I play 6-max, and the play tends to be very loose, varying from extremely passive most of the time to maniacally aggressive the rest of the time. I do see tighter tables occasionally, but they’re a rarity and I like to avoid them. In a nutshell, I’m either hammering at pots with my big pairs and big connectors, or I’m getting in cheap with smaller pairs or smaller connectors to try and flop a monster and win a big pot. I’m learning to outplay certain opponent profiles with postflop play, but in general keeping it simple and sticking to a very straightforward TAG style nets a nice profit.

Preflop, I’m almost always open raising or folding as opposed to limping. One could probably say never to open-limp in 6max, but I think there are times where it’s appropriate. I often find myself at very loose-passive tables, and limping under the gun with a small pair or even 9Ts and similar hands often induces a series of limps, creating a nice multiway-limped pot - perfect for small pairs and suited connectors.

In early position, I’m essentially raising only based on my hand strength; usually with a range of A9+, KQ+ and 88+ depending on what the table conditions are like.

Middle position changes things a little with the added element of having a raise before me. I’m usually only 3-betting a raise if I think my hand is best, or folding if I think it isn’t, but there are exceptions. My 3-betting ranges depend completely on the players I’m up against, but in general I’m sticking to big pairs and big aces when I see a raise ahead of me.

Again, if I’m sitting at a particularly loose-passive table where 3-6 players seeing a flop is the norm, I’ll often call an EP raise with suited connectors or a pair that I know isn’t good. People often note that implied odds are greatly diminished in fixed-limit as opposed to no-limit, but they’re still good enough to make up for being a 4:1 dog if you know your opponents will often call down with ace-high when you flop a set. The fish also tend to play their hands in such see-through manners that you can usually tell when they’re on unimproved overcards, and can extract some more money from them with your smaller pairs when you feel they’re best.

Late position is where I open up my raising ranges significantly and really use my position to my advantage. As I mentioned, players tend to play very straight-forward and it is really easy to read their hand ranges, so I really start to play around and stick in some bluffs when my opponents show some weakness. I’ve also practiced using the isolation play to better my chances of winning with hands like small pairs among other hands, but to be honest players are so loose that they’ll cold call 3 bets from the blinds with QT, A6 and other trashy hands, so it can get a little messy at times.

Playing from the blinds is where it gets a little tricky for me. Since late position hand ranges tend to be somewhat looser than those of other positions, calling ranges from the blinds should be looser too. No-limit differs greatly from limit in that your whole stack is at risk every single hand. If I see a late position raise from a player who I know my K9o is beating, I’ll often fold anyways because I don’t want to get involved in a pot in which I won’t be sure if I’ve got the best hand. There’s also an implied threat of having to face several very large bets in order to show a hand down. In FLHE, our K9 is almost always ahead of a late position raise, and we can often get a showdown for nothing more than a few bets. I’m learning the ins and outs of restealing vs the blind burglars, and really just having fun.

Lets look at an even more marginal example than the K9. I’m in the process of rereading Super System 2, specifically the fixed limit section by cutie-pie Jennifer Harman :). At one point she notes that folding a hand like T8 from the BB to a button raise is simply too weak. Let’s look at an example.

Folds to button.
Button raises.
Small Blind folds.
Big Blind (us) holds T8o.

At this point we’re looking at 3.5 small bets, and it’s costing us 1 small bet to see a flop. If we look at the numbers, we see something that at least I find pretty interesting. Getting 3.5:1 pot odds, we would need to be up against precisely a bigger pair (we would be a ~4:1 dog) to make a call wrong. Even then, we would probably be getting the implied odds to call since our opponent would no doubt pay us off if we hit 2 pair or better.

Add also the element of metagame by way of showing that we show our opponents that they can’t just bully our big blind every orbit, and it becomes a clear call.

Another tidbit is that with hands like AJ/AQ or some weaker middle pairs, I’ll often just call an EP raise from the blinds knowing that I probably can’t isolate the hand any further, and that I don’t want to further bloat the pot with a marginal hand out of position. It also adds some deception since most players would expect a 3-bet from AQ or 99. Not sure if this is correct of if I should be jamming these hands.

They say that limit holdem is a science and that no-limit is an art. FLHE more about pot odds, equities and all that good stuff - much more mathematical and mechanical than NLHE. While I love no-limit and the adrenaline-pumping play, something about the smaller-betting, more mechanical aspects of fixed-limit have left me pretty excited and I can’t wait to start moving up in stakes.

Next up is post-flop play where I’ll talk about what I’ve learned so far; raising for free cards, calling down, player styles and noting, bluffing too much - GRR! - and other goodies.