Q&A #109: Adjusting To A 50BB Buy-In With An Extra Blind

Thanks for answering this, Ed. This is the basic adjustments that I have been tending to make a little more. People are definitely staying around for bigger than normal raises( say 8-10x gets 3 callers or so as is typical in a live game). I have been adjusting by opening more often with hands like AJ and KQ for instance. I still have been limping behind several limpers with some hands like 76s and Axs because I figure I am getting good odds on my money. Do you agree that is an ok move with the stack sizes? These players tends to pay off pretty decently. They will often call to showdown with middle pairs and top pair with a weak kicker if they are offered good odds to call.

Threads, I think it might be ok to limping on or near the button but you don’t want to be calling x10 raises with 76s or Ax suited because you will lose a lot more than you win. Really in this sort of game I would be waiting for big hands 99+, AK, AQ, and playing them hard pre-flop. I don’t see being tight as a problem as often the pot is fairly bloated before it gets round to you and you can just shove or raise big in a very nice situation. When I played a live 50p/£1 game (I’m a UK player so that would be $1/$2 US) I was amazed by how much money people would raise and call with speculative hands pre-flop - 10x raises and calls were commonplace. I was very lucky to get dealt AK once, kings twice and queens twice in a four hour session and nearly trebled my buy-in. The only problem is that I guess it can get quite dull waiting for those cards to come, but I have found to my cost that calling raises with 78, especially when short stacked just wastes a lot of cash - those sort of hands work best deep stacked 100+ bb.
BTW just noticed the copyright comment at the bottom of the page - is this a reference to text-adventure Zork??

Interesting question threads13.

And Thanks Ed, as usual, smart advices.