Theory Discussion, 99 in early position

[Renton]

Please only respond to this if you have experience playing at least 1/2 stakes of full ring.

Folded to in early position (one of the first three positions), we have 99 and 100bb stacks at 2/4. The table is generally 100bb deep, and is a good mix of tags, bad regs, and donks. Overall a fairly std table.

What is the theoretical best play here, and please in detail explain why. Do you limp in or do you raise and if you raise, how many bbs?



I will give my version of the answer once some people have posted.

[BankItDrew]

Depends on a couple things.

First of all, my read on my opponents. When I'm playing online, I rarely have good reads on more than a couple of the other players at the table. This is due to the 12 tabling + no HUD, which many of you subscribe to. If I have too few reads, I'll limp 99 hoping to hit my set or take down a small pot on a friendly board. If my reads on the table are good, then I'll do the opposite and play the pair much more aggressively. Unlike AA, 99 is much more difficult of a hand to play postflop without reads.

Secondly, my decision is based on my image. Keep in mind, my reads trump my image. But if I have solid reads on my opponent + I have been more aggressive than average preflop, I'll raise 99 preflop when folded to in EP. Hell, I'll raise it from any position if no one has raised preflop yet.

[pokerfan]

yeah, i need serious help to play 77-99 in early position. I raise these hands from any positions when playing online but i like to limp in and go sethunting in live loose passive games. The problem is i ran into lots of aweful situations( one or two high cards flop or drawing board) very often when i missed my sets and gotta play medium strength hands oop. Lagg and TA float my cb and take down pots after pots from me in later streets like crazy. Anyways, we should be able to double barrel enough on safe board to exploit those weak floaters or c/r bluff them on the turn to mix it up and keep opponents guessing.

[Renton]

bump

[spoonitnow]

Open limping is something that I almost always consider to be a mistake since it seems so much easier to just open raise to the same amount with all of the hands you want to play when you're folded to. Following this line of thought, I think the easiest play is to open raise with 99 to whatever standard amount we always raise to.

With that having been said, I think that with proper balance it could be perfectly fine to open limp 99 with some frequency. It's a hand that doesn't do well against a 3-bet, but can still often call a raise and be profitable out of position. It's also a hand that fairs well multi-way, so we're not scared of being in a multi-way limped pot.

If we choose to open raise with 99 from early position instead of folding, then our bigger pairs increase in strength. We'll also get more value from top pair hands when we play with big aces. On the other hand, there aren't many hands that lose value because we choose to add 99 to our open raising range.

Now assume we choose to open limp with 99 from early position instead of folding. If we balance correctly, then it's likely that there will be stronger hands than 99 that we occasionally open limp with. The necessity for this balance has the potential to make us lose more value than it's worth from the times we open limp stronger hands.

I'd like to go a bit deeper than this on the topic but this is all of the time I have.

[Renton]

k, stop taking into account balancing and shit like that.

I wanna know, what is the most profitable play in a vacuum, assume you are unknown to anyone.

[BankItDrew]

I wanna know, what is the most profitable play in a vacuum, assume you are unknown to anyone.

limping

[spoonitnow]

I wanna know, what is the most profitable play in a vacuum, assume you are unknown to anyone.

limping

I'm not sure I agree. Enough people at 400nl will be able to sniff out your set when you hit since an open limp puts your range as being mostly low-mid pocket pairs (regardless of whether you are known), and this will hurt your profitability. Combined with the fact that we're going to be out of position the majority of the time, we have a decent case against limping. While at 25nl and below I would say limping is likely the most profitable since these two factors don't have as much of an impact, but with the table composition that Renton described at the stakes described, I don't think an open limp does it.

In a vacuum, I think a raise size that balances disguising our hand just a little with getting good stack-to-pot ratios is key with 99 here. This way we can still represent a wide enough range to make continuation bets work while having a pot big enough to justify them. Also, the profitability of our sets will still be nearly maximized as well. I would suspect the answer is between 2.5x and 3.5x the big blind, with a bit of a lean towards 2.5x-3x.

[XTR1000]

I didn´t read any reply yet.

I´ll raise 99 to 3.5 BB. I do this because

- I generally like to take the lead and hardly ever limp, playing limp-call would either turn my medium pp´s face up in EP or I´d be forced to limp-call med sc´s, high pockets and broadways as well on occassion. That´s not a good option.

- We can play 99 profitable OOP vs bad players and will take down a ton of pots vs fit-or-fold nitregs

[Seabass]

99 I make a standard raise with. These days I like to open 3bb on most tables.

99 hits well enough vs random opps, while 88 imo is more debatable.

[Renton]

Ok, I think its a limp and here's why (long post coming).

I feel that when we raise with 99 in early position, we are almost never successfully value betting worse postflop.

