Limp-Reraise with AA/KK in EP

[soah]

I agree.

[FreakDaddy]

I'm saying this as a thoughtful recommendation (hopefully it comes off that way). I'd ask yourself what are you so scared of? This is purely psycholgical at this point. Everyone knows scared money = dead money. Is there some aspect of your game you're not confident in? Work on it. Play smaller stakes. I mean, if you're enjoying how you're playing, then go with it, have fun, but from your post it doesn't sound like you're having fun. You sound overly timid and scared.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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Here is a quick hand from last weekend playing 5-150.

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What is 5-150? Is this some sort of structure where the betting is capped or is this a misprint? What I'm curious about is the blinds, max or min buy in and so on.

~ Rick

[soah]

spread limit

[soah]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm saying this as a thoughtful recommendation (hopefully it comes off that way). I'd ask yourself what are you so scared of? This is purely psycholgical at this point. Everyone knows scared money = dead money. Is there some aspect of your game you're not confident in? Work on it. Play smaller stakes. I mean, if you're enjoying how you're playing, then go with it, have fun, but from your post it doesn't sound like you're having fun. You sound overly timid and scared.

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I'm scared of putting myself into -EV situations because I've forced my opponents to play more or less correctly against me. I would rather wait patiently for a chance to get my money in as a big favorite instead of when I don't know where I'm at in the hand.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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Okay, so now that I'm willing to raise with AA/KK in EP, shouldn't I add some other hands, too? If not, they'll always know where I am. So, I presume I should occasionally raise with AK/AQ? Since there are 32 ways to make AK/AQ and 12 ways to make AA/KK, I should be able to raise AK/AQ about 1/3 of the time to create the needed deception. Is it worth it to raise a hand like JTs or a small pocket pair about 10% of the time, or will this not help with deception and/or just get me into trouble? I could see how the small pocket pairs could show huge value but medium suited connectors might not.

[/ QUOTE ]

Once your opponents are starting to get a line on your tight play I'd raise the small to medium pocket pairs a fair amount (let's say 20% of the time) when your stack is deep (as are the stacks of your opponents). This protects your AK/AQ and overpair raises when the flop comes middle cards. You need to be able to bet the flop on quite a few of your misses, but here reading opponents is important.

Raising with decent suited connectors is OK too, but you will rarely hit the flop as hard as you will with a pair - here you want to have a decent chance of taking down the pot on your misses or flopped draws with a bet.

~ Rick

[Rick Nebiolo]

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people need to be less afraid of limp reraise gone wrong getting limped around. its not that bad.

its much better than raise to 5xbb, get called behind me 5 or 6 ways.

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Not sure I understand you. If your stack is let's say $700 in this game (sort of typical) and your limp reraise fails (the pot is six way for about $50) you need to be really careful postflop when all you have is an overpair. When you get postflop action it's often going to be action you don't like.

But let's say with $700 you either raise to $30 or $40 or limp reraise. If your raise gets called in five or six spots you aren't getting away from too many flops, the pot is too big (about $250) relative to your replaceable stack (in the Commerce game you can buy a max of $600 after going to the felt).

A limp reraise usually narrows the field more, but if you didn't push everything with the limp reraise you are usually pushing on the flop with your remaining chips.

Am I missing something?

~ Rick

[soah]

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Not sure I understand you. If your stack is let's say $700 in this game (sort of typical) and your limp reraise fails (the pot is six way for about $50) you need to be really careful postflop when all you have is an overpair. When you get postflop action it's often going to be action you don't like.

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Fold.

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But let's say with $700 you either raise to $30 or $40 or limp reraise. If your raise gets called in five or six spots you aren't getting away from too many flops, the pot is too big (about $250) relative to your replaceable stack (in the Commerce game you can buy a max of $600 after going to the felt).

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If you limp in and get outflopped you lose $10, or maybe $60 if you bet and fold to a raise. By raising preflop and refusing to let go of your hand, you lose $700 when you get outflopped.

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A limp reraise usually narrows the field more, but if you didn't push everything with the limp reraise you are usually pushing on the flop with your remaining chips.

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If you limp-reraise you are generally going to be putting in 20-30% of your stack preflop. No hand is correct to call you even if they get the rest of your stack 100% of the time that they outflop you. Your opponents will either correctly fold and let you take down a couple hundred dollars of dead money with no risk, or they will incorrectly chase without proper odds. You win either way.

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Am I missing something?

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Yes.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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spread limit

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Wow, that's some spread (I assume the BB is $5).

We don't see much spread limit here in LA. My only experience with it was in a 2-10 spread in Las Vegas around 1985.

It would seem that the spread of this magnitude serves as NL with a capped bet as opposed to a capped buy-in.

~ Rick

[bkholdem]

I just skimmed your post as well as soah's reply. While everyhing he says has merit I would like to offer an alternate persepctive.

I have been playing for 2-3 years, first limit then no limit. Until recently I played very tight. Not quite as tight as you (I routinely raised AK in ep) but probably very close to your level of tightness. I basiclly played all pairs and AK from all postions (unless the table was very agressive I would not play small pocktes from ep if I thought I would routinely face a raise and reraise by the time it got back to me). I played AXs and occasionally sc's from lp in limped pots. I limped AQ and AJ from all postions and folded them to a raise. VERY TIGHT. I have recently opened up my game considerably. The benefits of playing very tight are that you face few difficult decisions. The drawback is you don't maximize profits and don't learn to 'play poker'.

So my basic message is that you need to redefine the question. The question is how can you increase your profits playing no limit. limp reraising AA KK is but one of serveral ways that you should change your game to accomplish this.

Ideally you should be growing into a player who makes it very difficult for opponents to put you on a hand, while at the same time manipulating your opponents into revealing the strength of their hands, and narrowing their holdings.

I agree with soah's assessment that you are playing scared, at least that was true of me. I however think it is OK to step out of that mold gradually if that is your preferred method of approaching the improvment of your game.

Feel free to pm me with quesitions if you want.