How nitty can you go? (preflop in whale games)

Limping sucks in cash games regardless of what game you play. The rake is a huge factor, especially in PLO, so you have to push your equity and build big pots to easily reach the rake cap. Just pot with your good hands in loose games and be willing to stab a little bit more in multiway pots on turns/rivers if the previous street was checked through.

In PLO tournaments though, limping is viable. There is no rake, often there are antes, it's nice to keep pots small and you can get away with limping tons of trash mid-high pocket pairs if there are fishes that limp complete trash and are willing to stack off with bottom sets and weak 2 pairs.

@limping: what if I play in a 3% rake structure?

I would not recommend limping out of SB and usually not open limping SB either. I follow in general rule of using one position earlier per limper. So if I am BU and there is one limper I iso raise with my CO open raise range. With 2 limpers iso raising MP range from BU and so on. If there are multiple limpers and I am in SB or BB I usually raise roughly with my EP range as it often leads into being OOP in multiway pot so we dont want to bloat pot without hand that do well in that scenario.

If we expect to get into multiway pot often we should aim to have nuttiness. So high suits, high pairs and high rundowns. That is mainly also because in multiway pots we have to play relatively honest as making bluffs with low equity holdings is very dangerous. So population is likely too call happy with mediocre/weak draws and we want to be the one dominating those draws.

So I would still recommend to 3bet good Axxx rundowns like AKJTss, AQJ9ds and some of the bit smaller ones like QJT8ds. Those will do fine in multiway 3bet pots also. If you only 3bet premium AAxx your 3bet frequency will be very low and you will have issue on lot of boards where AAxx is not doing great. Like some QT7 etc.

Thanks for the answers guys! Makes a lot of sense. Guess I just have to run a bit better and not get into a mindset of overadjusting just because people keep hitting sets a lot against me atm

I'd definitely advise against 3betting tighter. It might be valuable to 3bet more equitydriven as the general population underfolds Vs 3bets and does not 4bet much more than AA.
3bets generate a lot of value because of that. But rather use worse KK instead of 7654ds especially IP as people tend to play their hands and you don't have to be worried that you never have it on 864r.
Of course tighten up Vs tight openers and tighten up with rundowntype hands Vs players that are aggressive and callhappy as this is hard to play OOP against.
Apart from that you can do a lot of exploitative stuff if you have a HUD. Limping is usually not good but it definitely can be good in some situations

Thanks for the answers. After 50k hands I see what you mean. It's very +ev to 3bet equity driven. Variance is still extreme, but at least the ev graph is going up.

Originally posted by tranceactor

3bets generate a lot of value because of that. But rather use worse KK instead of 7654ds especially IP as people tend to play their hands and you don't have to be worried that you never have it on 864r.

What would the treshold be for 3betting KKxx combos?

I am also wondering about 4betting for value against very loose 3betters, that 3bet something around 10-15% on CO and BU. GTO likes to 4bet hands blocking Aces and unblocking Kings... ok, but I feel like I would prefer hands like double suited, or somewhat connected Kings, or even doublesuited Queens, as anyway people don't fold a lot (even at 100b stacks). Is that a good adaption? What would be your suggestions for 4betting these very wide 3betters?

As a rough guideline I would 3bet everything that has 50% equity against your opponents range when you are in position and add 0.5% EQ for every player behind you when you have an ace and adding 1% if you don't have an ace. OOP is a bit different as playability and visibility become more important.

Similar against loose 3betters. Mainly 4bet when you are a favourite against his 3bettingrange. The idea of unblocking KK and blocking AA makes a lot of sense when you assume that a lot of KK would fold to a 4bet. I doubt that on low limits as population has trouble folding a hand they already 3bet with. So, unblocking KK is dicy. If you feel that a lot of the population overplays them preflop against 4bets and on the flop then blocking them isn't that bad anymore. Semibluff4bets with let us say 7654ds only work if people fold at least part of their 3betrange preflop (assuming that they don't fold OTF a lot)

Don't limp.

Tighten up 3bet range from hands that rely more on FE (as you have none), like Axxx with smaller x's (A987ds etc).

Wait for good hits, and get as much money in as possible. Tone down bluffing, unless it's a good spot.