small pps utg

I dropped 22-55 from my ep range awhile ago. Today I had the subject come up twice with both sources saying that I should be playing these kind of hands utg. Thought I should bring it up here and get your opinions.

FR or 6-max?

Sorry, FR @ 5nl

Until people start 3betting a ton or are able to fold overpairs, I wouldn't be trying to do what the big boys do.

Why did you drop them would be a better question?

Originally Posted by jyms

Until people start 3betting a ton or are able to fold overpairs, I wouldn't be trying to do what the big boys do.

I'm kinda slow sometimes so you might have to explain this statement to me.

Originally Posted by jyms

Why did you drop them would be a better question?

Pretty much anything I've learned about poker has come from these pages. As far as why I dropped them, it starts with rentons 169 hands guide. I don't have any other examples off hand but there are other places in these forums that have led me to believe it's the right thing to do. Not that I couldn't be misunderstanding what I've read.

Well let's approach this from a thinking angle, Why would someone drop small PP's from Early position? What is the difference? And if you know why, then should we drop them at the micro stakes?

I dropped them, and only open 22-55 in lp. Why? Because opening them in ep is doing very little. People at these stakes are generally loose, you are going to be playing oop against a very wide calling range in most situations. Being that you are oop you have a hard time deducing what your opponent has, as well as their initial range being so wide, they hit sooo many flops... Is my reasoning correct?

I think that the general concept that made me drop these hands is that it sucks playing bottom or second pair when we're out of position. The truth is that I suck at playing these hands out of position. Looking at HEM, I lost 97bb over 100 hands playing this crap at 2nl. I was also open limping alot at the time and made alot of other changes in my play around that time as well.

The point being argued is that we could be cbetting in these situations and show a profit. I don't really agree with this as we're getting called alot with hands like A8 when they hit their 8 on the flop or whatever. So I don't see us having much initiative in these spots.

imo it depends totally on the type of game you're in. If it's a tight game, and the players on the btn-MP2 are only making tight calls of EP raises, then I open 22-55 there. I've played a lot of rush recently and with games being tight there its been working for me.
At micros once you hit its just a matter of going to value town usually; in or out of pos.

i know you have read this before because oyu posted in the thread, but here is Daven's take in his planning your hands thread:

FR 50nl, 44 under the gun. If you limp, you plan on playing a weak hand out of position and without initiative on about 90% of flops. And you plan on trying to extract huge value out of position the 10% of times you flop a set. Sound like a crap plan? Ok, how about raising? Do you plan on c-betting as bluff on most boards, with only 2 outs when called? Do you plan on somehow stacking a set-miner when you hit your bottom set? Sounds like plans that involve a lot of shitty spots and this is why most winning FR regs evolve to open folding 44 from ep most of the time.


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basically this says what i feel about it way better than i could

Would you rather have T9s or 22 OOP heads-up on a flop if you were the PFR?

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Would you rather have T9s or 22 OOP heads-up on a flop if you were the PFR?

That's odd. I'm sure there we're more posts in this thread earlier :P. As far as your question goes spoon, neither of these are in my utg range but maybe that's not your point. The easiest way to answer this for me is to stove it so... yeah 53.63% in favor of T9s, which seems right because sometimes we're hitting overpairs and flushdraws. Although, 22's gonna have some showdown value, albeit weak, more often.

I guess your point is that with 22 having less equity than T9s, which isn't in my utg range anyway, why would I want 22 in my utg range? If so you've made your point. If not I'll take my deserved troutslap.

Originally Posted by supahaole

That's odd. I'm sure there we're more posts in this thread earlier :P. As far as your question goes spoon, neither of these are in my utg range but maybe that's not your point. The easiest way to answer this for me is to stove it so... yeah 53.63% in favor of T9s, which seems right because sometimes we're hitting overpairs and flushdraws. Although, 22's gonna have some showdown value, albeit weak, more often.

I guess your point is that with 22 having less equity than T9s, which isn't in my utg range anyway, why would I want 22 in my utg range? If so you've made your point. If not I'll take my deserved troutslap.

The equity of T9s against 22 is irrelevant here. As an aside, even though T9s beats 22 aipf, 22 beats AKo aipf, and AKo beats T9s aipf. Hopefully you can start to see one reason why this is irrelevant (hint: hold'em hand equities aren't transitive).

The point is what are you going to be doing on the flop, what sorts of hands are you going to have on the flop, and how often? A piece of software called Flopzilla that has a 7-day trial can be useful here.

Once you get that, the answer to the OP will be obvious.

I think the fact that opponenets are loose and playing a wide range makes playing small pp's OOP easy. Were basically not trying to fold out people that can't fold. We are trying to hit sets and get paid. The fact that we can get paid easier when we do hit our gin card makes this a pretty easy hand to play. As with what spoon is talking about, we only care what our cards are when we show them down, so what cards would you rather hit your hand with on the flop and go to showdown in a larger pot OOP, T9o or 22? Say the flop is T52r

Interesting, I honestly thought I was gonna get inundated with people telling me to keep the small pps out of my ep range. I think I'm gonna do some experimenting @ 2nl playing them more aggressively and see how that goes. Thanks for making me think for myself jyms and spoon.

It'd be nice to here some other opinions, anybody?

