Circumstances have conspired to keep me from playing much poker this year, but I'm trying to get back on the proverbial horse. I deposited tonight and have been playing pretty well at .5/1, trying to get my sealegs and maybe rebuild a small bankroll for myself.

I've been away from the game for a while...especially online...and I'm sure it's changed, so this spot has me somewhat flummoxed.

Decent table, probably about 3-4 players to the average flop, not a ton of raising pre-flop.

It folds around to the hijack (a loose, pretty poor player...I'd seen him call somebody down with a gutshot in a headsup pot earlier). He limps in and it folds to me on the button with 55. What's my best action here? I think I can make an argument for all three options.

Reads/stats on the blinds? I think this is the most important thing; much more important than the read on the limper.

I don't think an good argument can be made for calling here, though. I'm generally raising this.

I didn't have any stats software up and sadly, I didn't have much of a read on the blinds either, so that can't help me much. Are you thinking that this is fairly read-dependent?

I'm raising this always. If I'm wrong, someone please show me why.

In a loose game with a limper I might fold this sometimes, if I think I'm going to get action both the blinds as I generally would at this level, because 55 is tough to play against the world, but that might be a mistake.

i agree. if the blinds are loose, you just built a big multiway pot to set mine in. if the blinds are tight then you just go HU against a limper with a hand that has showdown value. 55 has poor visibility postflop, but if the limper is loose and passive like you say he is you should be able to either take him to value town or dump it if he gets ahead.

I think you need either some showdown/fold value or better than 3:1, unless the players are just heinously, heinously awful.

Thinking about it, though, you probably do and they probably are.

We raise, everyone calls, flop comes J-9-6, checked to us. Do we bet?

everybody as in the co, the blinds, and the limper?

don't bet.

Just the hi-jack-limper and the blinds.

thats probably close. j96 is the sort of flop that hits almost every hand at least a little. it might just depend what kind of mood im in, and i would lean towards checking.

I think that's a mistake.. if the blinds are going to call anyway, surely you have enough implied odds to at the very least call. I'd raise almost no matter what, because you'll be able to take many free cards in position

You should always go all-in without to see teh floop

Sigh.

I cant think of a situation where folding preflop would be good?

Raising and calling are a bit closer, though I generally raise it.

Without any stats to go by, I would tend to want to check this flop.

I agree with the rest here. If the blinds are loose I'd just call, but generally I would raise here to get it heads up. A small pp plays better heads up. Against two unknown blinds I would raise. I would never fold this hand.

only if you raise, blinds and HJ call and you get a flop that hits a lot of mediocre hands.

i agree if the blinds are tight we raise, but if theyre not this hand is easier to play by limping.

if the flop checks around we bet. obv if we set up we bet, and if we dont and someone in front bets, we fold.

"so what if we bet the flop and get a caller?"
that depends on your read. usually im hoping for a cheap showdown.
theres not much use in raising pre hoping to get free cards down the road, as there's not many boards we want to take free cards on with 55.
the free showdown is good, but raising pre doesnt usually help accomplish that.

actually this wouldnt be a horrible fold, as were not getting good odds to set mine, and we have no idea where we are on a ton of flops, and we're not far ahead % wise against 2 or 3 hands. the only thing i really like about this hand is our position.

do i sound like im really rusty? i havent played much in several months

Ooooh. No. Don't fold please. That's a pretty bad option.

As far as rusty, I'm not sure, but you sound toooooo tight imo.

maybe not so much rusty as the game average game texture online is constantly changing.

youre getting 2.5-1 on a 7.5-1 shot. you really making up 5 bets on a table this tight often enough to justify it? i doubt it.

true you dont always need to hit to win, but not hitting puts you in some difficult positions post flop.

This part is poor thinking. We absolutely do not need to hit a set to win this pot. In your very next sentence you comment on the tightness of the table. This means that we will nearly always be in a 3 way or HU pot with the betting lead. We really won't be in difficult spots very often. There will be a ton of boards we can c-bet and take down, a lot that we can c-bet/fold, and a lot we can get to a showdown profitably on. Basically what I'm saying is we will win this pot a toooooon more of the time than just those where we flop a set.

Playing marginal hands does not necessarily mean we will have to make a ton of difficult decisions. And even if it does, difficult decisions can often be the ones where we gain a big edge. Often times, the most profitable way to play a hand will not be the easiest way. Understand that and move on with that knowledge.

