This is a pretty simple hand but the preflop decision was interesting so I thought I’d post it.

Situation: $1/2 blinds, we’ve been playing about 3 hours, been playing well but not getting much to play. I’m in seat 8, there are two good players in the game, seats 4 and 6. Seat 3 is an overaggressive bettor who puts in lots of chips with any pair. The rest of the table is very passive, limping or calling small raises preflop and calling or folding to bets post-flop.

New player sits on my left. I am on the button and he posts both the small and big blind rather than wait a hand so that he can essentially “buy the button” next hand. This indicates someone who craves action, but he also seems comfortable at the table, chatting it up right away and knows some of the floor staff etc. so he’s surely an experienced player and probably at least dangerous if not fairly good.


Onto the hand:

First two players limp in. New player to my left says “No limping! I’m just telling you guys there is no limping in my games!” He clearly intends to be the table captain. I look down at two black aces on the button. By the time the action gets to me 6 players have limped including all the players mentioned above, and the guy to my left continues to say that you are not allowed to limp in his game, but has not looked at his cards yet. We have $300 in our stack, most stacks around the table are $150-300, both the good players have us covered and the new guy has $200. We are almost closing the action here, with only the new guy left to act (the only blind). He is out-of-position with 7 limpers (if we limp) and may just check along, but the way he has been talking he almost has to raise just to follow through with the no limping/table captain image he seems to want to portray here, but I've never played with him before so I can't know for sure.

What’s our play? If you raise, how much, why, and what’s the initial strategy/plan? If you limp, what’s the plan if he checks behind and if he raises behind?

Firstly, I have to say I like your setup of theses hand scenarios...I feel like I am playing a game or a quiz. Anyways onto the hand.

I would not feel secure limping into this hand even after he has postured that he would raise. What happens if he sees that his cards are only worth a call? You just let in 7 limpers with your bullets allowing anyone to hit their hand hard. Also knowing that everyone has heard him basically state his intentions to raise would give reason for many more players planning to look him up with any 2.

My thoughts would be to put in a strong raise maybe 5-6 x the BB and at this point he may think you are raising just to counteract his potential raise. You will at least be thinning the field to probably 3 callers including the Captain. You might even get a reraise. Or you might just take it down right there which would be okay with me.

I just think it is too dangerous to simply call in hopes that he will raise (and you may reraise) & possibly allow 7 limpers in for cheap.

You know the old adage...with AA better to win a small pot than lose a big one!

Let me know the outcome!
ps (how do you remember all these hands with so much detail?)

I dont care what this guy is saying, you want action, but from a small field. If he's screaming about giving you action, give him some, and he'll give it right back. You certainly don't want a family game with Rockets in the pocket.

You can Limp, or Raise:


Limp:

Possibility that he's saying "I dont allow limpers" to scare people from raising themselves, just so he can limp in with his garbage too. So you limp, he limps right behind you, you now have a medium starting pot with wayyyyyy to many people in it for you to be a favorite.

Maybe he's legit and he's going to raise. More action for you. The problem becomes, if the table sees that he's not looking at his cards, and being the "table captain" you have a good chance that 80% of the limpers will all call his raise thinking he doesn't have a hand and is just playing with his mouth. This is essentially the same as above, but with a larger pot, making you more committed to seeing a turn or river even if some bad cards come on the flop.

Raise:

Well the Cap-i-tan was full of **** and he'll fold. A bunch of the limpers will fold too. You narrow the field to 1 or 2 other players who think they have a hand but are clearly second best to you. Good outcome in my book.

The Cap-i-tan was full of **** but wants to keep his image, he calls/reraises you. Same as first raise scenario I would think.

The Cap-i-tan has a hand himself (when he finally looks down, if he hasn't snuck a peek without you seeing) and calls/reraises. Same as above.




So the way I see it, you can raise and narrow the field as you want with Aces, or you can limp, and possibly let captain narrow the field for you, or that plan could backfire.

I certainly see how being in this situation would make you think "i'll just limp, he'll raise, and i can reraise him." The problem with this is 1) if he doens't raise (i know i've already said that..) or 2) he raises, but gets a bunch of callers. Too much multiway for your rockets. In that case you'd have to push your entire stack to narrow the field because any modest to semi-large raise won't be enough to push enough callers off the now bulging pot.

so my $.02 says raise.

from what you have written, i would make a really strong raise... maybe even 10X the bb.

with the guy talking so much, he will at least call you (or might think you are bluffing and raise you; both of which you want).

if he isnt going to call your raise, then it is also very likely he would have just checked his option.

i would also make the raise big because the people that limped in after the Captain said "no limping" tells me that at least one of those limpers has a strong hand and is waiting for Captain to make the raise. Since at least one of them has a hand, you will likely get called by at least one of them.
Ideally, you want one or two callers and want to raise enough where you will get only one or two callers. But you dont want to raise where everyone folds. Given the Captain's action and that there are 6 limpers, I would make it about 10X (giving someone about 2:1) to call.

