Revisiting blind play.

This is generally aimed at 6max, but id welcome full ring players too although i think its less applicable.

Blind stealing makes up a decent proportion of our bbs/100 rate, particularly at 200nl/400nl, maybe 100nl too. Id love renton to dig up or repost his blind stealing percentages from full ring as that'll show a good rate and what can be achieved.

I wanted thoughts however on the idea of playing the button weakly in 6max games versus bad players.
We know from table selection rules that we shouldnt have loose/passives or calling stations acting behind us, but at times a seat in a good game is just that, no matter where its located. Hence, if we know our sb and bb are going to call far too much when we raise anyway, but that we still gain really good value when we make a hand, is there a point at which we can limp hands like AT/KJ/QJ/A9 that are obvious button raises and get three streets of calling station value rather than just picking up the blinds. We know afterall our loose/passive is going to play too many hands and take them too far via chasing or calling with a lot of second best, so is it worth taking more unraised flops versus these guys and hope to get them to pay say 20bbs over three streets or just to continually raise, raise, raise to steal no matter what we have rather than take the added value of them wanting to showdown a second best hand a lot?

There's plenty of games in 5-max that I find so loose I will not even raise AKo. Sounds weak, I know, but if they're not folding to cbets but overcalling their hands I'll gladly limp it in and hope to hit TPTK and stack their mid-pair. My raising hands are 10 10 - AA.

It's not common but I have come across games like this where I find this is actually the best strategy.

I think raising is better - if you cbet/bluff less, use pot control and overall have a big post flop edge, then you get more value starting off with an 8-12bb pot vs. a 3bb pot.

and you get added benefits of possibly tilting them and picking up more small pots too. you're also probably ahead of their calling ranges pre flop anyway.

Originally Posted by benny999

I think raising is better - if you cbet/bluff less, use pot control and overall have a big post flop edge, then you get more value starting off with an 8-12bb pot vs. a 3bb pot.

and you get added benefits of possibly tilting them and picking up more small pots too. you're also probably ahead of their calling ranges pre flop anyway.

agreed.
How would these players react to me say limping from the button with AT when they have A3o for example and i get them to play a fair sized pot over 3 streets to the river in comparison to me opening from the button and them *maybe* mucking preflop but sometime calling and c/c c/f'ing when i show strength over two streets.
Is their more value to be gained from allowing them to think they can bet the best hand with a trash kicker because they play too much, or just hoping they may go to far in raised pots (fwiw, a 200nl fishmight take A7o to showdown in a unraised pot but probably wont in a raised pot)

In other words, because they suck horribly, does preflop raising give them an excuse to fold the worse hands they defend with and means i gain more from constant raising and stealing without flops and/or showdowns when i show two streets of strength?

I still think if you can generally get better value and make fewer mistakes then them post flop, it's going to be at least the same but probably more ev than limping (especially with metagame stuff), even if you get one more street of value with limping, simply because of the starting pot sizes. But there will be a point where neither limping or raising is good, like A6o or something, depending how bad they are.