Micro Stakes Online NL Poker Forums

Question:

What hands do we flat with IP (CO/BTN) in a 6-max game vs a good, tight villain open raising from UTG/MP? What is the reasoning behind this play, what makes it profitable?

Answer:

?????




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Please post your replies below. I will go through all of them and will be re-editing the above post to formulate a concise answer as to the reasoning behind this play (if there is any).

My understanding is:

Playing poker starts with fighting for the blinds. Open raising is profitable cause you a) have a chance of stealing the blinds b) can make money post flop especially that you have initive (which is important though I only understand it at a theoretical level).

But why calling vs a good player? When 100 blinds deep do we only call with pp and hands that have good hot/cold equity vs his range??? Calling with low suited connectors seems like a recipe for disaster... same with aces that are likely dominated. What do we call with and what do we want to achieve? Is there a mathematical rationale behind this play?

Vs a player whom we consier to be bad in one way or another I guess we call with any playable hand cause we have position.... So is it always a question of balancing card advantage, position advantage vs the comaparison of our skill level and the villain's?!

It depends on what position you are relative to UTG/MP raiser. While you did say you were IP is this a 6max/full ring table? What position are you? If villan raises UTG and you are UTG+1 on a full ring table, what you flat with is going to be much tighter compared to villan raising in MP when you're on the button. The question is so vague I don't think anyone can really give you a definitive answer.

hi KingKris,

I edited the post to include the information you mention.

Maybe indeed the question is a bit too vague but what I am most interested in is the thought process of a good player that leads them to calling and early position raiser in positon (specific hands to call with might change between 6-max, full ring, stack depth, but the thought process and things to look at is possibly the same).

Is there some math involved that makes calling IP with 97s correct when 250 bbs deep but not when you are 150 bbs deep? Or do we just play it by "feel" taking into consideration our skill advantage, position advantage and stack depth (a smart fella could profitably call 97s OTB vs a TAG raising UTG in a 100bb deep game, but I will be completely toast?!) ?

I am so dumbfounded as to how the good players make decisions in certain spots and the rationale behind them

There is math behind almost every poker decision.

To give you a simple example:

We are 100bb deep and we call (3bb) with 66 on the button and we flop a set 12% of the time. When we flop a set we win villains stack 20% of the time. After doing this 100 times we lose 88 times 3bb (264bb) and we win 12 times 20%*100bb (240bb). In this situation our result is -24bb (-264bb+240bb)

When we are 250bb deep our result will be +336bb ((88*-3bb)+(12*20%*250bb)).

A difference of 360bb!!!!!

Hope this explains a bit why we can play some hands when we are deeper. It has to do with the posibility we can make a winning hand compared to our reward.

It depends on alot of things, like:

- your position throughout the rest of the hand(absolute position),
- Look at the effective stacks if you want to choose profitably hands,
- (implied) odds against this opponent(are you going to get paid off alot?)
- Is it possible for me to steal the pot in a later stage due to my image/history/skill?
- what hand are you most likely going to flop if you hit.
- What is my preferable SPR when i make my hand?

Im sure there are many more reasons, im just naming a few to get things started

I hope this isn't sabotaging this thread too much but I was going to start a similar thread about when we are on the BTN and a villain that is for ex: 21/19 or even 32/30. Since there flatting range is so small, maybe just mid PP, big suited Broadways, that this is an open any two cards since its very unlikely he will flat? Just 3b/f...will this show a profit even if he is aggressive in the blinds? Assuming I fold to 3b and c/f flops when called.