Lately I've been working the 1/2 at a nearby casino (max buy-in 200) and was wondering what you guys think about a strategy I applied last night as well as one problem that I feel I hadn't really solved.

First of all, I had an absolutely horrible seat. I had 2 tight players to my right and 2 loose aggros (1 bad, 1 pretty good) to my left. Also, as it got past maybe 9 or so the game went into this phase which often happens between 9 or 10 and maybe 2 in the morning: For a limp, everyone (except me) is playing pretty much any 2 and for a moderate raise you still get 5 or 6 callers with junk like K2s, K3o, J4s, etc. from almost any position.

When the game gets like that (and moreso with loose raisers to my left that had me potentially limp folding something like KJo when they'd routinely raise QJo), I switched to the following raising strategy: As first in, I'll raise any normal limp hand to 7 (and get normally 5 callers), and if anyone has limped, I'll make it 10 (with roughly the same result). I feel like this just makes my pots bigger and with the loose raisers to my left, I can more easily define their hands--like now I can just fold KJo to a re-raise, etc. and with a full-stack, there's still depth left to play little PPs for set value in a probable 3- or 4-way re-raised pot where it will cost 20-30 altogether to see the flop.

Then on my big hands, I make the raise bigger, like probably 15 first in and 20 with limpers, to narrow the field down to 2 callers.

So, first question: Do you guys like or dislike this adjustment?

My only immediate problem with it is that it defines your hands too much, but really no more than limping some and raising others. Here, I just make the limp bigger--but also with position give EP players the opportunity to limp re-raise, as I wouldn't with a limp. But few really capitalize on that anyway.

I started running this strategy last night for a few hours and one of the loose players (actually the bad one) to my left started giving me problems. After maybe an hour, he started re-raising me light, some mini-re-raises, sometimes maybe to 25 or even 30. I wasn't sure exactly what he was re-raising--I'm suspecting quite a few mediocre aces (A9+ perhaps). He was also one of these bad "fearless" types who gain big for a stretch then lose it all.

How should one deal with this kind of player OOP? One thing that might be possible (?) is to start limping little PPs and SCs again to avoid over-inflation of the pot PF and to gain plenty of callers. Maybe also mixing in big hands as much as 1/3 of the time in the "small raise" category so that you have something to come over the top with? Possibly 4-betting AQ or even AJ, TT to half a stack (pretty risky if anyone else has called, though, as was often the case)?

While this guy was very bad postflop, I do think he was astute enough to have noticed that I was making 2 classes of raises anyway, and he made PF play difficult--and it was also much more difficult OOP to capitalize on his postflop mistakes.

What do you do here for as long as you don't have the option of getting a better seat?