[Wright Patterson]

Live 4/8 at a local club. Two seats to my right is an extremely passive, naive beginner who typically will call the flop and turn with absolute zip, but often fold a weak pair on the river if you bet at him; to my immediate left is a steamy loose raiser who ALWAYS pays off no matter what and who I feel I have an excellent read on.

I'm in early position, third in. The loose, naive beginner limps; so does the player after him, so it's two limpers to me. I see I have 75 of clubs. I also notice that my steamy friend on the left is loading up chips to raise, and I pause a second to think: my hand is cheese, but if I hit a good flop I'm absolutely sure of getting full value. Moreover I don't have to hope just for a straight or flush - given how loose this guy's raising standards are, and that I feel I can read him well, I have additional pair outs I wouldn't normally have, depending on whether I have a chance to manipulate things post-flop to get head-up with the raiser.

So I go ahead and limp and as expected, he raises. No one else calls so we go four way to the flop. To cut to the chase, I flop a double belly-buster, turn the straight, and my raise and river bet are both paid off by the steamer. He may already have been steaming, but now he's on full-blown tilt, muttering to himself about how loose I am to limp such a hand early, and to chase a "gutshot" on the flop (he doesn't understand the concept of a double-gutshot).

My question is, was there any value whatsoever to my extra-tricky limp - or was I fooling myself that the special situation justified it? How about the fact there was no guarantee that his raise would chase out enough players that I could get the potential to isolate on the flop that I was looking for?