| This is a discussion on A case for limping pre-flop. within the online poker forums, in the Cash Games section; ... |
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#1 | ||||
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| A case for limping pre-flop. |
| Play Texas Hold'em Online Poker | A case for limping pre-flop. | |
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#2 | ||||||
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| First off, I've got nothing against limping. There are no doubt situations where it is the best possible line, I however limp maybe once every few thousand hands. Usually when situations come up in which limping may be the best choice raising or folding is very close in terms of EV, so I default to taking those lines because creative plays result in much more frequent big miscalculations. This is why I don't limp. Quote:
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cards like SCers. The point is, most 14/10 "TAGs" are TAGfish, they're doing it badly. The answer you're looking for isn't in adopting a completely different stragety, it's learning to play this one well. If it takes losses with the limping approach for you to realise that then so be it. Quote:
FWIW, you shouldn't be playing a TPTK hand passively OOP. If you're playing it then you should be the pre-flop aggressor (open raise, 3bet, 4bet, 5bet, if none of those sounds like a good idea, fold) because you're OOP, this means you're continuing with the betting post-flop until the point where it's no longer profitable against his range. Playing passively OOP is throwing money away, I'll agree with that. Quote:
Also what happens when you do catch your or A or K and an obvious draw completes, what about when you lose value when he checks back turns to draw to hands and folds on the river (costing you equity), what about when you hit your A or K and the board pairs? Hand over hand situations greatly favour the guy in position, and it's either going to cost you a lot or you're going to have to avoid that by playing way too passively and losing value. Remember also that you have a big hand, you want to win a lot, not a little. If you get AK vs AQ and flop an A, you want to win a really big pot. Quote:
If you're not playing an extremely wide range, and it doesn't sound like you are, then raising is good, you want them to make the mistake of calling because their range is weaker than yours. Build a pot, let them call with speculative and dominated hands, fold a lot and pay you off a lot. Quote:
Also stealing limped pots is not an easy thing to do, the pot is so small compared to the stacks that the implied odds are huge for any kind of draw and guess what speculative hands flop a lot of. Draws. All in all, I don't disagree. Limping is not some evil disgusting thing that we should avoid, it does have it's places. If you're on the button with a dominating hand and BB is likely to spew horribly post flop if he catches anything but not necessarily call wide pre-flop, then yeah limping is ok. If you must do it, do it in position. Even then, don't do it. It's not something that you must absolutely never do, it's just something that is almost always a mistake. |
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#3 | ||||
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| Here's the thing, what range are you limping with utg? Is it tight? Then limping doesn't disguise our hand if we limp what we should be raising with. Also big hands, or hands that are likely to be the best hand on the flop won't get much action unless your beat- meaning big pp or tptk type hands- at least not 3 streets of value. So if we limp preflop and connect we have a smaller pot for those couple of streets of value. If 5 people limp with us it's a 5bb pot we bet the flop get a caller he folds the turn we have a net of 9bb. Woopee. If we bet 4bb get 1 caller pot is 9.5bb on the flop. We bet the flop he calls bet the turn he folds we net 14bbs against less competition. Your right most of the time tptk or big pp don't get a ton of value so why short yourself preflop when 1/2 the time no one will continue with you to the turn? And sometimes you do hit a monster which makes it the much harder to get in your stack when the pot is so tiny. I guess I could see limp raising whenyour deep to get a better SPR so that you can collect a bigger bot pstflop or at least make it easier to commit with a big hand. Which is really more the issue than anything. A smaller SPR makes it better to get it in with TPTK and costs your oppenent when they call your big raises. By limping you are allowing your oppenent the right odds to call to beat your big hand. That was rambly and awful sorry. |
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#6 | ||||
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| From Ed Miller's SSNL: "an aggressive blind stealing strategy can improve a player's overall winrate by 1.5bb/100" You may not believe that the blinds are worth much in cash games but one of the most respected poker authors today estimates stealing the blinds to be worth ~25% of what people consider a solid WR. I love limpers. They limp, I isoraise, and they give up like 70% of the time postflop. So yes, limping can be profitable, just not for the limper. |
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#12 | ||||
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| Thanks for the responses. Good stuff to think about. Quote:
Do you really want to play a big pot with a one pair hand anyway? Usually, if you're barrelling and someone is still around by the river they have TPTK beat. The goal isn't to get worse hands to fold, it's to get them to call. Say you limp EP and get two callers, the SB completes and BB checks. You're now getting 4:1 pot odds as a ~33% favorite against 4 limping type hands, 35% vs random hands. This is profitable. Moreso in fact than if you raise 4bb with AK vs typical calling ranges (~52% vs small pairs and suited connectors) with only 1.38:1 pot odds. So, your equity edge is actually greater in the limped pot by a couple percent in relation to your $ invested. Looking at it from a purely risk/reward point of view, if you make a PSB on an A or K high flop, your total investment in the hand is now 1bb + 5bb to win a 5bb pot. Contrasted with a 4bb PFR and one caller (blinds foldind), the pot is now 9.5bb and you make a standard continuation bet of 7bb you're risking a total of 11bb to win that