It seems to be mostly accepted that if it's folded to you and you want to play, you should raise to open.

But is this line of thought based on any solid theory?

1) I've heard an argument from math people that only by raising can you put the big blind in a position to make a mistake, but that argument seems flimsy to me. It doesn't account for the strength, or vulnerability of your position at the table, and that you can yourself make a mistake by raising.

2) Raising everything you want to play for ease of balance is a practical argument, but I don't see a reason it should be theoretically correct.

3) Raising to be aggressive and collect fold equity--again I do not see why it should hold water theoretically.


Unless you are playing extremely tight and folding non-premium hands (which can't be right either), I can't find a good argument that raising every time you're first in should be theoretically correct.


Do any people agree with me, or can anyone convince me otherwise?

Raising to collect the blinds and deny equity seems a couple of good reasons for it.

fold equity turns your earn into cash! 1.5bb risk free if just the blinds. an excellent winrate in nlhe is 0.1bb/hand.

There are some spots where limping might have a higher EV than open-raising (e.g. in the small blind), but the main reason to play any hand is to make other people fold so that you increase your chance of winning the dead money. You can't steal the blinds/antes immediately by limping in.
Trial and error has shown that open-raising is a more profitable strategy overall than limping. If limping was better than raising, everyone would limp, instead of just the fish.

No. If you look at HU, which has been pretty well solved at this point, you'll see that hands at the margin between raising and folding prefer to limp and that they are balanced with smallish % of strong limps as well. I see no reason why full ring would be any different. Let's say you have QJo in EP and you know it's basically a BE open. I'm very certain in optimal play it would almost always be played as a limp.

There are two major reasons why no one does this in practice:

1. High rake means you don't want to see a lot of flops
2. Adds way too much complexity to your game for a relatively low EV gain

Because of pot odds? The SB would have to be 1/5BB to offer the same pot odds to completing as limping in other positions.

We're comparing raise vs limp odds. How good the limp odds are affects how wide your limp range can be, not if you can have a limp range or not.

Regardless of how attractive or unattractive the limp odds are they will always be better than the raise odds and there will always be hands at the margins of folding and raising that will prefer the limp option.

In a heads up game, you can guarantee that the 'fight for the blinds' is between a maximum of 2 players. Why would you limp in a full ring game, where your 'share' of the dead money will be even smaller, and up to 6 players could have position on you post-flop?

I don't see how you can reach this conclusion with any reasonable amount of confidence. There are multiple competing factors here, mainly the incentive of pot odds for limping vs. the possibility of winning the pot for raising. The worse our limp odds the more appealing raising is relatively. It is perfectly reasonable for there to be a point where the incentive to limp is too small to compete with the incentive to raise for the entire range.

Well if you wnat to have limping range,you should have some hands that will limp/fold.And if we assume you will get raised 50 percent of the time,so when you see the flop,you need to win like 1BB or 80 percent of the pot if you play vs BB.If my math is correct.
It seems to me,one of the reasons not to limp in non-SB positions,you just need to win too much postflop.
I know this is rough approximation.

Yes, but 1BB is 50% of a 2BB pot. Our weakest hands will need to capture half the pot against the range he checks back if he raises up 50% pre-flop. This seems reasonable to do since his check-back range will be relatively weak.

GaPot is 2.5BB,but we need to win 1BB we invest plus 1 more to cover up our losses when we got raised.

Sorry, I didn't realize you were talking about non-SB positions.

It is my opinion based on what I have seen the softwares say that open raising in holdem is more profitable than limping. Also, if I open call in some games, I don't feel good about it compared to open raising, counting out some situations and tourney situations perhaps. The aggressive play has been known a pretty long time, especially if you pick pots preflop and after. Vs. the extremes, one might do as well or better by exploiting.

I think the softwares always raise first in because that's how they programmed it, as an abstraction and simplification of the full NLHE game.

