I was studying some of my recent hand histories and a thought occurred to me. One of the most profitable spots in poker is when you open and only get called by the player in the big blind. In passive small stakes games, there is very little you can do to get this result when you open from early position, so you’re forced to play fewer hands from there. Theoretically, you should be able to open the pot often from late position, but in these games, the action does not fold around as often as it is supposed to because the players in early and middle position either open limp or open raise with more hands than they should.
If you fold right away or call with the intention of playing fit or fold postflop against these opens, you essentially let them take away your opportunities to play hands in position against the Big Blind. If you’re not getting spots to open in late position because players are constantly taking the spot before it gets to you, you have to fight for your right to open. Here are a few ways in which I try to regain control of these spots.
Fighting Frequent Limpers
The most common hijacker I see in passive small stakes game is the frequent open limper. Fortunately, they are the easiest ones to deal with because they limp so many hands that their range isn’t much stronger than that of a player who defends the big blind too tightly. For this reason, I treat them as if they were this player type who is just choosing to play the big blind multiple times an orbit.
This means when I am in middle or late position, I will raise their limp with almost as wide a range as I would have had the action folded around to me. If I am able to get the players with position on me to fold, then this spot is almost as good as that. There are two exceptions however. First, this approach works best against the type of limper who raises with their best hands and limps with everything else. Some players have developed a style where they limp either their entire playing range or they shift their limping range so that it is trap heavy once they realize I am attacking it. Both these player types will have hands like KK, AA, and AK in their limp calling range whereas a tight BB defender likely would not.
The other exception to this approach is when there are multiple limpers. Let’s say the frequent limper limps from early position and three or four players limp behind before it gets to me. This is a spot that is hard to attack with a wide range because once the first player calls, the others are highly likely to follow suit. Even with position, I don’t want to play a multiway pot with a marginal hand against players who love to call. If stacks are deep and there are more than two or three limpers, I am forced to stick to above average hands.
Fighting Frequent Openers
The other type of party pooper I see is the player who opens more than his fair share of hands. Admittedly, my view on this topic has changed a lot in recent years. I was so used to opening tight from early position for the reasons stated above that I did not realize that I was actually tighter than GTO would suggest. I would fold hands like KQo and J9s without much of a thought until I started working with a coach who showed me that these hands were close to 100% GTO opens. In fact, he showed me that I should be opening even wider than this because my opponents under three-bet and played too straightforwardly postflop. For these reasons, my early position opening ranges are a lot wider than they used to be.
Even now that I know how wide a GTO early position opening range is, I still see players who open wider than they should. I have two options for preventing these players from taking my spots. The most common one is to start three-betting them with a wide range of hands. This is a great strategy, but it is sort of risky because it bloats the pot before I get to see the flop. This can be a problem against players who call the three-bet too often because they put me on AK. This is great when I actually have a real hand or when an Ace or King comes, but it can be difficult to force folds when I have hands with little equity.
The other approach that I am learning to use more often is flatting their opens in position and then playing aggressively postflop. I think this one has more merit in passive games because it controls the size of the pot preflop which gives me more room to outplay my opponent post flop. When I three-bet preflop, they put me on AK and play accordingly if they think that I’ve missed the flop. When I call preflop with the intention of floating or raising the flop often, it’s harder for them to put me on hands that missed because this is not something that these players are used to seeing. Additionally, because they were the preflop aggressor, I gain information from their decision whether or not to c-bet and what size they choose if they do. Essentially, flatting their opens instead of three-betting them allows me to play many more hands and leaves more chips behind which allows me to benefit from my positional advantage on later streets.
There are some downsides to this approach. First, flatting with a wide range against a frequent opener gives the players behind me a very profitable opportunity to squeeze. Fortunately, this is not something I have to worry about too much in passive games. Second, flatting instead of three-betting does give up some fold equity which allows my opponent’s hand to realize more of its equity. This assumes that he has a raise folding range to begin with. I’ve seen plenty of players who don’t seem to have much of one, so this is not a big loss against these player types. Lastly, flatting from middle position encourages other players to flat in position behind me. In my opinion, this is the biggest issue with this approach because it is much more difficult to bluff in multiway pots which defeats the purpose of flatting with a wide range in the first place. For this reason, I tend to three-bet more from middle position in order to fold out the players with position on me and flat more when I am on the button or in the cut off.
Regardless of which approach you take, if a player on your right is opening more than his fair share of pots, you must put a stop to it so that you can open more than your fair share of pots. The only way to discourage him is to make his strategy unprofitable. Big hands don’t come around often, so waiting for them in order to fight back is not enough. If you want to control your table, you must become comfortable with playing a wider range using intelligent aggression and your positional advantage to force the players on your right to get back in line.