same 5.5bb pot. Plus, you're playing your cards pretty much face up at this point and a missed sets/dominated aces will fold and the hand is over, you won 5.5bbs. Consider if one of the players behind limped with AX(s) and calls. Now you're risking 6bb total to win a 15bb pot against someone who is calling in a dominated position (and probably even more importantly, thinks they still might be good) with potential for more value on later streets. Conversely, you can get away from the hand cheaply facing a raise from an obvious made draw, set, etc. Plus, if you get raised holding AK, it's definetly not the end of the world as most players will raise limpers with a pretty wide range of hands that are dominated by AK, and he will rarely put you on that hand. So, you retain the deceptive advantage. I guess I just don't like playing out of position because it makes it so easy to read your hand and I'm searching for ways to extract value, and make myself less exploitable, with a positional disadvantage. Does this make sense or am I missing something obvious here? Thepokerkid123 brought up some interesting points as well. I'll try to get back with a response to some of those in the next day or so. |
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#13 | ||||
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| The reason AK is profitable is because you have a good amount of fold equity. Your right if people are calling you down they often have TPTK beat, most of the time people don't call you down. Most of the time you pick up the blinds. Most of the time you get a little profit out of this hand and sometimes more, but it is consistent BECAUSE of folds- not in spite of them. If you limp and wiff you cant really cbet, more people are in the pot so you probably are way behind and you probably lose this pot. you could have earned 1.5bb, instead you lose 1bb. That may not seem like a lot but if all you ever did with AK was pick up 1.5bb it would be an AMAZINGLY profitable situation. When you dont pick up the blinds and wiff, you STILL have fold equity and will pick up the pot even when you miss when you fire a cbet. If you're only looking at AK as a way to try and get peoples stacks in with worse A's then your going to be losing a ton because worse A's dont often get their stacks in by the river- even when you deceive them. If you plan on playing AK as fit or fold on the flop- which you really kind of have to when you limp- I think you will be losing $$ over the long term. If your playing at the micros deception is useless. people are too dumb to be tricked straightforward poker is the way to go. If your playing higher than that you will need to limp a TON of hands to be deceptive and you will get picked off most of the time unless you plan to limpraise with garbage and big hands... but thats still bad. |
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#14 | ||||
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| re: A case for limping pre-flop. poker Quote:
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#16 | ||||
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| Sorry but most of these arguments sound pretty weak. There is a case for limping in some spots and in particular, I think overlimping on the button is a good play in a lot of situations -- when everyone is in,yeah, limp that 98s on the button obviously. But your dream scenario where everyone limps and you stack their two pair with the nuts doesn't happen very often. Instead, what happens more often is...you flop some sort of weak hand...you have 54 of diamonds in a 6-way pot and the flop is 4K7 with one diamond. Someone bets, 3 people call...you figure, hell, I'm getting 6-1, I call. The turn is the 6 of diamonds...OMFG, I have a pair + FD + inside straight draw...someone bets...there's a raise...OMG, I HAVE to call...the river is a 4 and you get stacked by 77. you can choose to play tight and build big pots with premium hands or you can try to steal a lot of pots with a wider range of hands, but limping accomplishes neither of these things. Big hands like AK don't come around very often and you are losing value if you don't raise/reraise with it 90% of the time. And yes, avoiding going broke with TPTK and getting value out of Ax is pretty much your standard definition of playing poker, it sounds like you are afraid to do it. |
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#17 | ||||
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| Not talking about stacking someone. What I'm talking about is extracting extra value from hands that would normally fold to multiple streets of betting. You'll rarely stack someone with AK as a TPTK hand anyway unless you're playing against a total fish. If AK is profitable because of the fold equity, then it really shouldn't even matter what your cards are/were. Or, am I missing something here? Isn't the point of poker to get worse hands to CALL and better hands to fold? The equity math actually works out better for the multiway pot than a raised pot (assuming 5 way pot first case vs 4bb raise and one caller second). Investing 1bb with ~35% equity in a 5bb pot is much better than investing 4bb with ~52% equity in a 9.5bb pot. It's more bang for your buck in relative terms - .75bb/1bb invested in the first case and .24bb/1bb in the second. I'm not advocating always limping AK, for obvious reasons. Just trying to present a different way of looking at extracting extra value from a hand that I think is trickier to play than I think most people give it credit. |
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#20 | ||||
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| I try not to open limp but in some micro games its not a bad play. In 2NL you often find your self in games with loads of limpers and calling stations playing over 50% of their hands- but never raise preflop. So you can be safe knowing your limp with small pair/suited ace isnt going to be raised by anyone. However if you raise they will all call anyway - so its just costing you more to see a flop. |
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#21 | ||||
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| re: A case for limping pre-flop. poker Quote:
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#22 | ||||
