How much bet to take the limped pot preflop?

I'm on the button, with 5 limpers and the blinds yet to play. Basically, I saw this as semi-dead money if I raise, so I made a 5XBB raise.

Was that too little? I figured if I did much more, it would look too obvious as a pot steal and might get called just on that basis.


Mind you, I forgot to look at HUD, which would have told me the table is VP$ 46.4, so it probably was a bad idea to begin with.



pokerstars GAME #9093288024: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($0.05/$0.10) - 2007/03/26 - 00:49:58 (ET)
Table 'Varsavia' 9-max Seat #9 is the button
Seat 1: seffe ($8 in chips)
Seat 2: PokerPotato ($13.75 in chips)
Seat 3: svupzz ($2.80 in chips)
Seat 4: Toxics ($16.10 in chips)
Seat 5: Christolph79 ($7.65 in chips)
Seat 6: NYCT4040 ($9.70 in chips)
Seat 7: watsekaKing ($8.95 in chips)
Seat 8: rex00111 ($5.60 in chips)
Seat 9: Ninelions ($8.95 in chips)
seffe: posts small blind $0.05
PokerPotato: posts big blind $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ninelions [Qd Kc]
svupzz: calls $0.10
Toxics: calls $0.10
Christolph79: calls $0.10
NYCT4040: folds
watsekaKing: calls $0.10
rex00111: calls $0.10
Ninelions: raises $0.50 to $0.60

Bet the pot - here to $0.85 total... round it up to $0.90 or $1. Who cares if it looks like a steal - they can't do anything about it unless they have a hand, and you have position on them anyway with a half-decent hand, so it doesn't matter too much if you do get called.

Bombjack is right, I would have raised the pot to .90. This would drive out the majority of the limpers, and might even take the pot down. If you get called, you are likely beat by PP, AK, AQ. With this many limpers, my guess is that you are going to get called with a marginal PP that is hoping to hit a set on a cheap flop so that it can win a big pot off of any high card that hits the board. In this situation, if you get called, you can consider yourself behind in the hand. If you hit the flop, bet the size of the pot (if you are isolated to 1 or 2 opponents). If you get called, then I would set the expectation that you only bet out if your hand improves to 2 pair on the turn. If you hit 2 pair, i'd raise all in and hope to take the pot down without giving villian a chance to improve without paying. If you don't improve, your only option would be to check/fold to any raise on the turn.

Standard raise with limpers is 3BB + 1 BB per limper.
6 limpers, so the raise should be .90 or a llittle more to take it down.

Thanks guys. I realized while I was posting it here that I should have raised more just as a standard raise. As it is, it just looks like I'm have a hand and might even be inviting people to call since the bet was too small.


This turned out to be a misplayed hand on my part that worked out because of the bad table. I got 2 callers from the limpers, so now the pot is oversized for the value of my hand and probably their hands as well. Hit a K on the flop and made what should look like a c-bet, got one caller. Now the pot is really oversized and I chickened out, made small blocking bets on the turn and river, and won, beating K2 that had limped and called me to the river.

You should have stacked him.