I am pretty certain that folding here is a bad decision, but if you want to do some real analysis, put the limper on a range, and put the blinds on 3 betting/calling ranges and we will go from there.

i'm raising this, too. calling<folding, but both are way worse than raising, imo.

after quickly skimming replies:

dutch:

i'm betting a J96 flop in position and seeing what happens. if we only get called in one spot, i'm betting and free showdowning that mofo. if i'm called in multiple spots, i prob give that shit up.


rise or fall:

your post is a little self-contradictory. if you think we're going to have to make a set to win, then the players involved are likely loose enough to where we're going to get paid enough to make getting involved profitably. if you don't think that we can make enough postflop if we make a set, then the others are likely tight enough to where we won't need to make a set to win this hand anywhere close to all of the time.


dink:

i don't think that range analysis is really that helpful here, tbh. i think that leaving it at what i said in response to RoF is probably enough--preflop, especially, i don't think that it's a great idea to complicate things any more than absolutely necessary. postflop is another story, but yeah...

i think raising is the best option, i just dont think folding is as bad as everyone says it is.

i think folding is better than just calling for several reasons, though.
just limping along doesn't gain us the betting lead.
we let in atleast 1 and often 2 other hands against us, which means we wont win the pot a tooooon more without flopping a set.

actually, playing marginal hands will mostly put you in difficult spots post flop, thats part of what makes them marginal hands.
how do difficult decisions gain us a big edge? experience wise maybe, but i dont understand that comment.

Just because a decision is difficult doesn't always mean it's close. It probably just means we haven't made enough of an effort to understand it. When we solve those difficult decisions that most people don't understand, we gain an edge in all of those spots in the future. Sometimes the difference in EV for making one decision over another in some of these "difficult" spots is massive. The whole point was essentially not to shy away from decisions that make play a little less clear cut if those plays have a significant or potentially significant difference in EV. It's just lazy poker to do so.

I just want you to understand that there's a pretty significant difference in EV between raising and folding in this spot. And that means that folding IS a bad option here.

It's only wrong when we aren't folding the blinds much of the time when we raise. It really depends on how loosely the blinds defend, so we would need a read. The hijack's probably coming along.

We have no fold equity at the micro level postflop, even if this table is tightish, so we can't say we're doing this to project strength. If they hit the flop, they're not going anywhere anyway.

really? say we're up against three overcards from the BB and the limper: we're 34% equity putting in 33% of the money

1,370,754 games 0.047 secs 29,164,978 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 34.589% 34.49% 00.10% 472808 1320.67 { 5d5h }
Hand 1: 37.509% 37.41% 00.10% 512831 1320.67 { JsTc }
Hand 2: 27.902% 27.81% 00.10% 381153 1320.67 { Ah3h }


against 4 overcards (more likely) we're 30% equity putting in 33% of the money

1,370,754 games 0.005 secs 274,150,800 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 30.500% 30.42% 00.08% 416954 1125.67 { 5d5h }
Hand 1: 36.668% 36.59% 00.08% 501506 1125.67 { JsTc }
Hand 2: 32.832% 32.75% 00.08% 448917 1125.67 { Ah7h }




if the blinds are tight we can obv. change this, but if we think we're going to the flop atleast 3 handed, its not as close as you think.

Ok, I'm glad you did this much work here, but this isn't terribly relevant to the argument of raising vs. calling and certainly doesn't call for folding. Even if we are always vs. the types of hands you're putting in here, we have position, solid equity, positive implied odds, and the initiative. Your study shows only the situations when we are 3 handed. Not only that, but you gave the opponents specific hands instead of ranges. If you are to come up with a low limit player's limping range and blind defense range, you need to put in a lot of hands that have faaaaar less equity than the ones you gave them.


If we just call we will have a much harder time realizing the full equity of our hand than if we raised. As for the idea of fold equity, someone said that nobody would fold the times they hit the flop, but that's not all that fold equity entails. If we see a flop and bet, our opponents are going to fold flopped 6 outers much more often if we raise preflop than if we call. They are going to fold some hands like turned 10 outers and things like that. They are going to have far fewer outs vs. our perceived range than our actual hand.

Poker in general isn't a game of our hand vs. theirs, it's a game of ranges. When we limp preflop, we're representing a range that's much narrower and weaker than if we raised. Even our least sophisticated opponents are going to recognize this. When we raise, it puts a lot of hands into our range that will elicit more folds than if we limp. Make no mistake about it, even some of the time when we have the best hand, we want folds. We want people to make incorrect folds the times when we represent a range that is stronger than our actual hand.

If you think calling makes our hand play better than raising, I think you're crazy, but pleeeeaaase don't fold.

I haven't read replies to this thread.
But I am surprised to notice so much debating.

If we know how to play good poker, then we need to maximize our good hands in position.
We have the bst possible position, and very likely the best hand of anyone involved.
And we have seen no aggression yet.

I can't see any reason to consider any play other than raising.
Every single time.

The conversation would be debatable only if the poor villain raised preflop before it got to us.
But we'll leave that for another time.

Raise it up please.

--CM

thats youre answer to everything