Four Dogs
Legend
Silver Level
It's been a while since I started a pure strategy thread, years really, and this is a topic that's been on my mind as a potential candidate for quite some time. I'm sitting in a really cool coffee shop in downtown Chicago and thinking and writing about poker is a great diversion on a rare day off.
There's a certain situation that I seem to come across live than online but to be honest I haven't played on-line in ages so my memory might be a little off, but I do have a few on-line hands to support my logic as well as a live hand that's fresh in my mind as it happened just a few night ago at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond IN and is primarily the reason I'm writing this now.
The situation I'm referring to is kind of a weird kind of squeeze play, but unlike a traditional squeeze the aggressor has already passed on a chance to raise from the field but chose instead to limp. When it gets back to them they shove, all-in usually with a short or shortish stack. This line has always seemed extremely fishy to me. I can't imagine that it's +EV but I guess it works often enough against inexperienced players to keep them coming back for more. The Horseshoe hand is a textbook example of this.
In this particular $1/$2 hand there were 2 MP limpers and I made it $10 on the button with KTo, a little thin maybe but profitable in a game where limpers will generally fold to any CBet unless they connect with the flop. To my dismay both the blinds called as did the opening limper so my plan was to just check the flop with anything less than top pair. To may surprise the original field limper shoved all-in for $108. The villain in this hand was a young 20ish guy with a skull cap who had bought in several times already, mostly from being picked off on ill advised bluffs.
So you might think I should fold here, and I'm willing to discuss the merits of doing just that but IMO there was more than enough reason to stay in least of all his loose aggressive image. There is $148 in the pot, it's $98 to me so I'm getting 1.5:1 direct with little risk of facing a reraise from one of the other limpers. On the face of it, it's not nearly enough to call with the hands he's representing, KK-AA, maybe AK, but the problem with his line is that he will almost never have those those hands. In fact I can almost exclude them entirely from his range.
Sure, you see people open limp with AA or KK sometimes hoping to checkraise a LP raiser ,and it's a pretty fish play even then, but nobody ever limps behind with those hands, and especially not LAGs, and for good reason, it just encourages additional limpers and nobody wants to play a premium hand multi-way and OOP. There's alot of money in the pot and they think they're squeezing but aren't savy enough to realize that by limping behind they've removed all the hands from their range where squeezing makes sense. Also unlike a normal squeeze, the bet is almost always a short stack all-in. They never have the courage to risk much on this play and think that the large 3 bet will just scare everyone away. At the lower stakes where nobody hand reads they may have a point but any experienced player should be able to see right through this and call with any reasonable hand.
I wasn't able to find many hands from my database where this exact situation applied but when I did with one exception the villain always had junk 82s, 54s, J2o, a short stack and a VPIP over 50. The one exception was a 11/7 nit with JJ and 12bb's. Nits always panic with Jacks.
Oh, as for the Horseshoe hand? I didn't snap call, I worked it out first but of course I made the call. The board ran came Axx9Q and he showed QTo for a rivered pair not that it matters. I think a lot of inexperienced players would have just folded because they have a relatively weak hand, it's a lot of money and he must have it, but that would have been a mistake. Bad beats can sting but after I shook off the frustration I did give myself a little pat on the back for a good call. Sometimes that's all that you have.
There's a certain situation that I seem to come across live than online but to be honest I haven't played on-line in ages so my memory might be a little off, but I do have a few on-line hands to support my logic as well as a live hand that's fresh in my mind as it happened just a few night ago at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond IN and is primarily the reason I'm writing this now.
The situation I'm referring to is kind of a weird kind of squeeze play, but unlike a traditional squeeze the aggressor has already passed on a chance to raise from the field but chose instead to limp. When it gets back to them they shove, all-in usually with a short or shortish stack. This line has always seemed extremely fishy to me. I can't imagine that it's +EV but I guess it works often enough against inexperienced players to keep them coming back for more. The Horseshoe hand is a textbook example of this.
In this particular $1/$2 hand there were 2 MP limpers and I made it $10 on the button with KTo, a little thin maybe but profitable in a game where limpers will generally fold to any CBet unless they connect with the flop. To my dismay both the blinds called as did the opening limper so my plan was to just check the flop with anything less than top pair. To may surprise the original field limper shoved all-in for $108. The villain in this hand was a young 20ish guy with a skull cap who had bought in several times already, mostly from being picked off on ill advised bluffs.
So you might think I should fold here, and I'm willing to discuss the merits of doing just that but IMO there was more than enough reason to stay in least of all his loose aggressive image. There is $148 in the pot, it's $98 to me so I'm getting 1.5:1 direct with little risk of facing a reraise from one of the other limpers. On the face of it, it's not nearly enough to call with the hands he's representing, KK-AA, maybe AK, but the problem with his line is that he will almost never have those those hands. In fact I can almost exclude them entirely from his range.
Sure, you see people open limp with AA or KK sometimes hoping to checkraise a LP raiser ,and it's a pretty fish play even then, but nobody ever limps behind with those hands, and especially not LAGs, and for good reason, it just encourages additional limpers and nobody wants to play a premium hand multi-way and OOP. There's alot of money in the pot and they think they're squeezing but aren't savy enough to realize that by limping behind they've removed all the hands from their range where squeezing makes sense. Also unlike a normal squeeze, the bet is almost always a short stack all-in. They never have the courage to risk much on this play and think that the large 3 bet will just scare everyone away. At the lower stakes where nobody hand reads they may have a point but any experienced player should be able to see right through this and call with any reasonable hand.
I wasn't able to find many hands from my database where this exact situation applied but when I did with one exception the villain always had junk 82s, 54s, J2o, a short stack and a VPIP over 50. The one exception was a 11/7 nit with JJ and 12bb's. Nits always panic with Jacks.
Oh, as for the Horseshoe hand? I didn't snap call, I worked it out first but of course I made the call. The board ran came Axx9Q and he showed QTo for a rivered pair not that it matters. I think a lot of inexperienced players would have just folded because they have a relatively weak hand, it's a lot of money and he must have it, but that would have been a mistake. Bad beats can sting but after I shook off the frustration I did give myself a little pat on the back for a good call. Sometimes that's all that you have.