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 Originally Posted by baudib
preflop
I struggle with this a bit myself but your sizing for a live game and 1 limper is small. Are we juicing the pot to outplay him post flop IP? If you want to ISO maybe make it $12-$15. Since this is a guy who plays 2/5 he might realize you don't have a monster here generally with this sizing, of course players at 2/5 pick up on these things but don't do anything about it.
I don't generally raise preflop to thin the field in these games, or at least not in decent position. Regardless of whether I'm planning on doing a lot of bluffing postflop or a lot of vbetting, these players' biggest weakness is that they call far too wide preflop and far be it from me to discourage that. Villains calling with 63s and J9o and crap with no rebluff plans postflop is pretty much never a bad thing for us, no matter how many people that means get to see the flop. Hands are generally 2- or 3-way by the turn anyway, which is when the poker really begins.
I also don't care that much about "balance" in the sense that I'm afraid of looking like I have a weak hand when I, in fact, do hold a weak hand against any players whose exploitation plan is call moar. When you get a dirty image and make a smaller raise with a thin value hand (eg: 99, QJ), then you find that you win a ton of $150 pots with split pair/TPMK > 2nd pair/whiffed draw. When you do it with semi-bluff hands (eg: SCs, Axs), then you find you get a ton of folds on turn barrels and river post-oaks and selective triple barrels.
If there were players who exploited my weak range by 3b'ing preflop, then I wouldn't be so brazen. Against players who are capable of raising their marginal hands postflop, I can't so easily get away with endless thin vbets and barrels. Obviously when I have bad position with a high RIO hand, especially like AQo in the SB, then I'll make the biggest possible raise that will get called by worse, but even then it's not so much with the hope to get it HU.
My objective here was to get the initiative and hopefully steal some position, neither of which requires a big raise. I don't think it's so clean and simple in this case because we're ISOing someone who's capable of calling three streets with third pair, and I'm certainly open to furthering the discussion, but just wanted to give my little shpeil on how little I believe in the whole "thin the field" craze in live poker.
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