Originally Posted by jyms

I think the fact that opponenets are loose and playing a wide range makes playing small pp's OOP easy. Were basically not trying to fold out people that can't fold. We are trying to hit sets and get paid. The fact that we can get paid easier when we do hit our gin card makes this a pretty easy hand to play. As with what spoon is talking about, we only care what our cards are when we show them down, so what cards would you rather hit your hand with on the flop and go to showdown in a larger pot OOP, T9o or 22? Say the flop is T52r

The difference between T9s and 22 in the example I gave was that T9s is going to flop a lot of equity very often, while 22 is going to flop very little equity the vast majority of the time. This means that with T9s we're going to have more opportunities for +EV c-bets, while we'll still have the advantage in large pots since we're making nutty hands so often.

As for the bold, that's only true in specific betting (or raising) situations where we won't have to play the next street (like if we bet or raise and our opponent only raises or folds and never calls). It's not true here since we're assuming we're seeing a flop a lot of the time.

As for deciding whether to play small PPs in EP or not (along with which would be better to open, 22 or T9s), it doesn't really matter all that much unless you have more specifics about who is at your table and what's been going on at your table. In some games it's going to be right to play pretty loose in EP.

When talking about UTG opens like in this thread, I think beginners are far more confident and bound to lose a lot less money playing 22 than T9s. Sure we can talk about equity and betting and we know which we would pick to play, but I think those thought process must be present. A big problem for a lot of micro players is flopping a T high flop and not knowing when to let a hand go. I can't see any of them being confident for three streets with a TP on the flop when others cant fold. I just dont see the need for a micro player to drop 22-55 or any other PP's at these stakes with the value of sets in the game where your never getting blown of your hand by light 3bettters

I play small pp's in all positions in the followig way. I will open with my standard 4x(+1 for each limper) bet if not opened or limped to me. If there has been a bet prior to me then I have to have atleast 15x the bet in implied odds in order for me to make the call. Also depends on the villain, ie is he likely to pay me off if I hit my set or not. If he's really tight and I don't expect to get paid of then I muck'em.

Don't take what I say as the final word as I am working on my own game!

Originally Posted by HarleyGuy13

(+1 for each limper)

Do you usually raise small PP's behind limpers or limp behind?

@ Harley, I pretty much play them the same way with the exception of utg and utg+1. As of right now I still think it's best for me to keep them out of my ep range. Like I said, I'm gonna do some experimenting with them to see if I can turn a profit but I'm not expecting to see much.

@ Fish, I think Harley said he raises behind limpers. But it brings up an interesting question. Does it make sense to limp behind rather than raise with small pps in earlier pos, with the thought that if we do get raised we're seeing the flop cheaper than if we get 3bet? I think this makes more sense coz we're often paying less to hit our set, but then it's maybe harder to get stacks in. And then open limping almost has to come into the scenario so I'm not even thinking about that right now.

@Anybody else, I didn't make this clear in the start of this thread so I'll do it now. Obv if we're on a nitty table we wanna loosen up and probably include these kind of hands, but I'm talking 2nl and 5nl. Imo, if I'm sitting at a nitty table I'm already blowing it.

@open limping small PP's utg- our range is super unbalanced and really easily exploited. It might be profitable at 2nl because of lolimplied odds, but not really at other stakes. It doesn't really matter that we're getting to the flop cheaper than if we raise and get 3bet because we're going to get owned postflop. When we miss we're going to be c/f'ing or c/c'ing and folding to future aggression. When we hit we're going to be trying to get value from our set OOP, which kinda sucks unless villain is like 8/6(villain usually won't be because if the table was running that nitty we should be raising pre) or spewtarded post. So yeah, don't do it.

About limping behind: I feel like at certain tables where we're not getting isoraised for limping behind then yes it can be ok in EP. As for other situations, it should depend on stack sizes, how often villain limp/folds, how often villain folds to a cbet, how many other plays behind will likely call, can we get stacks easily post, etc.

i've been playing a few hands (ca 10k) of 10nl Full Ring over the last couple of days. Folding 22-55 UTG is a very good idea. Same with folding suited connectors and gappers (%$%! Shania for the moment). Why would you open 22-55? you're hitting almost never (1/9), when you do hit you realise that opponent's stack-off range is strong enough that you're marginal about stacking, and when you don't hit you're playing bottom pair from out of position. Pretty simple stuff really.

I'm 100% certain that a lot has been written on SCs recently. But, whatever, one advantage that T9s has over 33 is that it can be c-bet when it misses in far more situations as it isn't relying on hitting a 2-outer to improve in the spots you c-bet.

Also, 22-55 = 24 combos, T9s = 4 combos. I'd prefer opening J9s rather than T9s, but folding both is better again. I'm sure there was some sort of article written. Better to have 4 combos of shit in your UTG range than 24, if you're gonna have shit in your utg range then why not make it decent shit (e.g. J9s), especially cos everyone will assume 22-55 are in your utg range anyway..

Agreed, Daven. Also like the 4 combo to 24 combo explanation. Why J9s over T9s though? T9s hits the flop more than J9s is why I'm wondering.

Glad to see you back daven, thought you went off the deepend for a minute. Yeah, everything you said rings true for me. I still think I need to play with it some, probably more on flopzilla (note to self: download flopzilla) than with my actual bankroll.