Set up a CB? Perhaps, but you’d better know if the players behind you who are likely to call your raise are also extremely loose postflop. There’s not a lot of point to continuation betting a no-pair hand against someone who’s going to call on the flop and maybe also the turn and river with any pair. The majority of live $1-2 players aren’t that bad but enough are that I’d want to see people folding to continuation bets before I started planning the hand around them.

I agree that if you limp then call the raise to $10 that is like throwing money away

I use to get in all sorts of trouble with suited connectors, I think watching Daniel Negreanu to much and trying to be like him.

I would some times flop 2 pair, knowing the guy had a big pair, AA, KK, QQ etc only to see my hand countered on the turn or river when the board repeats and doesn’t fill me up.

Keep it up, added to my reader!

I agree that “it depends”, strictly speaking. In other words, there may be some very players who will ALWAYS pay off with their stack even though you obviously hit your flush, NEVER put you to tough decisions when you flop middle pair-no kicker, and NEVER cause you problems when you steal OOP. Such players will of course be big donors, but they probably exist in live $1-2 games.

However, they exist a lot less than we’d like to think. Ed’s article is spot-on IMO because it’s so easy to play implied odds hands thinking, “If X, Y, and Z happen then I could win a huge pot.” But without considering the actual probability of X, Y, and Z, you’re no better than playing 8-3 offsuit in hopes of flopping a full house!

For us intermediate players, folding SC (and occasionally low pairs) OOP requires the same discipline as when we first learned to fold queen-ten for a raise. Back then I was just learning, so if a poker book said, “You must not cold-call with queen-ten,” I paid attention! But now it’s easy to deceive myself. I’ll rationalize: “This author doesn’t know how bad my opponents are!”

Perhaps, but false optimism can kill intermediate players same as it can kill beginners!

Seriously, does Doyles advice “work” in deepstack games where let’s say you have 300xBB and so does your foe?? You limp. He makes it 5xBB. Folded back to you. If you call, now the stack pot ratio is ~29:1 I know position is bad, but lots of money behind for bluffing the turn or river scare card. Or would you advise open raising in midposition with suited connectors in a deep stack game to vary your play? Or, in the words of Ciaffone, good players don’t build draws out of position when the chips are deep?

Nice blog by the way

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