I'm definitely going to go against the grain here.

First of all, this wasn't specified explicitly, but I'm going to assume this is NL.

To me, it's very clear what I would do.

If this guy is talking the way he is, he would HAVE to make a raise or else be instantly labelled as full of crap. He's helping you set up the perfect situation in my opinion.

The way I see this playing out is as follows:

I would limp in with AA on the button.
I would assume he will in fact raise, as he has been proclaiming the entire time. Also, I would assume he would raise to minimum $10 to thin out the field.
Acting how he is, surely at least 2-3 people will call the raise before it gets back to you.
Assuming even only 2 others call, the pot is suddenly $38.
Now it's your turn. What do you do? Push.
You're implying to the table "I'm strong, don't mess with me." If everyone believes you, you're picking up $38 without seeing a flop. If someone thinks you're full of it, no problem - you're going in guaranteed as a huge favorite. It's highly unlikely you'll get more than one person calling your all-in.

So in this scenario, you have a very high chance of winning $36+ risk free, or doubling up as a huge favorite. The only other possibility? If the talker is really just full of hot air and doesn't raise preflop, then oh well... you only have $2 invested and could give up the hand depending on post flop action. Possibly you might hit a set of aces and still be good after the flop.

I prefer this over playing the standard way, say even raising to 10x or $20 preflop. When you do this, you're obviously indicating huge strength. You're saying "I don't care what this guy is saying, and I don't care if he plans on raising... I have a great hand and I'm going to raise it."

Several possibilities...

1.) With this obvious show of strength, Mr. Talker might look down and find junk, so he'll lay it down. Depending on how all the other players are, they might all decide to lay it down as well. So you end up picking up $12 in blinds.
2.) Maybe Mr. Talker decides to play you, and everyone else folds. Now the pot is $52+ going to the flop, of which $20 of that is yours.
2a.) Assuming Mr. Talker doesn't hit on the flop, and you bet out, he may fold... which means you net about $32.
2b.) There's the possibility that Mr. Talker hit big on the flop, and you may be already behind. Who knows how much you could lose in this situation?

So... with the way I see these two scenarios playing out, I like the first option WAY more.

I employed a similar strategy once last week and it worked out beautifully.

I was playing $100/NL and found AA UTG, sitting with $117. I decided that I either wanted to play a small pot, or go all in preflop. Since I was UTG, if I pushed, I was sure nobody would call me... so I just limped. A couple others limp in, then the small blind did exactly as I was waiting for - he opened up the betting again by raising to $3.50. Beautiful. When it got back to me, I wasn't going to pay around anymore. I pushed all in for $116. What's funny is, the next guy insta-calls for $97... with K8o. Small blind folded. Fortunately, my hand did hold up, and I almost doubled up with me getting my money in as guaranteed favorite. Can't ask for any more than that...

Murph...great write up as usual. I haven't read the other reponses so I hope I don't repeat anything. With 6-7 limpers I do not care what the "table captain" says, acts, or thinks about his hand. I am not letting someone else dialogue effect my poker decisions ever. I'm one to take the emotion out of poker, its the only way to be a long term winner. Sure you can be tricky and make an amazing play and limp and then reraise his raise but I think your out thinking yourself if you do that.

I make my standard raise to $15 get a couple callers and reevaluate on the flop. Theres no highlitght of the night at the poker table, I think you need to maximize the value of the aces and not risk a community pot. This might be the risk averse stategy but your going to maximize the value of the hand in the longrun.

i very much agree with invisiblesoul here. add to your possibilites that it may be rereaised by another limper wanting to isolate the talker, who has presented it like is he is raising blind.

the one thing needed to pull of the "tricky" limp raise here is to be able to dump pocket aces post-flop. in this situation they would have to be folded most of the time if the talker limped or folded.

by the sounds of it, my opinion is that would be a good gamble to risk the +ev payoff of raising right there for the possible payoff of a pot that was juiced up by a "blind" raiser then reraised (or even rereraised) by us, with 7 limpers in betweeen.

but you've got to be able to dump them, or you are risking much more.

great write up and question murf

First off, I’m glad to see that everybody seems to be enjoying these and hopefully we all become better players by feeding off each other here. The last 2 I posted were great discussions and this one seems like it may be even better.

