I haven't read the 2p2 thread yet so I may be repeating some of what is in there but I thought it may help my own game if I was to go through some other resources and write down what I learn about isolating...
Firstly we need to ensure we are isolating the right type of villain. As soon as most people limp we can instantly put identify them as a weak player although occasionally regs and stronger players will limp so we should make sure that we have a little info on villains pre and post flop tendencies before isolating them with a wide range. Against unknowns it is generally safer to keep a range that will play post flop.When we do have info that our villain is a weak player we can divide these players into two groups, weak tight and weak loose players.
Weak tight players will have vpips of about 15 or less with a large gap between that and their PFR. A large part of their limping range will be small pairs and suited connectors, the sort of hands that either hit monsters or miss the flop.
An example of a weak tights limping range. This is 7% so it could be from a villain playing something like 14/7 or 12/5.
Just from looking at this range we can see that he will miss the flop a large percentage of the time and will give up a lot post flop. From this we can set out a plan for our hand, when he limps we isolate the flop comes down, he checks, we c bet and take the pot down.
From this plan we can figure out what size our bets should be when isolating this type of player.Since he will be calling a lot of this range all the time trying to hit his monster we can push our pre flop raise size a bit bigger than normal, maybe 5x or 7xbbs. When he misses the flop and gives up we can make our flop bet smaller, something like half pot. By betting big pre flop and small post flop we are exploiting this players tendencies as much as possible and making as much as we can off them.
When it comes to hand selection it shouldn't really matter. Unless we flop the nuts (or very close to it) we should be folding the flop when we get raised all of the time, even if we had isolated with AA or KK. The only thing we need to think about is the players left to act behind us and how our hand will play if we get called by another player and end up in a multiway pot.
Weak loose need a different strategy to play against as they have a different mindset than the weak tight player along with a completely different range. Rather than just seeing a flop and folding everything except their monsters they will love to call your c bet with their draws, second pairs, and Ace high hands.
These players typically look like 30/5 or 54/8. They will have very high vpips but their PFR will be around 10 or lower.
An example of a 30% range for a weak loose player. This would be from someone playing 37/7.
Against these players we should be looking to isolate with a range of hands that will play well against this range, maybe something like 77+ and any two broadway cards. This sets us up to hit top pair good kicker often which is great when he is going to call our bets with top pair shit kicker or second pair. This range can be changed a lot, depending on just how loose the villain is. If they are playing 84/5 we can feel comfortable playing hands like Kx and Qx and picking up pots with top pairs.
We should be aiming to build small to medium sized pots against these players as we will be playing with weaker hands and taking them to showdown more often. Pre flop we want to be sticking to 3.5 - 4.5xbb so that if we get a c bet and one more street of value we will be setting up a pot of around 40bbs. This also gives us more flexibility and lets us get away cheaply when we completely miss the board.
The last thing to consider against these players is position. When we will often be playing post flop position is even more important than normal.
When we isolate
multiple villains we need to be ensuring that we do it with a fairly strong range. We will often get two or more callers and will then have a harder time playing post flop. When in position we can always consider limping behind multiple limpers with hands that have good implied
odds. Something like A2s, 78s or small pairs can flop big hands in multiway pots which have great implied odds for us.
Lastly we should always be looking to see who is left to act before we isolate anyone. If there is another loose player who is likely to call our raise or an aggressive reg who will notice you isolating the weak player we really need to think twice about isolating and maybe shrink our range a bit to cover this. This is where table selection is great, we should be making sure the fish are on our right, the regs are across the table and the nits are to our left. This is not always the case though so just make sure you check before you go isolating that weak limper.
