Poker Hands and Strategy

This shit happens to me all the time on Ignition. I need to learn to fold KK when UTG+1 instajams my open raise. My normal bust out with AA has me all-in pre versus 2 opponents and I come in a distant third to the worst pre-flop hand. I absorbed a bunch of coolers and bad beats a few weeks ago and Ignition started sending me emails asking if it was time for me to make another deposit, which added insult to injury. Still, your pain helps in a sick and weirdly satisfying way. Thanks for sharing!

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I am not a wealthy man, but I have enough money to never fold KK all in pre in a $150 tournament lol. I’m not doing it in the 2020 decade. I refuse. Glad I could help the pain.

When I see the entrants and reentries in some of the highstakes mtts compared with the payouts I often think that is not an good investment. I rail some crazy russian in the NLO8 and there are two guys with 3 entries who made the money and are still down on the tournament. And I see that a lot in the highstakes that people reenter when first place isnt even 20buyins or so. The edge cant be there if you play against the elite online players so your expectation should be lower. I think they are burning money and I dont know why. Is it ego? Shouldn’t be your playing schedule be based on the softness and expected ROI. Even if I had the money I wouldnt play 2ks just for fun if its a 50 man mtt.

I had one scenario in 100k SNGs where I probably should have folded KK.

Unknown opens UTG, I 3bet from UTG+1, tight ABC pushbot reg (TreysFull) who knows me minraises in MP - when shoving was completely reasonable with his stack size. There might have been another player in there.

Huds do not help the majority of players and hinder as many as they help.

basically no one has 100% of themselves so you have very little risk when you’re swapping with all the other top pros and basically just crushing the fish.

8-handed 4/8 LHE. UTG limps. His range includes ATs and 99. I am not sure what the top of his limping range is. He probably plays too many hands UTG, but he isn’t limping any two suited cards. Folded to me in the small blind. BB is never folding if I raise. Not sure how aggressive he will be.

What should my non-folding range look like? I’m usually the tightest player at the table in terms of folding the SB in a limped pot, whether it be LHE, NLHE, O8, or any other game that uses blinds. I think most players are too loose in the SB, but I might be too tight.

$500 million-dollar guarantee coming up on bovada in a couple weeks. excited!

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At that stakes you’re probably doing okay playing super tight. At a higher limit probably A2o, K2s, K6o, Q2s, Q8o, J4s, J8o, T5s, T7o, 95s, 97o, 85s, 86o, 74s, 76o, 63s, 65o, 53s.

Roughly. Shave off the very bottom if bb is the type who will pop AJo or JTs in the bb, but that will never be the case.

These guys play so face up postflop too you should be looking for reasons to get in there. You are so rarely going to put in more than a small bet bad postflop.

tourns on that site man, there are so many people willing to get it all in bad or punt off way, way too many chips at any point in the tournament but you have to fade all of it to get any real payout. It’s hard.

KK into AA is just yawn annoying though.

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So, here’s a limit hand for all you NL donkeys to look at. Experienced LHE players can skip it. I think it’s a pretty reasonable, almost standard way to play it, but it’s the kind of hand that a NL player who doesn’t understand limit will screw up. I post it just to practice writing about hands and to see if I can induce NL players to consider playing limit.

If live poker ever gets back to normal, limit games are more casual and friendly. You don’t get the adrenaline rush of big pots and running big bluffs if that is your thing (although I did run a few bluffs), but if you just want to have a good time and aren’t trying to supplement your income, you should consider learning how to hold your own in a small stakes limit game. (Part of the reason I think those games are friendlier is that they are less of a sausage-fest.) If I hit a lottery jackpot, I’d probably spend some of my days dicking around in limit games that are just a bit too small for a pro to play in regularly.

5-way limped piot. I complete in the small blind with K7s. I think Gary Carson advocated raising with this hand, but I believe most poker authors would advocate a call.

The flop is K85r, giving me top pair with backdoor straight and flush draws. A lot of bad regs will bet because they have top pair. A lot of other bad regs will check/call because they are worried about their kicker. NL players have an instinct to take a bet-bet-bet line with top pair unless they face resistance or a bad run out because they are terrified of giving free cards. That’s a mistake.

A lot of NL players complain about being unable to protect their hands. While the idea of protection is a bit overrated in NL, the way to get people to fold is to force them to call two bets cold and I think this hand is a demonstration of how limit is different from no limit. I don’t think you would take the line I took in a NL game.

I checked, but not to check/call (unless an EP player bets, especially if they get called).

The last two players to act where both guys who were willing to bet less than top pair on the flop. It checked around to the button and I check-raised, as I intended all along. Check-raising is a key skill in limit games. I started out playing in small stakes limit and that has probably trained me to be a bit too willing to go for a check-raise in NL, but then, I am also capable of a c/r bluff. It’s an instinctive line for me and has earned me a table image of being tight and tricky at big bet games.

UTG limper calls two bets cold, I feel like his range is weighted towards OESD, slowplays, and middle pair hands. Everyone else folds, including BU and we see a heads up turn.

Turn is a 6, putting two hearts on the board, not my suit. I bet and get called, so I am likely not beat.

The river is the 9 of hearts, so backdoor hearts get there. I bet my straight, hoping he has two pair or that I misread him and actually has a weak king, and get raised. I call and we chop, as expected.

I feel like this hand is rather basic, but I am also used to not seeing anyone else make this play below 8/16.

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The only time i ever played limit in a casino was 3/6 and i wanted to kill myself. you are right on the less of a sausage fest part though, although the women/men both tend to be older in Limit imo

I played 2/8 in Pahrump a few years ago as it was the only game going. I had a guy who kept calling down my high PPs and getting there. Decided to run a 4-street bluff with 93o and got him to fold river, then showed of course. My proudest limit moment.

There was some history as a different guy had bluffed 93o earlier - and said “that’s my hand, I have to bluff it”. So the table got a big kick out of my 93o bluff.

the one i played in was 6 way to the river every hand.

Massively multi-way games are easy. You have to adjust your range towards hands that play well multi-way. Nut-peddling will probably get you to at least break-even, but the key is knowing how to play push-pull, when to try to narrow the field and how to build a big pot.

The biggest leak i see in small stakes limit games is playing too many hands out of the blinds. Getting 8-to-1 preflop doesn’t mean you should call with any two.

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The biggest mistake NL players make in LHE is forgetting there is a massive difference in implied odds between the two games.

I returned to poker beginning of this month, mostly 4 tabling full ring cash on bovada/ignition + whatever $5-55 online tourns I decide to play there or other sites.

doing well so far, don’t expect that to continue forever since there aren’t gonna be as many wild days like yesterday on iggy/bovada (it was like the glory days of online poker–maybe slightly better, people were making more super absurd bluffs than back then) even though I didn’t cash in a single tournament.

Did get a minor 2nd tonight that covered my tournament bricks this week but I think I got owned HU and need to work on it, dude was a super aggro and just kept making random pairs by the river and I just stopped folding A or K or even Q or J (!) sometimes high to a dude firing whatever every single hand/street. I did get the chip lead, lost it, got it back again, lol me, just needed to make one more hand on that guy then maybe.

Fridays I have the best runs in tourns so far, seem to have a good mix of loose enough players to pay your hands off early and weaktight enough players later to chip up.

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He cheated 100%

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i played at stones quite regularly until the covid. it’s a nice card room when they aren’t a part of a years-long scam.