losing $0.10, a few questions

[fakedecoy]

My stats are 19/10, running -10BB/100 over 2,400 hands at the $0.10 tables. I was playing SNGs before this and considered myself a decent player, but after a long SNG losing streak I moved to cash and I've obviously got some major leaks or just a complete lack of skill altogether. So here are some random questions -

When I raise limpers preflop, am I trying to bet just enough to fold them out or just little enough to keep them in? I find that some limpers will regularly call 6bb raises in any position, and I'm unsure whether to raise higher next time.

I see a lot of TAGGs that only buy in half of the max or even less. What do you make of these? Is there any valid reason to do this, or are they probably unskilled postflop and just have the saving grace of a decent starting range? I'm the only player at most tables who auto max rebuys.

About half the players seem to be LPASS preflop. But postflop I have a really hard time figuring them out. When they call down hands on every street, they may well have air or the nuts. They will sometimes bluff on the river. Beating them sounds straightforward - don't bluff, but bet heavy (75-150% of pot, or raise higher if villain bets) with a strong middle pair or better or when semi bluffing with strong draws, double or triple barreling, and commit to see the river most of the time unless things look horribly bad. But in doing this strategy I lose more in folding so many hands preflop or postflop and in bad beat showdowns than I win in showdowns or pricing them out. I feel as though I've gotten better at value betting, but the better I get, the more I lose somehow. Is there another major component to beating these type of players? Are there sharks who play so LPASS preflop, stats such as 35/10, or am I almost certainly psyching myself out?

[Arjonius]

At this level, you can win pretty consistently by playing ABC poker since the opponents will make more than enough poor and -EV plays for you to show a profit. Basically, you can sit there playing small pots with your modest hands - often more or less maintaining your stack - until someone pays off one of your big hands.

You can increase your total winnings if you watch and take advantage of the individual opponents' tendencies to win more with your modest holdings, to win more of the pots when no one has much, etc. The cost of doing so is increased variance.

[LAPRAS]

The disparity between your VPIP and PFR is too large. Stop cold-calling pre, stop calling out of the blinds, stop limping.

2,400 hands is a very very small samplesize to be talking about WR. I sometimes play that many hands in an evening.

When you raise limpers you're primarily doing so because you're in position with a dominating hand with which you can extract tons of value postflop when you both hit. Don't assume you have any FE readless, most of the time people don't limp/fold.

Playing against weak half-stacked regs isn't too hard. Read up on SPR - your hand selection vs these guys should be weighted towards high card hands.

If you aren't confident going for thin value then going for fat value vs loose/passives is a relativley foolproof strategy.

[villagenut]

The disparity between your VPIP and PFR is too large. Stop cold-calling pre, stop calling out of the blinds, stop limping.

So what do think are good VPIP and PFR at this level. I've heard 18/15??

[LAPRAS]

I'm not too sure since OP doesn't specify if he's playing 6max or FR. Regardless of this consideration, most winning players have a VPIP/PFR with a ~3% gap. 20/17 for example.

[JKDS]

@raising limpers: http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...rs-152850.html

@playing short stacked: theres a section or two in "No Limit Holdem Theory and Practice" that covers this nicely. Its a great book, and theres currently a beginners examination of it going on. If you dont have it/too cheap to buy it, then there is likely a topic about it on twoplustwo.com. Gist is this: Playing shortstacked does have certain advantages, and it is certainly profitable. However, playing with 100bbs or more is likely best for learning how to play this damn game. Also, if we have an edge on our opponents than we want to have more money on the table. Getting AA vs KK doesnt and taking 50bbs isnt as good as taking 100bbs ya know. Playing against short stacks really only comes down to range analysis and understanding how their effective stack changes the actions your allowed to take.

@beating loose passives: no, they arent very good at all. Someone who runs 35/5 is bad for a worse reason than you running 19/10. Big gaps means they do things their unsure of alot. They call too much oop or without initiative with weak ranges (bad), they likely open limp (bad), and they likely stack off too much with dominated hands (bad). Beating them simply comes down to understanding board textures, their range, and their tendencies. More often than not, theyll have alot of dominated hands in their ranges, so exploit that by having the hands that dominate them.

Theres quite a few threads in the beginners digest at the top of this forum that have some good info in them. Read a few, and dont be afraid to post hands where you have trouble. Just make sure to convert them first (via ftr's converter or something like weaktight.com) and provide reads and such and ppl here will be glad to help u out.

[fakedecoy]

Thanks for the advice! Lots of good stuff.

The spread on my 19/10 stat is so wide because I've been posting the sb after limpers, figuring I'm getting 5:1 odds or better (brainwashed by a Gus Hansen book). But I just analyzed it in PokerTracker, and I'm -35BB/100 over 321 hands in which I've posted sb (compared to my overall -10BB/100 stat), so I'm going to stop that now. I'm glad you had me looking at that!

