Iso-raising on a super-aggressive (pf) table

[DavidC]

I play at a game where, on a good night, there's a ton of raising preflop (with garbage). Certain players will 3-bet in the BB with nothing, just to build a big pot, or a limper might say, "What the hell..." and raise to build a big pot. If a pot is 3-bets, it's rare that it won't be capped. Most of the time, someone caps it out of turn and everyone that's playing just throws in 4-bets.

There's also live-straddles (a player posts a blind when utg of twice the big blind, and this reserves their right to act later in the hand (where normally they will raise again, blind). People are allowed to re-stradle, and re-restradle, all the way around the table, I think. I've only ever seen 3 straddles in a row, though.

The neat thing about this game is that, unlike other games, the cap on the betting is "3 raises". It's a 5-10 game with a cap of $20 pf, but if there's two straddles, the cap becomes $30 pf. Kinda neat. Awesome game. Anyways...

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At a typical party 0.5/1, I'll raise with JTs on the button vs 4 limpers. Is this a good thing? I'm still reviewing SSHE PF section, slowly, so I'm not 100% sure, but it seems good, so I do it.

At this game, though, given the button in the same game, should I be raising, or should I attempt to limp in before starting to build a pot?

--Dave.

[JKDStudent]

How many people to the flop? How much does the aggression continue post-flop?

[MrWookie47]

My first inclination was to say limp, on the justification that your equity was going to change dramatically on the flop. You want to see the flop cheaply, and you'd rather not give the limpers a chance to reevaluate and 3bet/cap. Stoving it up, however, shows you've got about an 8% edge against 4 random hands, which isn't as slight as I thought it was going to be. That said, there are a lot of flops you're going to have to fold, or at least would like to fold if the pot wasn't ridiculous enough to justify drawing to runner-runner trips. I think I'll vote for limping in this situation, waiting to push a bigger edge on the flop. Raising can be good if you won't get 3-bet, but I think at that point, the return on JTs is getting small compared to your initial investment.

[DavidC]

Whoops. I meant "position raising" or whatever... even "value raising with speculative hands".

My mistake.

[DavidC]

[ QUOTE ]
How many people to the flop? How much does the aggression continue post-flop?

[/ QUOTE ]

Just depends who's in the game. Sometimes it can get pretty aggressive, depending on what players are in the flop and what their positions are in the hand.

It can get REALLY aggressive post-flop sometimes, but also is sometimes just like a normal party 0.5/1 with the exception of the preflop aggression.

How would this affect your decision with JTs?

--Dave.

[Rah]

I wouldn't enjoy playing JTs against an overaggressive field of maniacs. It's a nice hand against a loose/passive field, but your implied odds are ruined when forced to pay a lot preflop. It seems like you can't manipulate the opponents into giving you free cards etc, so even if you do flop a nice draw, you'll have to pay a lot to make your hand.

I guess it would be valuable to have a nice draw if there are 6+ players postflop, giving you a huge equity, but since they are crazy, it becomes a mathematical problem. I'd say slight EV+, high variance.