding "im going to limp/shove this because my big blind seems aggro and will prolly open over my limp a lot" or "I'm going to raise K6s here because he's quite passive and will fold more often than not pre and more often than he should to my flop c-bet" and making every decision in vacuum rather that starting out with a GTO flawwed strategy.

So much this.

If you're gonna use an exploitative strategy then you're playing exploitably. Because of this it's important to understand how you are playing exploitably cos if you don't then it's a pretty big problem when people start exploiting you. If you start from a GTO strategy then you're at least aware of where the unexploitable equilibrium is within your ranges and then its pretty easy to make exploitative adjustments away from that vs different players if you have a good reason

much nicer way of putting it ^

If you never limp bvb it's a good enough strat

I mean there must be SOME merit to limping BvB sometimes, depending mostly on the stack depths, the guy in the big blind and probably the most important factor, your hand.

One thing you MUST do, if you never limp the sb is fold from there quite a lot, as one of things EVERYONE will notice is that you're opening loads and loads BvB (even if it's just cos you have good hands) if you open 5 striaght BvB hands then nearly any opponent is going to think "wow he opens every time BvB" and will naturally start to call/raise wider - I think this is an adjustment even pretty weak players will make naturally. In fact I think weaker opponents are way more likely to make because it's seen a quite a personal thing attacking someones big blind.

the main problem here is that regs will check check behind limps nowadays a lot more than they used to, yeh it means you can complete weaker than you would a few years ago, but youre gonna get floated out of your seat alot and make it pretty difficult post down the streets.

Was rofling around with this the other night.  Think I got checked behind twice and the other shoved.  Fortunately I had AQ when he did the shove with king rag which was nice, though probably not so great ICM wise.  Probably need a bigger sample size.

FWIW I think Alex did this to me just before the thread went up and I bet called KJ or KQ.  Was ahead I think.

also we're talking aboout tournaments here, where nobody ever folds ever

Yeah... Not read the whole thread but basically regs don't rAise from the bb anymore in my experience without hands they wanna call off. So this is pretty bad strategy IMO

Interested in all the comments coming from the two main different perspectives. My question if people are just checking the BB more, is what do we do when we limp, check and then flop a purr/ nice draw?

Do we just start leading?

Interesting topic, something I have been working on myself for a little while trying to come up with a pretty decent balanced range.

I think as a default its better to have a raise/call, raise/fold against alot of players (ones that call a lot in the BB actually rather than shove), versus regs though I definately think having a limping range is optimal.

Sauce123 (High stakes Cash game reg I am sure everyone knows) limps his entrie range BvB in 6 max cash, and has a pretty good balanced limp/fold, limp/call and limp reraise range

I think its a little harder to implement a limp/call range with 20-25bb stacks though, but maybe some villains/spots its viable