With big hands preflop I often just call raises from TAGGs with the rationale that they're likely to fold if I reraise, and if they call or reraise they likely have AA or KK, so I might as well see a flop with their range still a little wider so that maybe I can hit, and the pot is still small so easier from me to get away from if they fire at the flop. Am I wrong here?

I just read the Raising Behind Limpers article, and have a few questions. Article quotes below.

Suppose that at a 9-handed table, an UTG player that you know nothing about limps, and it's folded to you on the cutoff with A8s. Quite often you would like to make a raise with this hand in late position against a limper, but you should beware. Be very, very cautious about raising early position limpers if you don't know anything about them. At micro and low stakes, players absolutely love to limp/raise and limp/call preflop with big pairs and big premium unpaired hands, and this can cost you big. Now, since we don't know anything about this guy, we can still limp behind and own him with our implied odds.

What would we know about the player that would change our decision to limp here? The text doesn't suggest what type of player would limp/raise and limp/call with those big hands. I've seen both LPASS and TAGG players do it.

Suppose in our original example with K9o, the limper had really posted a dead big blind, and checked preflop. Then a raise seems almost obvious as a routine blind steal, except the limper has already said he doesn't like his hand enough to bet it (when he checked), so we'll probably take that extra big blind down with our 5x raise anyway. This new scenario is only different from the original example by a small detail: when the limper voluntarily limps, we have a better idea of his range when he calls our raise.

How does our idea of his range change when he checks his dead bb and calls a raise versus limp/call? Obviously limping is usually done with a slightly tighter range than checking a dead BB. Are we assuming an LPASS will call a raise in either situation, so a dead BB calling is likely to be even weaker?

[LAPRAS]

I don't play FR but I do disagree strongly with the notion of overlimping A8s IP vs an unknown. IP I don't ever have a range for overlimping vs one limper. In 6max this would be a really standard isoraise, I don't know much about an unknowns UTG limping range in FR but if I don't feel comfortable raising then I'd fold basically. But raising seems fine. We have position and initiative.

In the second example, say villain is 35/5 and openlimps. Without getting into how his pfr range might be distributed, we can comfortably assume him to have a top 35%ish hand. When the other guy posts he can have atc, and further, when he elects not to raise, we can presumably eliminate at least premiums from his range. Basically readless we can assume him to fold a lot more often than the 35/5 limp guy.

[Stacks]

My stats are 19/10, running -10BB/100 over 2,400 hands at the $0.10 tables. I was playing SNGs before this and considered myself a decent player, but after a long SNG losing streak I moved to cash and I've obviously got some major leaks or just a complete lack of skill altogether. So here are some random questions -

First off, your sample size is way too small to make any reasonable assumptions about your game based solely on your vpip/pfr and winrate. Losing for -10BB/100 over 2400 hands will occur relatively frequently to even good players, as it's just a part of variance.

When I raise limpers preflop, am I trying to bet just enough to fold them out or just little enough to keep them in? I find that some limpers will regularly call 6bb raises in any position, and I'm unsure whether to raise higher next time.

You are raising limpers for a number of reasons. The primary reason is the fact that players that limp are typically bad players. That is, they are prone to making loads of mistakes both pre and post. Because of this, we are wanting to play pots with these players as we have a relatively large skill advantage, and should make less mistakes on average than these players, thus profiting.

Another reason is that these players are limping with a very wide, weak range of hands. Thus isolating with hands like A5s, K9s, Q7s, etc is going to be profitable because not only do we have skill advantage, but because they are limp/calling with hands like 97o, 22, J6o, etc, we also have card advantage (a stronger range).

Add in the fact that in most cases when we isolate a limper, we typically have a positional advantage (act behind them), it makes for isolating limpers to be a very profitable play.

To answer your question directly, we are generally raising them for value because we do not expect them to fold very often. So we are raising hands that play well postflop, with the hopes of them calling and us being able to use our card, position, and skill advantages to profit postflop. And if the villains are bad enough that they are willing to call larger raises with a wide/weak range, then by all means continue to raise larger, as they are just creating more dead money in the pot that we can capitalize on postflop. Also, we get value from our big hands much quicker, and easier.

I see a lot of TAGGs that only buy in half of the max or even less. What do you make of these? Is there any valid reason to do this, or are they probably unskilled postflop and just have the saving grace of a decent starting range? I'm the only player at most tables who auto max rebuys.

It's really hard to generalize players, as everyone plays differently to some extent. It's likely that if they are buying in short and they are only playing on a table or two, limping, minraising, etc., that they are passive-bad calling stations. Thus, we should continue to value bet them often, and forego bluffing for the most part (they hate folding). Keep in mind when playing with shortstacks, hands which rely on implied odds (suited connectors, small pairs, etc) go down in value, while hands like KJ, AT, etc go up in value.

