Preflop continued

On limping

I never limp in shorthanded, and i reccomend never doing it if you're above 50NL. With every hand you want to play should be raised if no one else had raised, even weak holdings that you may be raising in position. The reason for this is you want to build a pot, for many reasons. The main two reasons are:
1. Build a pot so you can be more easily paid off with your big hands
2. Widen your raising range so it's harder to read your hand.
When you get to higher small stakes, people see right through the early limp call, it's usually a low pocket pair. They know you aren't going to limp or limp call a strong hand, and they will push you off your hand usually. It's hard enough playing out of position, don't make it harder by limp calling.

If 3 people limp to you on the button, that's a great place NOT to limp, but to raise. Because usually they will all fold and you'll pick up a decent pot, and if you do get a caller you can usually take it down with a cont bet.

However, at 50NL and below, it's ok to limp sometimes, especially if you raise isn't going to get you isolation (narrow the field down to one or two opponents). It's also ok to limp in low low stakes because you don't necessarily need to build a pot, because the fishieswill call your over bets and over pushes a lot of the time with bad hands.

On 3-betting

reraising a wide range preflop, also known as 3-betting light, has become a popular tactic recently. 3-betting light is a very complicated aspect of poker, and everyone has their own style. Reraising TT-AA, AQ-AK is almost a standard range lately.

Like i said, three betting light is complicated, there are many many many reasons for doing it. The most basic reason is so you can get AA and KK paid off more easily. The tighter your reraising range, the bigger your reraises should be. Other reasons for threebetting a wide range is if you don't feel the opponent handles it well, and you feel like you handle it better than them.

The most basic screwups by people when they get three-bet are:
1. Calling a 1/10 of your stack off with a PP, because against a light 3-bettor, you won't stack them when you hit your set very much.
2. Calling a wide range but folding the flop too much
3. raising loosely but folding to light three bets too much.
4. cold calling a 3-bet OOP with a weak holding and playing it badly postflop.

You can exploit these very easily, and it's pretty obvious how.

I'm sorry i felt like i did a poor job describing this but it was the best i could do right now.

On suited connectors

A lot of people know about the profitability of raising suited connectors in position, but another profitable way to play them is cold calling raises in position. You can do this with 2 or even 3 gap sc's profitably, given that you are aggressive and have good postflop skills. This is even more profitable in Full Ring according to my friend Lyric.

Raising them from the CO and button is almost a given for me, but it's just a preference. In a vaccum (on their own, without computing the extra value it gives other hands), even as a 17/14 TAGG, i feel that they are profitable.

OOP it's a little more complicated. If your going Headsup to the flop, you're going to need to bluff with them sometimes. If your pot odds are good and the pot is multiway, it's fine to call with them OOP.


Well, i felt like that todays blog was a lot less fun than the other one, but i hope it was helpful nonetheless!