IMO here are the possible outcomes:

1. Raise 99, win blinds (good).
2. Raise, get reraised, fold (very bad).
3. Raise, get called, flop set (very good)
4. Raise, get called from blinds, don't flop set (decent, probably somewhat plus ev)
5. Raise, get called in position, don't flop set (the most common scenario is bad imo, here's why)

I feel like in this scenario people are generally never giving us much or any action with worse hands and we end up being in tough spots where we don't want to give a free card, but also don't know if our hand is strong enough to bet. This leads to doing a lot of small betting and messy check calling.


Whereas contrast the scenario with limping in:

-Its not a large "technical" mistake since every hand has pretty good equity against a medium pocket pair. We all know that the only preflop hands that have a landslide victory with equity are QQ+.

-We can profitably call any raise from virtually anyone. The flop is usually going to be a very profitable check call.

-We widen the ranges that we play against postflop, resulting in more value vs worse hands.

-99 plays great multiway.



Now I've already heard someone mention that raising 99 utg protects your big pairs. Well, why can't we just limp 99 and raise 98s and 87s? Won't that accomplish the same end? In fact the way I'm seeing it, limping medium pairs actually allows you to play more hands profitably from early position, since you can just auto open suited connectors now and everyone has to give you credit due to your pfr still being only around 10-11.

Also, and try to convince me otherwise, isn't raising 98s utg comparable if not more profitable than 99?

[Warpe]

...your argument being that when we're opening with scs we either hit the flop hard and continue or miss and c/f, without having to worry about trying to get to showdown cheaply with a mediocre hand? we're folding to a reraise, I'm assuming, whereas we're not with 99 if the stacks work and we're betsizing correctly.

I think your argument has a lot of merit, although I'm in the "it depends" camp b/c how the table is playing is a factor we can't ignore. Raise 99 on tight passive tables, limp it on loose aggro ones where a reraise is more likely/opps like to float. Or is that too simplistic?

[elipsesjeff]

You could do both. 50/50 raise/limp. just like you don't always raise 78s UTG you shouldn't always raise 99 either.

You could make an argument for not always raising KK-AA too.

[XTR1000]

Ok, I think its a limp and here's why (long post coming).

I feel that when we raise with 99 in early position, we are almost never successfully value betting worse postflop.

IMO here are the possible outcomes:

1. Raise 99, win blinds (good).
2. Raise, get reraised, fold (very bad).
3. Raise, get called, flop set (very good)
4. Raise, get called from blinds, don't flop set (decent, probably somewhat plus ev)
5. Raise, get called in position, don't flop set (the most common scenario is bad imo, here's why)

I feel like in this scenario people are generally never giving us much or any action with worse hands and we end up being in tough spots where we don't want to give a free card, but also don't know if our hand is strong enough to bet. This leads to doing a lot of small betting and messy check calling.


Whereas contrast the scenario with limping in:

-Its not a large "technical" mistake since every hand has pretty good equity against a medium pocket pair. We all know that the only preflop hands that have a landslide victory with equity are QQ+.

-We can profitably call any raise from virtually anyone. The flop is usually going to be a very profitable check call.

-We widen the ranges that we play against postflop, resulting in more value vs worse hands.

-99 plays great multiway.



Now I've already heard someone mention that raising 99 utg protects your big pairs. Well, why can't we just limp 99 and raise 98s and 87s? Won't that accomplish the same end? In fact the way I'm seeing it, limping medium pairs actually allows you to play more hands profitably from early position, since you can just auto open suited connectors now and everyone has to give you credit due to your pfr still being only around 10-11.

Also, and try to convince me otherwise, isn't raising 98s utg comparable if not more profitable than 99?

I get your point so far, but what makes 98s actually more attractive to play in EP?

- As Warpe said, we may call 99 somewhat thinly when getting 3bet, what sc´s can´t.
- Mid sc´s value comes mostly from LP aggression, semi-bluffs and floats, while 99 has some decent SD value vs a lot of ranges
- We don´t flop a draw heavy enough to play a big hand nearly as often as 99 flops a set/overpair
- If we catch a somewhat good flop, we´ll usually be looking at 6 to 9 outs and will have give up more equity to IP aggression than we would with 99
- A FD will have bad reverse implied odds

[Renton]

we're folding to a reraise, I'm assuming, whereas we're not with 99 if the stacks work and we're betsizing correctly.

meh, we're almost always folding to a reraise with 99 oop

[Renton]

You could do both. 50/50 raise/limp. just like you don't always raise 78s UTG you shouldn't always raise 99 either.

You could make an argument for not always raising KK-AA too.

if what im saying is true then we should almost always be limping with 99

[Warpe]

we're folding to a reraise, I'm assuming, whereas we're not with 99 if the stacks work and we're betsizing correctly.

meh, we're almost always folding to a reraise with 99 oop

If we're raising 2.5/3x I think this could be a leak, definitely so if we're deep. A 3-bettor is more likely to stack-off so our implied odds are juiced for sethunting, imo.

