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winky51
12-30-2004, 02:48 PM
At first party poker was bombarded by bluffers, so I adjusted.

Now its being bombarded by annoying limpers.

Many of you said they are making the wrong play and I agree but 90% of the hands I am in with a limper I am losing some serious money.

I look over my notes and I just can't see where their limp benifits me except on the off chance I hit a straight or flush in a hand I would have never been in on in the 1st place.

EXAMPLE: 1 limper EP, I have AJs in LP and I raise. Flop comes A 9 5 rainbow.

Check, I bet, he calls
Turn blank...
Check, I bet, he calls
River blank...
Check, I bet, he raises, I call. He shows AK.

His raise initially would have preveneted me from playing in the 1st place. Thus I lost tons of money. This happens over and over. Or they just call down.

Now the limp reraiser I can handle, it still sucks though.

In poker tracker I am losing loads of $$$ to these pricks. The only time I get them back is when I flop a monster and they call down.

But I don't think the occurances of the monsters make up the difference. example AA vs my KQs and I get a flush by the river.

Generally I find limping vs bad players a bad idea. I only lose money limping and slowplaying. Seems like my aggressive nature works against me vs the limpers.

Do the times I get the monster mathematically compenste against these people?

If I am more conservative betting to prevent losses against these players am I not actually losing money since they are still calling stations and most of the time they do NOT have a big hand they limped with?

HELP.

lu_hawk
12-30-2004, 02:52 PM
Good post. Very hard to win against these players.

Bob T.
12-30-2004, 03:03 PM
Online 10-20 game, MP limps, LP limps I complete in the SB with 62 suited, BB raises, all of us call.

Flop T 6 3 rainbow. I bet, BB raises, and everyone calls again.

Turn 2, I check, BB checks, MP bets, LP raises, I decided to play, and three bet, BB folds, MP calls, LP calls.

River 2, I bet, MP calls, LP calls.

MP shows KK, LP shows ATsuited.

Damn those limpers.

bozlax
12-30-2004, 03:54 PM
"Damn those limpers?" Are you being sarcastic? You won with 2s full of 6s, right?

This brings up the other side of the argument, though. You won the hand, 20BB, with a hand you shouldn't have been in with in the first place! MP was slow-playing (probably not the best idea, but not a bad one), and you were calling raises, first with low-suited-3-gap, then with second-pair-no-kicker, then with low-two-pair (probably your only play that made ANY sense, and even that doesn't make much).

donger
12-30-2004, 03:57 PM
I usually try to avoid games with lots of preflop limping and bad postflop play. They are terrible for your bottom line!

billyjex
12-30-2004, 03:57 PM
While, yes, this is frustrating and has happened to me by the very passive players, as Bob T. showed, you can make this profitable yourself. Since they don't raise you are able to limp more yourself w/ small pockets, suited connectors and suited aces. Make THEM pay for limping.

Gravy (Gravy Smoothie)
12-30-2004, 03:59 PM
The thing with loose-passives: you lose less against them than you should when they have hands that beat you, but it is frustrating to lose hands to them because they have given you no reason to believe you wouldn't win.

Once you can get past the tilt-inducing nature of their play, you can't find better opponents for your bottom line.

Bob T.
12-30-2004, 04:07 PM
Yes I was being sarcastic.

I'm not sure I like the second call preflop, but playing any two suited for 7 to 1, doesn't seem like a big mistake.

On the flop, I thought that the aggressive BB might raise with overcards, and eliminate the other two players. He probably did, but they had too much hand to be eliminated. Getting 15 to 1, I thought that calling with 5 potential outs was reasonable.

The turn play is the toughest, because my two opponents play on the turn is consistant with a set, but when they just called my threebet, I was fairly confident that they were on one pair each. It just seemed like a threebet was the best way to continue, if I was going to play.

The river was straightforward, although I thought about checking, and going for a checkraise, as if I was worried that the board pairing counterfeited my two pair. But I thought that I might get raised anyway if someone had an overpair.

But, if either the KK hand, or the ATs hand raise preflop, plays that I would make all of the time, I would never have seen the flop. The point was, that the limpers let the blinds play for a discount, and sometimes that costs them.

Tosh
12-30-2004, 04:26 PM
[ QUOTE ]
Online 10-20 game, MP limps, LP limps I complete in the SB with 62 suited, BB raises, all of us call.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm Bob really?

AviD
12-30-2004, 04:29 PM
Now that's picky, unless I am missing your meaning.

pudley4
12-30-2004, 04:39 PM
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Online 10-20 game, MP limps, LP limps I complete in the SB with 62 suited, BB raises, all of us call.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm Bob really?

