I have trouble in adjusting my game against some winning players on 50/100 dollar buy in levels (normal speed), these regs in practise never raise their button and on the other hand they call most of my button raises. My total ROI after about 3000 games is 7%, to which I am not satisfied. On the other hand I think I have received unexceptionally lot of s**t in these games, so IO expect my ROI will increase when I play more. But back to the original question, what would be the best strategy to play against "winning limpers" assuming I cannot avoid playing against them (I sit normally first in the table)?
Raise strong hands if they call often. Check weaker hands, donk good flops and double barrel scare cards.It's not profitable to limp too much.
What TheTurbo said, and also punihsing his limps with a wider range and seeing how he responds to it, would make sense to me
These are regulars on Stars?If you have some screen names let me know who they are and I'll see if I can do a video against 1+ of them on dealing with intelligent limpers.I wrote an article about dealing with limpers (HERE btw) a long time ago and this would be a fun follow up.You guys probably see RJRJ around here recently (blogging and posting), I had a few really good battles with him at $100 or $200 a few years back when he limped his buttons. He was probably the first real thinker I faced that limped, and it made for some really aggressive lines.If you have a 7% overall ROI, it makes sense that you probably have a slight edge on these guys. I would imagine, as you suggest, that if you play more frequently you'll become sharper overall and probably have a higher ROI vs the random fish. However, I would go one step further and say you'll also see more ways to exploit these thinking limpers. After all, they are giving up quite a bit by not building any pot preflop in position and by calling your raises very wide OOP. That's two general strategies they employ that I believe are flawed (to an extent) and you can start to take advantage of right away. There could be much bigger issues, depending on how they specifically pay in other areas.Players like this can seem fishy, since they don't look fundamentally sound from the outside. However, when you play tons of hands OOP and limp tons of hands IP, you're used to playing a lot of marginal hands. The weakest point these players usually have is their play in large pots. But you can just as easily make a mistake yourself as force one.Anyways, give me a few reg names and I'll see what I can come up with video wise.
Oh and I'd say Cog is quite a bit above what you'd look at a $50-100 semi regular limping player, skill wise. That should be obvious from his success and fast adaption to $200 dollar games, and super turbo (short stack) games.I must admit, I was even surprised by the extent of his success (not success, but how successful he was) when Cog jumped into those $100-200 super turbos. The toughest think you would say for a player that keeps pots small and plays regular speeds to do would be to adapt for hyper aggressive short stack situations.But again, Cog has taught so many adjustments and strategies vs various opponents to hundreds of players, all while consistently grinding on his own... in hindsight it's really no surprised he was one of the biggest winners in his buyin levels in super turbos.So anyways, I extend some respect to those $50-100 guys you want to beat even more handily, and of course to the more skilled limpers of our day (RJRJ before he raised, Cog of course).
You could watch Cog's videos and get a real good ideal of what these players are doing. This would help you figure out a strategy to use against them. One of Cog's students has started a training site teaching people how to play the limping style. These players are not dumb. They focus on adjusting to what you do. So you have to out adjust them. Their game is post flop. Seeing that you are a winning player at $50/$100 level I know you the basic *if they do this much then we do that and if they do that to much then we do this*. It is all about out adjusting them.PaulIB_FishingTalking like a shark, playing like a fish
tasticle @ 50's on FTP reg speed GOGOGOO!