[Renton]

we're folding to a reraise, I'm assuming, whereas we're not with 99 if the stacks work and we're betsizing correctly.

meh, we're almost always folding to a reraise with 99 oop

If we're raising 2.5/3x I think this could be a leak, definitely so if we're deep. A 3-bettor is more likely to stack-off so our implied odds are juiced for sethunting, imo.

Yes there will be spots where we can call a reraise, but in general a good player in position is going to own us in that spot and we won't have enough implied odds.

[NLHE lahooozaher]

Ninjabumping this...

We limp 99 UTG, folds to c/o who's an aggressive preflop player who raises to 5bbs, and it folds back to us. How do we respond here? What about lower pairs?

[BankItDrew]

Ninjabumping this...

We limp 99 UTG, folds to c/o who's an aggressive preflop player who raises to 5bbs, and it folds back to us. How do we respond here? What about lower pairs?

aggressive player from the CO or Button raises and it gets folded to us? We raise.

[Renton]

Ninjabumping this...

We limp 99 UTG, folds to c/o who's an aggressive preflop player who raises to 5bbs, and it folds back to us. How do we respond here? What about lower pairs?

aggressive player from the CO or Button raises and it gets folded to us? We raise.

lol, what?

[Fnord]

Once you decide that limping a range of pairs is so much more +EV than raising after considering the value of balancing it with other hands then you MUST re-think your entire game plan from EP. Also, LRR sucks so much worse than R/4-bet 100+bb deep without extra dead money in the pot.

Online you're going to get attacked a lot if you limp from EP. You can't play set against someone raising you light because he won't stack off often enough. Also, enough people have hands in online full ring that absent tells and megadonks (keeping people honest) it's so much harder to figure out where you're at OOP.

Another thought is that I don't see EP as the place where there is a whole lot of value. Instead I aim for a defensive game plan that plays a few hands for profit and depend on my position play to take home the big money.

[Renton]

my current thoughts since i started this thread:

In early position in tough 9 handed games, limp/calling is probably optimal with 88-JJ and good suited broadways like KQs AQs etc.

However, if u have a limping game at all you need to limp with more hands than that for balancing reasons. You'll need to mix in limps with QQ+ AK and with some more marginal pairs. This will make your preflop game very complex, as your raising range will now be tighter, which will have postflop ramifications for that range.

So given that, I have decided that I never open limp, forgoing optimality for simplicity. Also the shania gained by your big pairs for opening a wider range utg isn't to be underestimated.

[Fnord]

/agree

I save the limping for when there are fish in the water. Also, I'm more inclined to play a limp range in a live game.

[BankItDrew]

Ninjabumping this...

We limp 99 UTG, folds to c/o who's an aggressive preflop player who raises to 5bbs, and it folds back to us. How do we respond here? What about lower pairs?

aggressive player from the CO or Button raises and it gets folded to us? We raise.

lol, what?

we have the best hand and are oop

[Renton]

so, what so u expect will be accomplished by limpreraising 99 that wouldn't just as easily work with 98o?

[BankItDrew]

so, what so u expect will be accomplished by limpreraising 99 that wouldn't just as easily work with 98o?

both work really well in this situation. i recommend both

[Renton]

you are wrong

[Renton]

and you didn't answer my question, which was what does limpreraising with 99 accomplish?

[BankItDrew]

First of all, you're first question was not "What does LRR 99 accomplish?"

so, what so u expect will be accomplished by limpreraising 99 that wouldn't just as easily work with 98o?

nothing.

If you are limping any two cards, everyone else folds to the C/O, the player there raises is known as an aggressive player preflop - a good move for us is to raise. Good aggressive players know when to jump ship, and what better time to provide that jump than when we LRR? Most of the time we are taking it down right there, with no difficult decision on later streets. Sure, other options include calling with our 99 or 89s, but then we are facing a cbet oop HU with hands that require implied odds. Villain might be aggressive preflop, but this gives us no reason to believe that we will get paid off when we hit the flop to make the call a profitable one.

You know, when you say things like "You are wrong" in regards to an opinion - you're actually hurting the thought process. Sort of like a stubborn scientist proclaiming that his theory is the only possible theory. I could understand your stance if I made a calculation error, but come on Renton!

[Renton]

Ok, here's why (in my opinion) you are wrong.

When you make an aggressive move with deep stacks, bet or raise, it can have one of a few purposes:

1. Value: You expect your bet/raise to get called by a worse hand a high percentage of the time.

2. Bluff: You expect your bet/raise to make better hand fold a profitable percentage of the time.

3. Semibluff: You expect your bet/raise to have high enough equity vs his calling range that given he folds a better hand a high enough percentage of the time, your aggressive action will be profitable/optimal.

4. To protect a vulnerable hand with shallow stacks.


Your limp-reraise with 99 isn't effective in any of these scenarios.

[wufwugy]

vs a good player l/rr doesn't work. i am up a ton in pots where i get l/rr.