Small Blind: Ranges

[Damien]

Okay, I'm reading and re-reading responses to some of the posts that I have recently made and I wanted to pose a follow up question. Here are two situations that occur when I am in the SB:

1) CO or Button limps in instead of attempting to steal. With what hands should I raise?

2) After a few players limp in, I complete. BB raises. With what hands should I call the raise?

It seems that in both cases, my range should be similar (PP, Axs, Kxs, A9+?). Just wondering if my thinking is on the right track here. If the ranges for these 2 scenarios should be different, how should they be different?

[the_hawk]

The range for (2) is clearly much wider than for (1) - if at least most of the limpers call, you probably then have odds to call with ATC.

[nsidestrate]

[Misunderstud]

[Damien]

Nside says: Assuming that no one else re-raises, you should never fold here. Not anything.

That's what I have always assumed, but then in my recent post where I called a couple limpers in SB with 54s, and then the BB raised, Janeg wrote:

[Misunderstud]

You can't really ask for arbitration when you receive conflicting advice, which you often will in borderline situations such as this. Jane has given her opinion, nside has given his - they're both yours to consider the merits of.

I'd still be interested to know nside's raising (as opposed to reraising) range in SB against a lone limper, though.

[Damien]

[nsidestrate]

I disagree with Jane's advise above. I'd have to see the actual link, but 54s is a hand that I would always want to play in that situation. As a rule, if I am in the pot and there is only one raise coming back to me, I would essentially never fold. However, I have a ton of respect for Jane's game, so there might have been more going on in that hand.

Also, as I see more hand examples that you post, I'm starting to give you advise that keeps you out of marginal situations post-flop. I think you have a tendency to get in some bad spots that you would have better off to have avoided pre-flop. Perhaps Jane was thinking about that hand in that way too.

That makes the question you asked about the SB more difficult to answer. Personally, I'm quite aggressive when a late position player open-limps. I'll raise probably about 60-70% of my hands. My default assumption is that a player who open-limps is usually too timid and usually plays bad. I'm normally going to attack them with anything remotely playable.

My sense is that I'd be comfortable urging Misunderstud to raise more hands in that situation too. In your case, I'm not so sure that you should try to emulate my approach yet. You will end up playing a lot of pots heads-up and out of position and will be in many spots where you might end up losing a lot of money post-flop. It also depends a lot of the other player. Any player who open-limps and is generally not very showdown-bound is a great candidate to raise. A player who is pretty sticky and likes to call down with Ace high or any piece of the board means that you have to dial down your aggression to hands with legitimate showdown value.

As a middle of the road position, I'd suggest 22+/Ax+/KXs+/K9+/QT+/JT/98s+ at a minimum. As you want to add hands, add Qxs, suited connectors, suited one gappers and eventually most any two suited cards. This is a rare spot where I don't have any problem with weak Aces. Virtually no one will open limp a middling Ace, so even A2 is a very good hand from the SB.

In general, players who open-limp from late position are bad players and I want to play more pots with bad players. However, you have to be careful about what their tendencies are. If they are bad calling stations, don't lose a bunch of bets posturing on a ten high bluff. If they are bad weak players who tend to fold, don't ever check to them. Also, watch out for "clever" players who open-limp with AA/KK because they don't want to "only win the blinds."

[nsidestrate]

By the way, the longer I play, the harder I find it to answer starting hands questions in a chart-like way. My standards are significantly adjustable in certain situations and this is an excellent example of it. There is a player in the middle limit games that I play who open-limps from MP3/CO whose post-flop play I respect quite a bit. I think he loses value with that approach, but I don't isolate him without a real hand because I respect his post-flop play well enough that I'm not keen to play a big pot OOP with 54s against him.

A similar situation arises when you are MP3/CO/Button and you face a single raise in front of you from a MP/LP player. The difference between the range I would 3bet against player X is so different than the range I would 3bet player Y that it is almost impossible to discuss.

[teknique]

[Misunderstud]

[nsidestrate]

[nsidestrate]

[Schlepper333]

Interesting thread. I am still a newbie to LH and I agree with what Nside stated about giving chart -like advice about hands. Still as a newbie I try to follow charts as a base. I figure when I get more hands under my belt I will know when to make exceptions. That said I stick pretty close to SSHM like a bear cub sticking to its Ma. From my s-n-g/MTT experience I learned to rarely enter the pot with a limp any time, but most especially LP. Yet in SSHM the chart has the player limping certain hands LP. When I played .02/.04 and .05/.10 entering first-in in HJ or CO was rare. Now that I am at the .10/.20 level it happens more frequently. So am I understanding that I should take those limping hands from SSHE and raise with them instead? Understand that I have no problem open raising LP. God knows I am use to it in NL, but I thought that perhaps the authors of SSHE had a reason for a LP limp. For those with copies of SSHE the charts are pp. 80-83.

Another thought occurs that maybe the state of the micro games have changed since SSHE and that open raising LP is the new wave.

Thanx for comments.

Schlepper

[nsidestrate]