2013: Make or break

Originally Posted by griffey24

BIG pots IP and small pots OOP seems fine by me.

Well, kinda sorta, but BIP SPR IP and SMALL SPR OOP is really more applicable. [Generalization]OOP you should mostly be playing hands with fat value as quickly as possible to keep you out of tough situations, and IP you can play weaker hands with a fat SPR knowing that your biggest advantage comes with postflop position (especially against bad players).[/Generalization] As such, you should be limping behind on the button a lot at live games.

I actually think 65s on the button 160bb's deep at a live table behind 3 limpers is an interesting spot. Playing the deepstacks position game is tough because you're mostly gonna get high-RIO two pairs, high-RIO flushes and even your straights are vulnerable sometimes. 65s plays much more comfortably as a semi-bluff hand, but iso'ing 3 players live is mostly gonna get you in a multi-way pot, so unless you have reads on a place where you can expect villains to fold, then you're gonna be bloating the pot with 6-high.

It gets all the more interesting given your reads on one of the limpers that he donks an unsustainable amount. This might be the answer to the question of what part of villains' games are exploitable because you have a great semi-bluffing hand for raising a lot of his donks. You damn-well better be on your A-game if this is your exploitation plan because your plan when putting the first dollars into the pot is to win a pot vs 4+ players by putting 30bb's in the pot a lot of the time with an unmade hand. I know that we'll be playing poker and not just blindly putting a $125 raise 100% of the time or that this will be the only time we win money, but it's still an exploitation plan that's ripe for some spew if there's any reason you think you're not on your A-game.

Anyway, I probably go somewhere in-between in and juice it. Something like 3.5bb's ($17) doesn't usually raise eyebrows that badly, and it puts the SPR in a comfy cozy zone for a baby straight/baby flush/baby two pair type hand, and it makes it so that raising a flop donk is more like a 15-20bb investment.

I'm open to thoughts on this though. This is the fun thing about live. Preflop is sosososo much more interesting. Deeper stacks, worse players, more limpers. Heck, there's even variables like catching people reaching or having people make accidental raises and shit that makes for a lot more interesting spots.