I was just in a hand where everyone limped to me on the button with T9s. In this situation with T9s playing so well multi-way, should I raise this hand? I limped, but I thought it'd be a good discussion on what to do. After all that discussion about raising ATs UTG I wanna hear thoughts on T9s OTB in a family pot.

Define "everyone" - was this a 9 or 10 person and the 6 or 7 in front of you all limped? Or was there 8 people and 3/5 limped in front?

If it was 9 or 10, and 4 or more limped before you, I don't mind a raise at all. I think your equity is OK against a bunch of limpers, you take control of the hand (at least a little), there's a small chance of getting the blinds to fold the lower end of their range, plus you're mixing it up a little.

On a passive table this can even be a free card raise, which is nice if you don't get much of a flop. But if you do hit a nice draw on the flop, you can jam with that many people in the hand, and it's going to be hard for them to put you on a draw with a T9 because of your PFR.

I agree with Frez, with 4 or more limpers I would raise. Thats probably my cutoff. Id also raise all PP here and lots of decent suited hands.

I mean literally everyone in front of the button limped to me (10 handed game). Family pot assuming the blinds stay in.

Ya baby!

whoa whoa whoa. hold on a second. discussion about raising ace ten suited utg?

you guys actually had a discussion about that?

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lets say you have five limpers in front of you and you're the button or co. what is your raising range?

hpfap says not to raise hands like aqo in this spot. i am skeptical of that advice.

hpfap sucks apparently

AQo has an equity edge. I'm assuming HPFAP assumes we suck balls postflop and don't know how to maximize/minimize wins/losses.

i am rereading the book right now. i have decided that either the games are drastically different now than they were then, the advice in the book is just generally bad, or it outlines a solid winning strategy that is just very different from the way most winning players play lhe.

fwiw sklansky has retracted some of the things where he doesn't push preflop edges as hard as you could.

I think it's mostly that the game has changed, and will continue to change. That's probably the biggest reason why I don't live and die by poker books. I read SSHE back in the day, but it's one of the only poker books I've read in it's entirety. I have read maybe a handful of chapters from HPFAP, and only a few chapters in Stox's book.

I own most of the books, but they're mostly for show on my dresser, lol.

I figured out recently, that in order to beat poker for life, you need to forget about what the books teach. They limit your potential, although they are still a great starting point for players new to a certain game, etc, but the game conditions are so fluid. A winning player for life will learn to read games, figure out the soft spots, and learn to exploit people's mistakes, rather than playing one certain style.

i mostly agree. however, i purchase and read almost every significant poker book written even if its about games i don't play. i feel that a failure to do so creates a knowledge gap between you and the players who do read the books.


btw what you said is huge and something most people miss. to win a lot of money at poker you have to be a hustler. you can't just get good at a game and play play play. you have to move around, find soft spots, and attack. what is a great game at a certain site one month might suck two months from now and you need to find another spot to attack. this tends to be cyclic. once a game sucks the good players slowly go away and the game starts to get great again.

if you approach playing this way you will make a lot more than people who are a lot better than you but insist on banging heads with a bunch of players that they are not much better than.

raising here is the same reason you would 3 bet the AJs in the other thread.
you have an equity edge. you should win more than 1 time in 10 (or 9, whatever)
so raising here is definately profitable in the long run.
plus, it might buy you a free card or two along the way, depending on how passive the table is (and it sure seems to be)