I’ll post my thoughts then post the next part of the hand tomorrow. But preflop is the main decision point in this hand and what makes it interesting, whereas most cash games the main decisions are later in the hand.

It’s tough to relate in text to the exact feeling/read at the table, but my feeling was that captain would raise 80-90% of the time here. I see this as a huge opportunity with AA that doesn’t come around often. The goal in n/l is to stack people, and this was such an opportunity. Stacking people with AA is difficult to do and usually requires a lot of chips going in preflop. Most stacking opportunities (at 100bbs or deeper) come with sets and straights, and sometimes with AA when alot of chips go in preflop. If most of the chips go in post-flop with AA, it is often the AA that gets stacked.

But there is also a magic number with AA. Remember that heads up you can never be less than about 80% to win preflop. This means that if you can get 20% or more of the effective stack in preflop, you will win in the long run even if you simply go all-in in the dark on the flop no matter how well the opponent plays.

So how much is this hand worth on average? Most PT stats online says AA is worth 6-8 ptbbs, which would correlate to $24-$32 in this game. There is $15 in the pot right now so it’s certainly worth more than that since as a default play we can simply push here and either win $15 or be a big favorite to win much more. So if we are going to ignore our buddy on the left, then how much do we raise?

$10-15—at $10 I think everyone will call and at $15 almost everyone. $10-15 is the standard opening raise in this game. This would be too small a raise after all those limpers. And I don't think the captain is likely to reraise, but is likely to call.

$20-25—if the captain or an early player calls $20, which is a distinct possibility, everyone has odds to call. After my $20 raise and a caller there is $55 in the pot and the next guy is being asked to call only $18 more. If he calls, the next guy has 75/18 odds. The calling stations will call with K9o and the good players will take a shot at this pot with 78s or 44, figuring to lose $18 or win $400+. I’ll be in trouble if I don’t flop a set.

$25-$35—this seems too big in some ways and not big enough in others. this is highly likely to either win the pot since nobody is in for more than $2 (if they all fold we make a $15 profit, which we’ve determined our hand is worth more than), or get a caller or two. If the caller plays well (seat 4 or 6 or captain maybe), the problem is that he can be pretty sure we have AA/KK and he knows how to outplay our defined hand here. For instance, a call with 44 they risk $30 to try to win $300. If you play it out, pot is $75 or $105 we bet $60 or $90 maybe and they can easily fold or raise here and its pretty difficult to release AA on a JcTc4d board after putting half our stack in. And a good player won't allow us to keep the pot too small here. I think $30 makes for a difficult post flop even if one of the donks calls as we won’t know if they are calling/playing back at me with 2 pair after the flop or with one pair that they hope is good.

$40+—this is getting to be ridiculous amounts that are unlikey to be called. When you get to $60 you hit what I call a safe zone, a zone where I have put that 20% in preflop which can’t lose in the long run. But a raise to $60 is just laughable and will surely result in everyone folding except maybe the odd slow-playing KK.

In general, if the captain weren’t present, I would certainly err on the large raise side here. I’d probably make it $35 or $40 and if someone wants to call that’s fine. Depending on the player/flop texture we can hopefully use position to control pot size if we want. But our likely result is to pick up the limps ($15) which is not getting enough value out of the hand, I feel. Maybe we get a caller and make another 35 and hopefully don’t get stacked when he gets lucky.

But instead of raising, we have another opportunity here with the captain. Granted, if he doesn’t raise we are in trouble. But that’s okay. If he doesn’t raise, I’m willing to fold the hand post-flop. Any flop not containing an ace or three clubs/spades are hands we will probably just have to fold on the flop. That is the risk, since one pair simply will not win this unraised/8 way pot very often. We are not whimps because we fold AA here, we just went for an opportunity and missed.

How much are we risking by being willing to fold after the flop? Well, we're risking the $2 call plus at least the $15 which is rightfully ours, or if you go by PT stats we risk the $24-32 that the hand would make on average. But isn’t the risk worth the upside?

I am 80-90% sure the captain will raise here. Our position couldn’t be better, as he essentially traps all players into calling here before it gets back to us. What if the captain makes a raise to $10, the result is that everyone calls and it gets back to me with $70 in the pot, which is certainly more than AA is worth on average and we can put in a big reraise. Or maybe he makes it $20, I’m sure at least 2 players or more will call and the pot gets back to me with 70-100 in it and we can put in a larger raise. Our reraise can now be enough that we should never get more than 1 or (doubtfully) 2 callers, and we have broken well through the 20% magic number, meaning we cannot be outplayed long-term post-flop.

