[fivebyfive]

This is a complicated question. Are we talking cash games where most people are 100bb deep or tournaments where stacks are widely varied? I’d want a read on the first limper. If this is a more common weak and wide range limper, and we’re deep stacked, I even advocate for going bigger. I want to find how big I have to make it before this initial player limp/folds any part of their open limping range.

When you say this: “I find many people in my games just can’t fold and ace preflop.” Do you mean for any sizing? What if we went all in? That’s extreme, but I bet we’d get some Ax to fold. Just maybe not to that min-raise + 1bb per limper strategy. So while tournaments are different, in a deep stacked cash game, and against a known player who has a weak and wide open limping strategy, I’ll sometimes raise to 10bb. If they still won’t fold, I’ll keep going up until I find a price where they will.

If one of the other limpers comes along, then we have to slow down. But if we can get heads up, against a weak and wide range, and barrel a lot against that range, I like our chances in the long run! We can do this with some of our premiums and premium blockers (like A5). As to the hands that play well multiway, I don’t mind overlimping sometimes with some of these kinds of hands. So 5d6d is a great overlimp. Let’s see three and go from there.

But back to that A5o, won’t we then have to play A5o in a bloated pot against this player? Sure, but we love this (trust me, we do!)! We’ll also now have KK and AA in this spot, and A5o isn’t the worst hand to play in position against a super wide/weak range. We can cbet small and barrel small on pretty much all but the worst runouts. This will be quite profitable against this specific player type. And for the record, I would never fold on an AXX flop with this hand. Let’s talk about the limping mindset briefly. “They will never fold an ace,” may be true, but it also means they will never fold suited connectors, broadways, small pairs etc. Postflop, it may also mean they will never fold second pair or a gutshot etc. If we raise their A8o to 10bb and they call. Okay, we may lose some chips here. But we’re printing money against all those broadways and small pairs, not to mention those second pairs and gutters that keep calling. More importantly, they’re in rough shape to get much value. So we can barrel small on flop and turn in position, but can they ever really raise us? No. And then we can decide whether to check back on rivers or go huge to try to fold out the weaker Ax. If we occasionally lose to A8 here, we’re going to make enough the other times that it will be well worth it.

[7high11]

All valid questions of course. Let’s focus on cash games where this is more common. Effective stacks vary from 75 BB to 150 BB. This is $1-$2 at the local card room. I played last night. So first problem, I didn’t practice what I preached. I started with a standard raise of $8 no matter how many limpers were in front of me. That never worked so I raised it to a standard $10 which we will see still didn’t work. I’m going to have to get better at increasing it.

8 person table. 5 seats emptied and filled over the course of the 6 hours I played. The other two were filled with studied players who stayed the entire time I did. For the rest of this discussion assume when I say “everyone” and no one” I am not including those two guys. Very different dynamic with them in the hand.

Everyone is very passive. They only open with premium or close to premium hands. Easy, fold when they open unless… But otherwise they are limping with almost anything. Very hard to range them. Hence your 10x makes more and more sense.

Again, other than those 2 guys, virtually no 3 betting, and including those two guys not a single four bet in 6 hours. The one “play” everyone has is the slow play. Literally not uncommon for someone to limp with AA.

Here is an example hand. I’m the effective with 75BB. LJ, HJ, and CO all limp to me in on the button with AJd. I open for 10 (yes now I know it is too small). Both blinds call, everyone else follows. 6 ways to the flop. J 9 6 rainbow (no diamond). I bet $25 into $60 (probably also too small). Fold, fold, LJ calls, fold fold. Turn is the 2 of diamonds. She leads into me for $35. You have to understand, and I am not exaggerating, virtually no one here leads with a draw unless it is to a straight flush. And a bluff is very rare (most players usually show their hands after showdown to show how smart they are!) So, did she just hit trip 2s, was she slow playing trip 6s or 9s? How do you range this? I fold. She turns over 26 off. I know, in the long run this is good for me. But I just lost more than 20% of my stack. It is hard to wait for the “long run”.

With 6 people seeing the flop, you have to hit it pretty well to not be outflopped. And even when I’m not, like in this example, you also have to avoid a random runout like this. The reason I was talking about NOT increasing the opening size into so many raisers is that after 4 or 5 times of being outflopped I’m down a fair portion of my stack.

Did an experiment one night with the guy to me right. We decided to solve for “x”. We kept raising our open sizes to see what it took to get everyone to fold. We stopped after getting 2 callers with a $32 open!

However, your point is well taken, and if it takes a $20 open to get down to 1 or 2 callers I’m going to have to start doing that.

BTW the woman who called a $10 open from MP with 62 off ended up winning $300 while we 3 “studied” players basically broke even.

[fivebyfive]

Wow $32 and you’re still getting callers. That’s pretty insane. If we can raise a limp 16x and get a call then we want to start to employ a pretty polarized betting strategy. Our raises are premiums with a few of those Ax suited wheels for balance and because those can flop okay against anything. We’re going to overlimp with the holdings that can flop monsters multiway (and only play them for their 2-pair+ value). And we’re going to fold more marginal hands—the ATo, JTo type hands. But until I see that someone is incapable of limp folding vs a 10X+ raise, then I’m mixing those marginal hands into my raising range.

In the end, this will be a bit more swingy. Larger portions of your stack will end up on the table than you are used to. But in theory, you should have much stronger equity and ranges when it does, and your opponent should miss more often than they hit.

This is highly exploitive, and not GTO, but against this opponent type it can be the most profitable way to play. But it can also mean some really tough, losing sessions. There’s no doubt about it. If you raise 16x and someone still comes along with 62s and then continues to hit their hands, you’re going to lose a lot. But if they’re doing that, more often, they will find themselves having committed a large amount and holding absolute trash.

[7high11]

Ah, in essence, that is what I was getting at, but going about it in a different way. I was talking about tightening my range because I wanted a stronger range to begin with against so many callers. But then I was talking about not making my opening bigger because I didn’t want to lose too much when I did get multiple callers and one of them hit Bingo. Now I get your logic of really opening large, but doing it with a tighter range.

And what I was experiencing was exactly what you are describing. I have been very “swingy”, and as I’ve discussed earlier, I don’t come with enough buy-ins to play a “swingy” game. So now you’ve at least helped me figure out my source of frustration. I just have to figure out the best way to solve it for my circumstances.

<font color=”rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)” face=”inherit”>With the exception of one or two players I’m the only person at the table </font>opening<font color=”rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)” face=”inherit”> what is anywhere close to a GTO range. Everyone else is either limping (and typically limp/calling) a really wide range, or opening with premium and close to premium hands. So when they do open, I can at least make a pretty good read on them.</font>