Last night there was a guy who moved to Vegas from here and plays the lower games there (like 2/5 at the Wynn mainly--Aside: Is that where MVP and Kenny are playing now? I may be there in early May, and if so, might be fun to meet).

Anyhow, back to the strategy question, he's raising to $25-$30 in LP on KQ, QJ (I think), AJ type hands as well as some medium pairs (I think). It's not frequent enough that it's chronic, but I wonder how you guys respond to this. Also, we were playing relatively short for most of the night--like $500-$600. Anyhow, no really deep stacks, and I had also bought in a little light for various reasons ($600).

Here are some of my ideas:

1) Re-raise to around $75 on JJ-AA and AK. He's dominated a lot and a good enough player to fold without a hand worth playing. He also has a lot of respect for my bets and, I think, will be very inclined to put me on AA/KK unless I have some kind of run of raising hands (had almost none last night, hence would look very much like AA).

2) Be more inclined to limp re-raise (I was UTG when he was in CO). I had few opportunities for this, but did try it on a QQ once and ended up losing $25. One thing for me as well, is that I look pretty nitty and the table was composed of fairly reasonable players (not really tight, but aware and not bad with a few exceptions), so an EP raise ran a high risk of just folding everyone anyway. Anyhow, somewhat difficult on this is that the LP raises are noticeably frequent but not so chronic that you're guaranteed an opportunity to limp-re-raise.

3) Possibly limp re-raise AQ (which is kind of nice, since I like to limp anyway with that hand).

4) Be more inclined to CR sets as long as he's CBing, since he'll probably have a weak hand. I guess on a board that it looks like it might have hit him, also betting into him with half-pot plus, then CRing the turn (or even the river, since I think it would be rare for him to have any real outs vs. set) might not be bad either. Or even calling down and CRing the river on some boards. Actually, I think I like the check-call better as a rule, unless it's a highly multi-way pot with possible flush draws or something like that. Anyhow, since the raiser is more likely to be weak (and aware of being weak), I think it gets a little difficult to extract adequate value from your sets if you slam them like you would against a raiser who's going to have a big overpair a lot of the time.

Thoughts?

I guess one additional question: I found this kind of play really rather difficult to deal with, so I wondered whether the LP raise just on some fairly solid good hands might not be a pretty decent play at a fairly tight and reasonable table. I'd probably make it more like KQ/AJ or better together with maybe 88 up. As to the "definition" of "fairly tight and reasonable": A limped pot would usually have maybe 5 players or so, but they wouldn't play their hands frivolously and most would exercise some degree of caution in calling raises (not to say they necessarily wouldn't play A6s to a raise, but they probably wouldn't stack off with naked A on that hand).