Another thing to consider is for the future this guy is going to be a nuisance at the table, so laying down law to him by limp/reraising puts another thought into his head. I like to be able to limp in these games because I feel many players play poorly post-flop in unraised pots, and I’d prefer him to have to think twice before raising my future limps (truth is I would plan to change seats at the first opportunity to sit on his left)

Not true. Random aces are only 77.29% to win against a hand like 56s. If you want to be lenient, we can throw in the tie equity as well to push it up to 77.50% eq. But it doesn't get better than that in this case.


I would limp here. It is ok to limp with aces in late position once in a while. You trade off some current ev for extra ev in the future. Look at it this way, people don’t expect you to limp late with AA, that’s a donk move in most cases. When you break someone here, or even let them know you had AA here, players are going to remember this for a very, very, long time.

What does this mean? It means players are NOT going to execute any sandwitch moves on you, knowing your liable to have anything. People will not read you as weak when you limp in last. This is going to all add up later on. People will be hesitant to chase you out in the future.

Of course, if your table is full of tourist newbs, who don’t know the difference between position or a value-bet, then you could be wasting your time here (and money).

If you are ever going to try this, then let me ask you, what better time is there, than now? If you think there is a good chance the guy on your left will raise, then a lot of these limpers may just call a small raise and build up that pot. When the action comes to you, you either re-raise very large, or push all in.

The worst that can happen is it’s checked after you, and everyone sees a flop. So what? If you don’t hit your set, 4-flush, or the board doesn’t pair then you throw your hand away. Very small risk, very large reward. If you do hit big, remember… you have a strong hand, with the best position…and a lot of money on the table eligible to go into the center. Very, very, favourable situation.

These opportunities do not come by very often. Aces you’ll get every 220 to 1, so don’t fret about it, you’ll get that hand plenty of times again.

He said "about 80%." 77% is "about" 80%.

And why am I not surprised that Invisible Soul wants to limp with AA here?

(just messing with you, ISOUL )

I think I would go for the limp here with the guy talking as much as he is. There is just so much more money you can get if you do. Ill give up the 10 - 15 to make a couple hundred in this case. It won't come by that often. If by chance he doesn't, you are still ahead going to the flop and will be able to see what happens from there. Most people that I have played with that talk like that will raise with nothing or in the dark, play like donkeys and are likely broke within an hour or two. They get lucky in the short term but give it all back by the end of the night.

I think I would try the limp.....but if the talker limps as well, you need to be very cautious post-flop (as Murf says). If the guy raises, he's probably got junk anyway and will fold to a reraise. Hopefully, one of the other limpers was slowplaying JJ, QQ, KK or AK and you can stack them!

this is only true if it is heads up. if there is 3 or 4 other players in the hand, although aces vs. any particular hand may be around 80% favorite, aces vs 4 or 5 other hands is less than 50% to win.

I elected to limp, thinking that the captain would raise about 80-90% of the time here. If he limps I am fully prepared to fold most non-ace flops.

As the action gets to me Captain is looking at his cards and again says "I warned you all, I don't allow limpers". I shoot him a look that tries to look like a sad puppy dog saying "pwease mista, don't waise me, I hope yaw just kidding awound" as I throw my two white chips into the middle.

Captain throws 2 red chips in, a pot sweetener making it $12 to go. 6 players call and the action is back on us.

I have no reason to think the captain has a strong hand here and I don't think he will call a large raise here just to save face. I don't think anyone has a strong hand. There may be a KJ and a 44 out there somewhere along with a JT and an 87s. Most players have stacks around $150-300. I don't feel that the captain will call a large raise here. Maybe one of the passive guys might. There is now $86 in the pot and the bet is $12.

Obviously we raise here, but how much, and what is the purpose. Do we want to get a caller? Keep in mind many of these these guys don't consider pot odds too much, they just consider $10 as a small raise that they can call with anything decent, $25 a big one that requires a "strong" hand like KQ, and $40 a huge raise that requires at least pocket tens or AQ. The good players in seats 4 and 6 will consider pot odds but will respect my raise as being AA or KK.

What's our play/plan/purpose?

I plugged some random hands into a calculator, and even if it was 4-way,

AA vs KQs vs J9s vs 44, AA is actually still over 50% to win... barely.

But 5-way...

AA vs KQs vs 87s vs 55 vs JTs... now AA is only about 40% to win.