I've recently started squeezing in my games at 10NL and it works sooooo well at these limits, people don't know how to defend, they will only come along with AQ+ or shove over so it generates A LOT of folds! If they play back, shut down.

I tend not to do it vs. UTG open though (depending on stats), and I'd call instead of squeeze IP if there was a loose fish in the pot. Ideal candidates to squeeze are LAGs and PEOPLE WHO ARE ISOLATING LIMPERS, at 2-25NL, there'll be the occasional limper! Regs isolate them with a very wide range which can't continue OOP to a 3bet.

I'd squeeze Axs+, sometimes Kxs, K9o + KTo/QTo/JTo, basically all the offsuit hands just outside of my calling range vs. MP open (suited combos would be a call) & QQ+ for value.

For sizing, I usually hit the pot button.

If I miss the flop and don't have much going for me in the hand or if the board hits his range a lot, I just x/f as villian would usually be so strong after calling OOP to a big squeeze.

Defending is a big problem! At low limits, I'm not sure if people do it enough to call/shove with anything less than a premium unless you have history with villain squeezing often.

In the blinds, I call with Axs and squeeze with some offsuit similar to above hands but I rarely ever squeeze OOP.

If any of the pros are reading this, feedback is welcome! Not entirely sure if I'm doing this correctly but based off some study and experience, it seems to be working for me.

Hopefully I was of some help

This is why I asked about the defending. I too, do not really know how to defend very well. I don't believe that it is much different than defending 3 bets, but can't say that is a very strong area of mine as well. I do believe, from a mathematical perspective, I don't need to be defending as wide as I do in a 3bet pot. In a 3 bet pot to 9bb, the defense comes from a single person and the 3 bettor would need folds more than ~67% of the time to have auto profit. 9/(.5+1+3+9)= 67%. In a squeezed pot, to say 12bb, the defense is coming from 2 people. 12/.5+1+3+3+12= 61.5%. If you take the square root of that it comes out to ~78%. So that means in theory as long as both original raiser and cold caller are not each folding to the squeeze more than 78% of the time, then the squeezer is not in auto profit. I know that its not that simple, as the cold caller is not defending often, they are the dead money essentially. However, where I play the cold callers seem to defend a fair amount. They are very passive and prefer not to raise but will call all sorts of stuff with the hopes of hitting. It is an a area that frustrates me because there are many times I squeeze and the OR folds and the cold caller calls. Now I am HU with a fairly capped range and then all of the sudden I am getting raised post flop and finding a bunch of aggression from a player who doesn't not appear to be overly aggressive. It "feels" like it happens fairly often and can't believe these guys are binking sets with their middle pairs or flushes and straights with there mid and low SC's, but its hard to continue against that when you only have a medium strength hand yourself or nothing.



This is why I asked about sizing. I tend to use the pot button in squeezes as well. Most times it puts me somewhere in the 12-13 bb. In doing the example, I just wondered if there were any benefit to going larger. I know some guys in my staking group tend to go bigger, like 14-15 bb. Like I said, some of the people squeezing me go as high as 16bb and even 17bb. I know the larger it is the more folds you need if you are the squeezer and the less you need to defend if you are being squeezed. So if you go larger, you have more FE, but need more folds and when you go smaller you have less FE but need less folds, but challenge is if the original raiser calls, more times than not the cold caller is coming along and now you are in a multiway pot, with potentially a hand that doesn't play so well. I guess easy solution is to do like you said and just x/f a bunch when you miss as the profit comes from the squeeze and them folding too much.

Lastly,
Thanks for the reply Colly and yes it was a help. It certainly shows me that I am not doing it often enough and I am leaving a lot of dead money on the table. It also confirms something that I was theorizing, in that, there are is certainly a group of players on MPN that are squeeze happy. They are definitely using a very similar line of thought to you and once I can find a way to identify them, creating a counter exploit to them should also be quite profitable. How to do that, I am unsure, but when I do I feel it will be quite profitable.



I think this is a huge area for profit and something I certainly don't do enough of. I know Jon preaches this and does this a ton in the videos he does for PokerVIP at the micros on the various sites. So any added info in this area would be greatly appreciated.

Think of your squeezing range just like you would a normal 3bet range. You'll have your nut value hands and then you'll have some bluffs that are too weak to call profitably.Then you adjust this according to player types and position. You squeeze vs UTG should be much tighter than vs BTN. Typically your squeezing range should be a little tighter since you're risking more money to make the raise than you would be with a normal 3bet.

In your example, ATs seems like a really nice spot to call. It will certainly be profitable to call IP. If you squeeze you aren't likely crushing villain's calling range so it's not a value squeeze.

There might be spots where you can take a hand that you call profitably and squeeze it instead because that might be more profitable. A really nice spot would be if BTN opens and SB calls since SB will almost always be dead money in that spot. Otherwise if villain folds too much to 3bets in general, or folds a ton to flop cbets squeezes should be super effective.

As for size, pot usually works great. Once the pot starts getting larger (more callers) you can scale it down a little since the additional money won't necessarily lead to more fold equity. Something like 12-13bb over a raise and 1 caller is good then 14-15 over 2 callers. In the crazy event that there's 3+ callers you might want to go to something like 16bb while pot might be 18bb+. That being said... adjust to the players so if they're stations then by all means make it 25bb.

As far as defending goes, you're right @fawltyfelix each player can fold a ton and still not have it be auto profit for the squeezer. Because 2 potential callers are involved you can't work out exactly what % you need to defend. In some spots like the BTN SB BB squeeze, button will have to defend a lot more since SB will be folding a TON. In a spot like UTG MP BTN squeeze, MP should have lots of strong hands in his range to defend so UTG will likely have to defend less. Defending something like 25% should be in the right ballpark.

I got some advice from a good pro a while back that if the squeeze is huge like 15bb+ (over a 3bb raise) then you shouldn't really be flatting and should just be 4betting/shoving or folding. This is because flatting, missing the flop (which will happen ~2/3 of the time) and folding to a cbet costs you a lot of money when you pay that much to see a flop. You should also be up against a tight range so floating gets less attractive as well. Depending on which stakes you play, take this with a grain of salt since 4bet bluffing a lot at micros typically doesn't end all that well.