[/ QUOTE ]
You're about 8:1 against flopping a flush draw and you're getting 7:1. Add in the times you flop a pair, 2 pair, trips, a gutshot, or other draws plus the fact that you're closing the action plus the fact that your relative position to the preflop raiser means you'll be acting last on the flop (which is very very helpful when you're looking at flopping a weak hand/draw) and it's a pretty easy call.

pudley4
12-30-2004, 04:40 PM
[ QUOTE ]
"Damn those limpers?" Are you being sarcastic? You won with 2s full of 6s, right?

This brings up the other side of the argument, though. You won the hand, 20BB, with a hand you shouldn't have been in with in the first place! MP was slow-playing (probably not the best idea, but not a bad one), and you were calling raises, first with low-suited-3-gap, then with second-pair-no-kicker, then with low-two-pair (probably your only play that made ANY sense, and even that doesn't make much).

[/ QUOTE ]

Bob was sarcastic.

Your analysis is wrong. See my and Bob's later posts for explanations.

Gatts
12-30-2004, 04:43 PM
PokerTracker has a nice feature that tells you how much you won/lost against a certain person. Against someone you described, I lost the most money against, but I also won the most money against. We played many pots heads up due to the nature of the table, and while I won only a few more pots from him than he did from me, I punished him when he had the inferior hand and gained much more than I lost.

These types of players may cost you money in some of the example you cited, but these are typically the players that will call you down with drivel and pay off your raises.

StellarWind
12-30-2004, 04:46 PM
The answer to your question is counterintuitive.

An idealized calling station is virtually the worst player possible. You save a fortune when he doesn't push a good hand and make another fortune off his calls with weak hands.

We can make a lot of money just by playing our normal, mathematically-sound game against him. But we make even more by tailoring our play to his weaknesses. That means vicious value-betting, avoiding bluffs, and running for our lives when he finally shows strength. These plays are mathematically unsound in the sense that they lose money against people who play correctly. Too much value-betting of the second-best hand, too little bluffing to keep them honest, and too many folds when our opponent is bluffing. But they work just fine against the calling station.

The upside to being an awful player is it is really easy to improve.

1. Calling stations who occasionally bluff do better. Their bluffs are extremely profitable because their value bets have excess credibility. You can't stop this because your play is optimized to exploit their failure to value-bet marginal hands. Unless you want to give up all of your excess profits from folding marginal hands when they show strength, you just have to tolerate a ripoff now and then. You are still way ahead. Just not as far as you used to be.

2. Turning to our topic, slowplaying is also a very profitable tactic for calling stations. They call way too much and pay a horrible price. We make it even more expensive with our excessive value betting. Slipping an occasional strong hand in with the clunkers (preflop or postflop) is going to make them some money. Nowhere near as much money as they lose with their constant calling, but they get something.

Just as in the bluffing case, there is nothing you can do. You have to tolerate the occasional trap as the price of doing business. It would cost you much more to "shape up" and stop exploiting them with trashy value bets.

In short, there is nothing particularly wrong with these limps which is why you suffer. If I watched JoeCS play 70% VP$IP and 0.2 AF all day while a bunch of TAGs shredded him and then secretly sat in his seat for one hand, I would probably limp Big Slick UTG too. Tight/passive with bluffs is the ideal style for exploiting TAGs who mistakenly think their opponent is a calling station.

Kirg
12-30-2004, 04:52 PM
I look over my notes and I just can't see where their limp benifits me except on the off chance I hit a straight or flush in a hand I would have never been in on in the 1st place.

That's because the $$ you make from these limpers isn't something you "can" pinpoint in any handhistory because it's a small subtle earn that just compounds into big numbers when you add all your hands up.

Every time you see a limper and they fold on the flop or turn in a heartbeat that was the easiest money you ever made...pure dead money.

That's all limpers provide, lots and lots of dead money which will almost never show up in a singled out hand history, it's only noticable over the long run. Look at your BB/100 and realize that's the only place you'll see the positive effect of these limpers...they're accountable for a nice big % of that winrate /images/graemlins/cool.gif

Tosh
12-30-2004, 07:14 PM
[ QUOTE ]
You're about 8:1 against flopping a flush draw and you're getting 7:1. Add in the times you flop a pair, 2 pair, trips, a gutshot, or other draws plus the fact that you're closing the action plus the fact that your relative position to the preflop raiser means you'll be acting last on the flop (which is very very helpful when you're looking at flopping a weak hand/draw) and it's a pretty easy call.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is not an easy call. It seems rather dubious, it looks less bad when analysed, but is still a fold. I think Bob actually alluded to that anyway in a post I didn't see till I had posted.