Also, the presence of shortstackers can very likely affect your opening range (tighten up if they are playing aggressively to your raises as they should be), and your opening raise size (smaller is better when the stack sizes are small).

About half the players seem to be LPASS preflop. But postflop I have a really hard time figuring them out. When they call down hands on every street, they may well have air or the nuts. They will sometimes bluff on the river. Beating them sounds straightforward - don't bluff, but bet heavy (75-150% of pot, or raise higher if villain bets) with a strong middle pair or better or when semi bluffing with strong draws, double or triple barreling, and commit to see the river most of the time unless things look horribly bad. But in doing this strategy I lose more in folding so many hands preflop or postflop and in bad beat showdowns than I win in showdowns or pricing them out. I feel as though I've gotten better at value betting, but the better I get, the more I lose somehow. Is there another major component to beating these type of players? Are there sharks who play so LPASS preflop, stats such as 35/10, or am I almost certainly psyching myself out?

You are certainly psyching yourself out. Especially when thinking there are (1) sharks at 10nl, and (2) sharks that play 35/10 preflop. Loose-Passive players are relatively easy to beat, and you have the correct idea. Their primary mistake (like more villains) is going to be calling too much. So to exploit this tendency, you should be valuebetting a wide range (as they will call with so much worse), and bluffing very infrequently. Because they are passive, you should play pretty tightly against them when they begin to show aggression.

It's really that simple. Hands that you would typically continue to barrel because it's a good scare card, or it increases your equity a little bit, you probably won't be able to barrel against a loose-passive player. Because even though the turn brought an A on a 953r board, they are still going to check/call 65 on the turn. So just be more adamant about valuebetting your weak ace, rather than bluffing your missed QJ.

[TheBowlBoy]

Sample size is way too small to be asking any winrate related questions. OP, if you're playing fullring, stop playing 19/10 and give 12/10 a try. NL10 FR is easily crushed playing a very nitty, positionally aware style.

If you're playing 6max, then 19vpip is fine but you still need to call/limp less and start raising more. 19/16 0r 18/15 would be better.

Don't get too wrapped up in stats though. Good stats come from playing good poker, but good poker does not come from emulating good stats.

[Stacks]

The spread on my 19/10 stat is so wide because I've been posting the sb after limpers, figuring I'm getting 5:1 odds or better (brainwashed by a Gus Hansen book)

Think of it like this. While you are getting relatively good pot odds, you have the absolute worst position at the table as you will act first postflop on every street. Because of this, you can't just go crazy calling raises and limping in with a very wide range, just for the reasoning that it costs you less.

If players limper before you, then sure, it's perfectly fine to limp in with a hand that is going to play well postflop in a multiway pot (think small pairs, suited connectors, Axs, etc). Doesn't mean you should be limping your 73o, 92o, Q5o, etc type hands.

With regards to calling raises out of the small blind, because you are OOP, you are going to play relatively tight from that position.

With big hands preflop I often just call raises from TAGGs with the rationale that they're likely to fold if I reraise, and if they call or reraise they likely have AA or KK, so I might as well see a flop with their range still a little wider so that maybe I can hit, and the pot is still small so easier from me to get away from if they fire at the flop. Am I wrong here?

Yes and no. You shouldn't just lump all players in a TAGG category, and treat them equally. Some players will call a 3bet (re-raise) with a wider range that others, and thus 3betting them with your big hands become more profitable than the other players. If they are going to fold an exorbitant amount of the time to a 3bet, then calling with big hands might be best. However, in most situations villain's are going to be more likely to make bad calls than bad folds, which is why we 3bet for value a large % of the time.

What would we know about the player that would change our decision to limp here? The text doesn't suggest what type of player would limp/raise and limp/call with those big hands. I've seen both LPASS and TAGG players do it.

You can't really know what hands someone is limp/raising or limp/calling with until you see it at showdown. However, it is somewhat of a fad among bad players to limp/raise their big pairs when they are the first in the pot in early position. This doesn't mean stop isolating bad players limping from Early Position, as they are still going to have loads of terrible hands in their limping range. Just be wary, and play appropriately when you do see them limp/raise (realize it's very likely a very strong hand, and tighten your isolating range against them in the future).

How does our idea of his range change when he checks his dead bb and calls a raise versus limp/call? Obviously limping is usually done with a slightly tighter range than checking a dead BB. Are we assuming an LPASS will call a raise in either situation, so a dead BB calling is likely to be even weaker?

When a villain posts a dead big blind, he automatically has a 100% random range including all possible hands. When he checks that dead big blind, his range is going to have a lot more weak hands than if a player voluntarily limps into the pot. Hands that he would fold instead of limping (72o, 92o, T4o, etc), are still in his range for checking his dead blind, and thus isolating them becomes way more profitable because the chances of them folding to your raise greatly increase.