ITH Poker Forum

[nsidestrate]

Who has the highest limit winrate on average why?

When I started playing, I sustained a 3 bb/100 winrate over a large number of hands. Players were much worse then. Now I suspect that 2 bb/100 is probably about the realistic max. The reason that there is a limit is because even bad players win sometimes. It is what makes it a great game.

Are you ever playing A2 offsuit?

You are entering into another area of personal bias. I really hate weak offsuit aces. I'd defend my blinds with them against very poor players, I might raise them first in late position against players I didn't respect. The only situation where I'd be likely to play A2 against strong players is that I would complete my small blind in an unraised pot. Generally though, I hate A2.

[BobBarker]

I'm really not sure what I have to change in my limit game to win in the long run?

[BobBarker]

I looked at three limit hand charts, One says to 3 bet JJ+ and fold lower to a raise. Another says to reraise one raiser with 99+ in late position. The last one says to fold AQ offsuit to a raise and three bet 1010+ which one is correct?

[nsidestrate]

You're not going to like this, but I'm going to go with all of them. I'm about to be at the WSOP for a couple of weeks, so I'm probably going to bow out of our discussion for a while.

[jeffnc]

One of the interesting things about a field of study like poker is that no one is "correct" with things like hand charts. This isn't happening in a controlled vacuum, like "12 + 7 - what is the correct answer?"

Poker has a lot to do with the unknown. How good are the players at the table? How good are you? What is your style? How much is the rake and how much will you tip if you win? What happened in the last pot? What happened in the last hour? What happened in the last year? Did someone go from happy to sad? Sad to happy? Losing to winning?

Some things in poker are clear, certain and don't depend on any other information. If you have a royal flush on the river in a limit game and you are heads up and your opponent acts first and he bets, then you should raise. That is certain. Well, at least from an EV point of view of making money in the hand! I've seen people just call here so their opponent has to show his cards first to see how he played his hand!

But what if you are first to act. Should you bet, or should you try for a check/raise? Let's say there are more than 2 people in the hand. The first player bets and you are next to act with one or more players behind you. Now should you raise or just call? There are no "correct" answers. The only way you can come up with "correct" answers is to make very contrived scenarios. For example "Joe is bluffing 100% of the time on the river when he bets first, and always folds to a raise rather than trying bluff reraise. Bob, behind me, calls 1 bet 100% of the time when he has king high or better, but folds 100% of the time to a raise unless he has the nuts." In that case it's obvious that you must just call 100% of the time. However it's never that clear cut.

The hand charts are not like the periodic table of elements. There is a lot of gray area in there and no one can definitively fill them out. In some cases, your guess will be as good as theirs. But until you feel confident in making that guess, then pick a hand chart you can trust and play with it. I think it's safe to say we all recommend Hilger's chart here.

[BobBarker]

It seems like I would rather three bet 77 than AK?

[nsidestrate]

It seems like I would rather three bet 77 than AK?

I certainly wouldn't.

[kpr16]

I this thread, because nside's patience is top notch, and OP seems as OCD as I am.

I'll give cliffs of the obvious lessons:

It's not what you don't know, it's what you think you know that's wrong that will kill you.

Almost all of the hand charts listed are well thought out by winning players. Focus on the thought process.

Poker is definitely taught flop->river, because it's easy to do so. But in theory you would want to start with the river distributions and work backwards, so heed Nside's advice to worry more about post flop once you have a foundation.
OP made a great example of this without realizing it by talking about raising a super tight range in EP and seeing a 932 flop. Few people are getting away from KK in this situation, but this is a decent example of a spot where it may be particularly harmful to the EP player to be too tight.