Hey guys.

This is a spot that comes up relatively often that I think I could potentially be taking advantage of in live games...

I remember when I first started playing poker, I subscribed to a lot of balugawhales ideas and one of them was categorizing hand strengths on a spectrum and having a region of flatting hands, which I think was common thought 10+ years ago. With the advent of solvers and emphasis on rake avoidance, plus more aggressive preflop strategies, I think flatting ranges have become narrower and narrower naturally.

But, in live 2-5, when I’m on the button, there are many scenarios I’m facing a raise from a recreational player and have no aggressive squeezers in the blinds and have been folding things like 98s. I think from a raw equity perspective these hands likely suffer vs a lot of players ranges, as most live players don’t open very wide. However, given us having position on a player likely to make mistakes postflop(cbetting too much then giving up, paying off when we make hands, overfolding on certain cards where we can bluff), we can likely make up some of the equity just by playing better postflop.

A concern I have is the larger raises you see as well in live. Online we are facing 2.5-3x sizings often, while live we are seeing 4x, 5x, 6x sizings.

We get a worst price as the size goes up, but it’s not that drastic, and often mitigated by stack depth.

I’m beginning to think I can be implementing a few more flats while In position on fun players, given there isn’t someone in the blinds who will take advantage of me making my range transparent and capped.

Any takes on this or anything to add? Is this just obvious and something I have been losing ev with in my game? Any glaring reasons this may not be a good idea?