Another Pre Flop Question...

The game(s) I have been playing in seem to ALWAYS have at least 4 to 6 callers (limpers?)before the flop. Because the game seems so loose, do I need to change my strategy of playing tight? Also, it seems that there is also a couple of players who do not raise pre flop with KK - TT or AK - AJ suited. How do you try to READ these plays?


As always, thanks for ANY help you can give me!

i wouldn't exactly change my strategy of playing tight, but i would be more apt to gamble pre-flop in, say, middle (or maybe even early) position with drawing hands.

if you can be fairly certain that you won't get raised by players behind you, that's good info.


turn a couple "garbage" drawing hands into winners against KK and maybe they'll learn and start raising with it...for your sake, i hope they never learn!

Depends on exactly what you mean. My guess is that if you are having trouble pre flop you are playing too loose but think you play tight. If you are folding 66 or 77 UTG as you should do in many games unless you are a great player you should loosen up and play it. If you are playing K-To in early position or in late position with multi-way action you are playing too loose and need to tighten up. In the game you describe small pairs, suited connectors and A-Xs have value. KJ, A-J, Q-J, Q-T can be real problems. Sometimes you can get in cheap in a hand where there aren't too many callers, but you have to be careful with unsuited high cards in these games. You also will find yourself with top-pair no-kicker sometimes when you play your A-6s. You have to play delicately when that happens. (That does not mean passively, but the bomb can go off in your face with it.)


How I read players like you describe is to raise and bet w/ my JJ and they call the whole way w/KK on a nothing board. They slow-roll me and show me KK. Then I put them on KK. Nice read, huh? That's how I do it.

If your getting to many callers pre-flop, why don't you raise the limit? (if that's part of the problem). In my home game a while back we used to have far to much calling until we read up a bit and started to learn the value of our hands. education for your gamers could be an answer. once we learnt the value of our hands the bets got ALOT bigger, in fact now we often have the limit bet preflop with say one caller (on grade 1-2 hands) and one caller from one of our few loose/passive players.


Also introducing a player into your home poker game who plays very aggressively can help this, Tight aggressive play in the long run will get far less callers, so if your gamers know that if your betting (and your betting high) you mean business... if they are calling on unworthy hands then surely there just throwing money your way?


-anyway, goodluck, theres nothing like taking money off mates...


regards,


Jake.

We hjave discussion of this in HPFAP-21. How aggressive/passive a game is affects the number of hands that you play. How loose/tight a game is should affect the mix of hands that you play. However, when inexperienced players describe a game as loose they frequently mean loose/passive. If that's the case you can increase the number of hands that you play, but don't overdo it.


However, if some players constantly limp with big hands and then reraise if they get the chance, that should cause you to tighten up some since you won't be getting as good of implied odds as it seems.