Q&A #106: Opening On The Button and Isolating Limpers

Great post as usual, thanks.

Something I’ve always wondered about when choosing to limp behind rather than isolate with “big potential” trash, like 56s maybe – aren’t we making a crap pot? For example, I’m playing 6-max online. I’m on the button with 5d6d. I have 100BB, and everyone has me covered. Folded to the CO (a loose-passive player who overvalues TPGK type hands) who limps. I make it 5xBB, the blinds fold, and the CO calls. I’ve just paid 5 BB for a chance to win 101.5, with a bit of fold equity as well. If I miss the flop, I can probably take it down with a cbet, because I have initiative, but imagine the flop is K56r. The CO leads into me, I raise him, he shoves, I call, and get shown KQ. Hooray, the dream scenario for 56s. Now, imagine if I’d simply limped behind, paying 1 BB to win 101.5, letting the blinds in as well. Imagine our same rainbow flop, versus 3 players that could have a wide range of hands. The range of hands my opponents are going to the felt with here includes more stuff that crushes me – K5/6, and whole load more stuff that doesn’t stack off. Even if I pot it and get one caller on every street, I’m not winning anywhere near my desired 101.5BB.

In short, what I’m trying to say is that by isolating the limper with implied odds hands we’re either folding him out preflop, or narrowing his range such that he stacks of easily when behind, or folds easily when quite possibly ahead (his naked KQ being better than our naked 56s, etc).

Thoughts?

…and a couple of other points I forgot to mention – what about stealing when folded to in the small blind? How is your range different from the button here? On the one hand we can make it 4x (or whatever we want) with half a blind already paid, and we only need to fold out one player, yet on the other hand if we do get called we’re OOP with trash. Are you looser than OTB here, or tighter? My other thought was about when we’re in the BB, and everyone folds to the small blind who completes. My thinking is that this guy has a whole host of rubbish that wasn’t even worth raising me with when heads-up BvB, and occasionally aces. Here at least the guy liked his hand enough to put in half a blind, but if he does call we’re heads-up and IP against a hand that turned down 2 chances to raise. Do these factors make stealing the small blind from the big blind the loosest of the 3 stealing scenario’s? Is it basically any two cards against practically any player (until he proves to you that this strategy is a bad idea)?

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…and a couple of other points I forgot to mention – what about stealing when folded to in the small blind?
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The BB will eat you alive here. Position, position, position. The complement to the BTN dynamic is to play a very wide range against the SB in the BB. The three most profitable situations in (my opinion) NLHE: BTN vs blinds, BB vs SB, BTN vs CO. All 3 of these have direct position and naturally wide ranges in common. Hugely profitable when you have position.

Ed,

I used to think I had pretty wide range on the button in 6-max. I’ve been playing a lot of HU lately and have come to realize it just wasn’t as wide as I thought.

HU is a different dynamic in that you get a better price and there is only one random hand in the pot with you. But, I have been playing very profitably opening 98-100% of hands on the button. I think my attempt to steal from the button is probably something like 40% in 6-max. I certainly see some room for expansion there.

Digi,

Another advantage to raising trashy hands where you have good steal equity is it broadens your range to disguise your premium hands. If you only raised premium hands, opponents will start respecting your raises too much, and you’d just be getting the blinds with them.

Is there a way to use PokerTracker to sort out the following:

How often does both opponents fold pre-flop to my re-raise after one opponent has opened with a raise and one other opponent has called. That is, how often will a re-raise function as a successful squeeze play whether it was intended as such or not?

Are the results position dependent? That is, are my opponents more likely to fold to my re-raise if I am in a later position than them or if I am re-raising from one of the blinds?

I have a feeling I should probably re-raise more often as a pure squeeze, or at least count on a higher likelihood for a successful squeeze when re-raising with more marginal hands such as low pairs (or maybe even low suited Aces)…

Hi! the odd for 4-suited flush draw from flop till river is 4:1. When i read the professional NL Books, the odds given is about 2.7:1 by using percentage count. is my understanding with the book right?

Neosys,
No, it isn’t 4:1.