A case for limping pre-flop.

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.

You can double up, but when you enter a pot the frequency with which you will double up is very low. It can lead to a big pot but the frequency with which it wont will multiply the cost of the attempt.

That TAG is probably highly exploitable because you're right, he probably does have TPTK type hands. You're describing a TAGfish. Forget about your cards for a minute and take a look at the table, who's folding too easily, who's calling too lightly, bluff the nits, value town the loose players, bluff the semi-thinking LAGs. Play a different range against all of them. Understand how your range is perceived (if it's perceived) and manipulate it. It is entirely possible to run 14/10 and be playing tricky as hell. Keep the top of your range, ditch the dominated portion of it (22-77 because your implied odds are stuffed against most players) and include good barrelling
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.

You're giving him 20:1 odds. The all in shove is spewy, at best. If you have to do this, limp-raise his 5bb to 20bb and cbet 10-15bb on the flop. The pre-flop raise will have only slightly less fold equity (but it's 5x smaller so you save a lot when it goes bad) and you gain some equity when he calls and gives you a highly profitable cbet opportunity.

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.

I don't like this because you're OOP. You're calling hoping to hit top pair, what's your plan if you miss? You're calling an extra 4bb pre-flop to hit 1/3 flops, that means you need to win an extra 2.6bb post-flop every hand to break even (doesn't sound like a lot, but giving up 2.6bb more than you have to every time you have AK is huge).
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.

Why do you want them to play speculative hands that they can fold if they miss? The only style of play that likes this is LAG, and I can see limping being part of a very creative overall LAG strategy but for the non-genius majority of us, LAG play relies heavily on stealing pots. Lots of pots. You can't get in there with rags and try to hit big and win big, you don't hit big often enough. You need to win lots of small pots to play such a wide range.
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.

If you win only one 100bb stack for every 100 times you invested 1bb, you're going to lose. You win a lot of stacks and lose a lot, that's poker, your edges (against ranges) are rarely big, sure on the river you may be pushing the nuts but the money you paid to draw to it was still paid. Sure, you called his shove with top set against his flush draw, but he had fold equity and he has outs. Edges are always thin. Remember that a good winrate is only a few bb per 100 hands, every time you limp/fold seriously hurts your winrate.

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.

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.

Also pokerstove AK against 1 random hand and then against 5 which situation would you prefer to be in?

Limping pf with a good hand is dangerous and makes the baby Jesus cry.
I will however limp a small pp to see a cheap flop.

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.

Poor Baby Jesus!

Lol at least I am trying to play them now, I was just folding them

I much prefer folding small pairs in EP (UTG, UTG+1) to limping with them. Especially if they're the only thing you're limping with.

That made me laugh.

Lol Hillbilly taught me that when I first joined.
And now he is teaching me pocket pairs, ty Hillbilly

end hijack/

Thanks for the responses. Good stuff to think about.

True, it's not good. However, the value comes in the deceptive aspect of playing it that way. If you limp, it invites other AXs type hands into the pot which might give you an extra street or two of value thinking that their top pair is good on a ragged board. They will have a hard time putting you on a big A in a limped pot.

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.

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.

It's a high variance play. When you have 5 people in a pot you really can't be too sure with TPTK, there's a good chance you've got several people drawing - they could have all kinds of junk. IMO, if its a small pocket pair or a suited connector and there's been a few limpers already and you're playing with 100 BB, go ahead and limp. AK is not a hand you want to play with 5 people. You can play tricky, but it's going to backfire. I've always preferred a more low variance style that involves selective aggression and relatively straight forward poker, it's worked fine for me at lower levels.

This, but that's not to say I won't bluff.

Sorry, but I just do not limp.

I'm always in for a raise.

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.

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.

After re-thinking this, I wholeheartedly agree. Limp re-raises are usually given respect and you can effect the same outcome with a standard re-raise and follow up cbet if called. Thanks.

I have ignored this thread until today, but I love this comment. I stated this in the cash games thread, but I'll say it again. This is how I keep my red line above 0. Iso-raise the limpers and then take it down with a cbet. If they call the cbet I then re-evaluate the situation from there. Besides 95% of the time I iso-raise them I am in position and they are trying to play the hand OOP.

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.

Have you even read this thread?

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.

You can win with small pairs without making a set, unless you limp. Honestly I don't see too many tables these days where limpers are seeing the flop without calling an iso raise. Make no mistake I'm talking about open limping. Limping behind 2+ other lose..limpers with small pairs and some SCs can be ok at times.

As a genral rule though I'll stand behind the premise that "limping's for losers".

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.

I'll concede that it could be profitable at the lowest stakes. I have no experience playing cash below 25nl other than crazy CC tables. From 25nl through 100nl at least, I'm pretty damn certain for the average FR player it's folding > raising > limping when it comes to small pairs from EP.

Agreed

Not necessarily. You have to think about it in practical terms. Let's say you limp AK in a 5-way pot vs. 2 top 30% hands and two hands in the blinds. You have an unpaired hand and no initiative, the pots you win vs., say, Ax or Kx are going to be smaller because it's limped, and you're going to fold the best hand a lot of times when, say, 97s bluffs you off a T82 board.

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.

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?

The equity is higher in a MW pot if you are allin preflop.

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?

The point I'm trying to make is that those Ax Kx hands will likely fold preflop to a raise but they stay in and call a couple streets vs a limp when they hit top pair/medium kicker. Limping also keeps the pot at much better SPR's (assuming 100bbs deep) for one pair type hands w/out a raise anyway.

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.

nice level 0 thinking. "omg i put u on teh AK, I callz."

Wouldn't this logic make an argument in favor of limping and then betting to steal limped pots (which is easier than you'd think). And in the process, risk less money in proportion to the pot vs a raise/cbet?

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).

Well, when you apply the percentage of the times he has an overpair, and equity vs his overall range, you're often good in that situation with 55. Especially, when you factor in FE.

cool keep up the good work.

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.