You point on balancing your passive range is super important especially for someone like me who plays a lot with the same pool of players. I have to make sure I can have strong hands in my limp range too.
For sure. I also think the live thing makes many people play worse in general. The social side, alcohol, tells verbal jabs etc can throw many players off. I see so many guys who crush online come play live and just play terrible for various reasons.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that selecting hands for check-raising is mainly about your hand strength. I would argue that check-raising has a lot to do with the shape of your opponent’s betting range.
Interesting. How do you use their range? If they are weak it will be hard to get them to bet when you check. If they are strong you don’t want t to CR without the virtual nuts. I guess you are targeting mid range but I find it hard to put my opponents on that range.
Can you expand?
My own play for sure. The course is two years old now so I’m sure it’s dated in the world of 500nl zoom but it’s very good content.
Also SPR and board texture. Paired boards play a lot differently in PLO etc.
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I still remember back before black friday when we fought for like a year with Mason, et al to make a separate live low stakes NL forum. Their view was that it was covered in the existing Low Stakes NL forum, of which the vast majority of posts were online hands.
Anyone who played both at the time could tell you how different .25/.50 online was from 2/5 live, but it still took forever to convince TPTB at 2p2 to agree.
Could always tell when the online player would come to the casino, he’d be the one raising to $6 in a 1/2 game and wondering why he got 6 callers and no 3-bets.
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Lol I know hey. Preflop raises are so different live from online. I can count on one hand the number of 2x or 3x preflop raises I’ve seen in 1/2, 2/5 and 5/10 NL. I’ve played for 20 years likely tens of thousands of live hands.
My favourite players are the ones who directly correlate raise size to hand strength. There are SO many of those live.
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It’s not something I have really figured out a way to formally state.
One scenario I would consider check-raising is when a player has a tell that he intends to bet if the action is checked to him. Obviously, this only works in a live setting. If you know this player well, you can tell if his bet is going to be a polarized range or if it is going to be a pure value range. If you have the nut flush draw, then maybe you don’t want to check-raise against the former range because he folds all of his weak hands that you could have stolen the pot from on a later street and 3bets you with his nutted hands, but if he has the latter range and he is betting too wide then maybe there are a lot of two-pair hands you can push him off of.
As Aofrantic said, it also depends on concepts such as SPR and board texture. Basically, anything which affects how the hand will play out. If you are comparing betting out vs check-raising and check-calling on the flop, obviously you should be thinking ahead. This includes what you will do if he 3bets (and how likely he is to 3bet) and what you are going to do on the turn OOP if he calls (and how likely he is to call the check-raise).
It was always hilarious when a guy like that kept increasing his open amount, trying to find the magic number to isolate and get it heads up, and going on tilt when a $20 raise in a 1/2 game yields the same 6 callers and no 3bets.
One of my probable leaks in no limit is that I don’t iso very much. One reason that I like PLO is because I don’t get punished for that.
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Ya that makes sense.
Your example of live reading reminded me of the worst angle I ever fell for. I was playing 5/10 which I don’t do often.I was pretty deep. We were three ways to the river in a pretty huge pot. River hadn’t seemed to change texture. Villain one bets. I have middle strength hand and think I have villain one beat. I’m contemplating a call and look at villain two who looks disgusted at flop and is holding cards as if to fold as soon as I call. I call and you know the rest of story! In comes huge raise from villain 2. 
Also another pointer for any poker player that comes from aofrantics post is tracking your win/lose. If you are not doing this 100% honestly you will never be a winning player.
I’ve been known to feign making a crying call in the middle with the nuts to induce the squeeze raise behind me. I don’t get to do it often, but I love how disgusted people get when they realize I trapped them.
Holding your cards out can be such an over-the-top acting job, especially if it is atypical behavior. I prefer the more subtle approach of taking my chip off of my cards and putting it back on my stack, but otherwise maintaining the same posture, as if I am unaware that I have signaled my intention to give up.
Yeah, I got frustrated with the HH threads in the LLNL forum back then because the strat was always tailored toward heads up or maybe 3- handed post flop.
I’d be like, “yeah, and what do you do when it’s 6-handed, my dudes?” 
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Lol right. I’d guess 40+% of flops are 6+ handed in our 1/3 NL games.
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I’ll share a few lol live hands since we’ve had such a good discussion.
4 years ago, WPT Niagara. 4 AM. 5/10/20 game with 2 drunk whales, 6 handed. I’m $4500 deep, the 2 whales are 1k/3k (they rebuy about once an orbit). Covered by the guy on my right who has yet to play many hands. The whales are raising every hand blind pf.