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| If you're playing against anyone decent the reason we play hands in cash is the blinds too. Just because we have 100 or 1,000,000 bbs doesn't change the fact that the only reason there is action is because we have to pay 1.5bb every orbit. All raises preflop are because of a combination of fold equity, hand equity, and both fold equity and hand equity on various boards later in the hand. Limping preflop just sets us up for playing a pot with high SPR multiway oop and that spot just generally sucks no matter what we have. The only exception is hands like low pairs which regardless of what wvh says if you are not being isolated is not a bad play. If there are people who will isolate you/be able to put you on a range though it's just throwing money away so you shouldn't limp. |
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#23 | ||||
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As a genral rule though I'll stand behind the premise that "limping's for losers". |
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#24 | ||||
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| Yeah but if people are calling a ton of raises preflop but limping if no one raises that's when limping small PPs seems fine. You can't really rely on looking to win when you miss sets just because most flops you're oop against someone who can own you pretty hard and you basically have no equity. On almost all flops you just cbet then have to ch/f turn. Now at least you said you fold them and I agree folding them > raising them generally in EP at FR but my point was at micros where players aren't going to isolate you light it can be open limping > folding them just because they'll see so many flops then not be able to fold top pair or any weak draw. |
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#27 | ||||
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Compare that to the times when you have initiative and have represented strength...you will win bigger pots vs. Kx/Ax and win with the worst hand on occasion when you get 77 to fold on a JTx board. |
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#28 | ||||
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| re: A case for limping pre-flop. poker Limping is teh sucks. There's not much more to be said for it. You can pretty much always come up with a better line except when lots of people have limped before you and I play 6-max so it doesn't happen too much. Also it amazes me how often people say that you can't win/it's very hard to win with small PP's if you don't flop a set. Playing them in position for a raise gives you every opportunity to outplay your opponents post-flop. Open limping gives you literally zero chance. why do that yourself? |
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#29 | ||||
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However postflop people do not continue in MW pots with nothing, in fact the strength of a hand at SD in a MW pot is usually higher than in a HU pot. So whilst you are in a favourable position pre-flop, post-flop you will find that if you hit a hand in a MW limped pot with a 'speculative hand' and you get action, you are not in good shape. People are entering these pots with the intention of giving up if they miss as they are cheap, so hitting your hand rarely leads to a big payoff. However should you hit your hand and get action, then someone else has also hit a hand and whilst you have a big hand you do not have the 'upper end' of big hands because virtually all hands that would have mead that kind of hand would have been raised preflop. When you raise preflop you alter most of this. You push out many weak hands that hit hands that are hard to spot. You gain initiative, its a lot easier to push someone off a small made hand with a c-bet than a bet out of nowhere. Your raise preflop may also take the pot down there and then. Your winrate is also higher when you raise rather than limp, look at your own database. Filter by pots where you are the PFR vs limpers and compare it to where you call vs limpers. Which has the bigger winrate? Should you therefore be doing more of whatever is actualy winning money rather than trying in vain to reinvent the wheel? |
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#30 | ||||
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Plus, many TAG regular types will raise limpers with hands that they won't call a raise with. A limp/call is a way to get money in the pot in a dominating position vs these types of people as well as severely under-rep your hand. The goal should be getting money in with the best hand and playing small pots with worse hands. Limping with big aces is a backdoor way to do that as well as keep people off balance and more likely to make mistakes (and helps balance your range as well). Limp re-raise is also a good way to get a more favorable SPR with KK/AA and as a way to kind of 3bet and get more money in preflop from oop. You can also limp re-raise with 87s vs the habitual iso-raiser. Personally, I think "initiative" is spazzy and over rated, oop. You have to do something to keep your hand from being played face up. I'll call/call/bet in position on the 10 high flop vs villian's AK/AQ with my 55 all day long. Heck, you can even do that on a king high flop and see if villian really wants to play for his stack with TPTK. Obviously, don't do this against fish. I'm offering a different strategy to keep the regs off balance. |
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#32 | ||||
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Yeah, there is a better chance that someone hit big, but leading out into a 5 way pot looks very strong and you can easily get away from it for less than the price of a raise/cbet should you encounter real resistance. I think you'll also find that if you follow through, people will use the above logic and fold medium/low strength hands to a double/tripple barrel (which still costs you about the same as a raise/cbet). |
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#35 | ||||
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| re: A case for limping pre-flop. poker Quote:
The more people see a flop the less likely a bluff works. Simply look at your own stats in HEM to confirm this. Also a bet in a MW pot will not cost less than a raise preflop because the bet in the MW pot will need to be bigger as villians who limp also tend to chase draws or have difficulty in folding their slow-played AT or whatever other ridiculous plan they have. |
Number of Posts: 38
Number of Authors: 16