One limp, open to $100, I call otb with J578ccdd. See a flop 5 ways.
Flop is 689ccd. By the time it has gotten to me, it is raised and potted to ~1200 or whatever by the person I haven’t seen play a hand and has ~8k in their stack. I tank fold, it gets in 3 way for $8400 and a set of 88 wins.
Last Halloween, get to the casino at 11:15. A maniac has $3k at the 1/3 PLO game and 2 whales have $2k.
Win my first hand with AAQ6hh. raisse pf to $15, get 4 callers. 857hh flop, lead $50, get checkraised to $150 by a whale. Qo turn, they bet $150, I call again. River Qo, they check I check back and mhig.
Win a few good hands and after an hour I have $2200 in the game.
Maniac is on my immediate right.
They open to $15, I have JJ34ss otb. Not a great hand, but I’m $1900 effective vs an absolute maniac, let’s see a flop. We go 4 ways to a J72r flop. Whale in sb from previous hand leads out $15, maniac makes it $75, I flat, whale folds.
Turn is the Kc, they pot it for $360 or so, I repot to $1400ish. They beat me in the pot.
River is a 9o, not a great card and they immediately shove for $300 effective. Never folding, and they have AQQ4cc.
They immediately congratulate me and say nh I deserve it with 100% sincerity.
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I have mostly played Omaha hi lo and mixed games for the last 6-7 years. I just started playing NL tournaments again. Is there any suggestions on any good books/sites to study?
Drunk tourists playing low limit PLO is the bomb.
2018 WSOP, I drive up to Vegas and head to the Rio. After I check in, I go down to the pavilion with the intention of playing 5/5 BigO, which was going and a couple of friends were there. I put my name on the list and decide to sit in a 1/2/5 PLO while I waited. I buy in for max, which is $500.
On the way to my seat I can hear the table that’s my destination, which is always a good sign. They’re having fun. I get to the table and I’m in the CO for my first hand. I’m still switching my chair (the one there was wobbly) and settling in as the cards come, and lo and behold, I have AAT2 (I don’t recall the suits, but they were double suited).
UTG raises to 15, 4 calls before it gets to me, and I finally take a breath and look to see that most of these guys are pretty deep, but none of them look like serious players. I 3-bet pot and all 5 of them call…
flop comes J75r, UTG leads out for $200, gets 2 callers, I shove for like $390 or whatever it was, all 3 of them call, board runs out Jx2x no flush and my AA holds up, and before I’ve even gotten my water bottle out of my backpack I’m scooping a ~2300 pot. In 1/2 PLO. Gamboooooool
I wish I could remember what they had, but obviously it was all crap. I passed on the BigO game and eventually cashed out for ~3500 that night. lmao
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The wsop cash games were so good a couple years I went down and only played them.
Ignition Hand #3987975105 TBL#22264367 OMAHA Pot Limit [MVS] - 2020-08-10 19:28:16 UTC
Table Info: Version: 1, Type: MVS, Stakes: $2.50-$5, Table: 001D19E6-0
Seat 1: Dealer [ME] ($317.60 in chips)
Seat 2: Small Blind ($517 in chips)
Seat 3: Big Blind ($150 in chips)
Seat 4: UTG ($500 in chips)
Seat 5: UTG+1 ($1,054.17 in chips)
Seat 6: UTG+2 ($938.97 in chips)
Dealer [ME] : Set dealer [1]
Small Blind : Small Blind $2.50
Big Blind : Big Blind $5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealer [ME] : Card dealt to a spot [Ks Qd 9d Qc]
UTG : Folds
UTG+1 : Folds
UTG+2 : Raises $17.50 to $17.50
Dealer [ME] : Calls $17.50
Small Blind : Folds
Big Blind : Calls $12.50
*** FLOP *** [4c Kh Qs]
Big Blind : Checks
UTG+2 : Bets $47.25
Dealer [ME] : Raises $194 to $194
Big Blind : All-in $132.50
UTG+2 : Raises $293.50 to $340.75
Dealer [ME] : All-in $106.10
UTG+2 : Return uncalled portion of bet $40.65
*** TURN *** [4c Kh Qs] [6s]
*** RIVER *** [4c Kh Qs 6s] [2c]
Dealer [ME] : Showdown [Ks Qd 9d Qc]
Big Blind : Showdown [2s 4d 6d 4s]
UTG+2 : Showdown [Kd Kc 5c 3c]
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