I don't think they gave the option to the simulators to limp first in. (except in heads up)

I don't think is true. With Snowie, for example, the "bots" were allowed to randomly pick from several options: fold, call (i.e. limp), open 1/4p, 1/2p pot, 1x pot, or 2x pot, and then simulations were run over billions of hands until the approximate EV of each option was established.
Through trial and error, Snowie learned that playable hands from UTG-BTN had a higher EV by raising first in, and open-limping appeared to be a dominated strategy, so it stopped doing it. (Some hands are +EV as limps, but raising them has an even higher EV). In the small blind, however, Snowie found that limping can have a higher EV than raising.

Something similar happened with Cepheus (the FLH bot), although that played heads up. It was allowed to limp, raise or fold pre, and very occasionally it chose to limp.

Some additional questions:

1) If we accept that heads up has a limping range, which is supported by the AIs, why would we not also expect ring games to have one?

2) Say we are on the flop with many other players remaining in the hand. We are in early position. Should we have a check-continuing range? More specifically, do our nuts and medium hands have preferences in how they play? Do they play mixed strategies?

Interesting to bring up Cepheus. It's limping strategy probably only exists due to noise. It seems pretty likely that the true solution to HU FLHE has no limping. Maybe that extends to NL as well. Does NL have more or less of a reason to limp than FL holdem, and is there more or less incentive to limp HU or non HU?

i think this is a good starting point for an iteration. now one would have to ask if, under the assumption that there will be at least one (iso-)raise 50% of the time, AA will be more profitable being limped than openraised. if not, we can safely assume that limping is not a good option overall. unfortunately, my 6max knowledge about 3bet frequencies etc. is far too limited to make any guesses.

Because one of the aims in a multiplayer game is to make other people surrender their share of the pot. Raising to deny equity is a crucial part of the optimal strategy. Most hands do not want to see a flop. Apart from when you have a premium hand, you'd rather steal the blinds.
Of course there is a check-continuing strategy. Indeed, it's often the case that in multiway pots, the PFR player should often be checking when OOP. It's fairly common for the OOP pre-flop raiser to only bet a few combos of strong (but vulnerable) hands and draws to the nuts, since betting mid-strength hands (or weak bluffs) when OOP and multiway puts you into horrible spots whether you get floated or raised, as multiway pots quickly get large and allow stacks to get in, but only a few combos want to play for stacks in a multiway pot. Check-raising is an also important strategy in those kinds of spots, since it's the best way to both get value/protection and enable you to get stacks in ASAP with the top of your range.

No. I suspect the stigma against open limping comes from the fact that bad players open limp a lot, but open limping strong hands can be more profitable than open raising. If you limp a hand like AK or AQ, it can encourage dominated hands to call after you which might otherwise fold to your raise. Employing a mixed strategy of sometimes and raising and sometimes limping can be more profitable. Limping a strong hand like AA has value for deception, and in many loose live games, it is common for cannons to iso raise but not three-bet, so limp reraising strong hands can be much more profitable in that situation. Limping strong and playable but non nutted hands in early / middle position like TT or JJ can also give you the opportunity to surveil the action after you before you commit to playing a big pot or end up calling a large three bet when you are very likely to be dominated.

AK is a 65% favourite against a completely random range. As soon as you add another player it drops to below 50% and as I say, that's against a random range including all kinds of garbage. By limping you're likely to end up in a multiway pot with players behind you and no idea where you are even if you flop top pair.

As for limping AA the same problem applies. If you limp-reraise it, how exactly do you balance that? What hands are you using? The sort of things you are talking about you could maybe get away with 15 years ago but the idea that they are better than raising first in, in any sort of game against competent players just isn't true. And by competent I really mean 10nl online.

Yeah.Its probably the case that some hands in GTO strategy should be limped in,because there probably is some hand that has same EV by rasing and limping,so it should be mix strategy.I guess the EV difference between open raise and limping is very small and complexity of playing such range is very high,so nobody plays it.

65% of 200 is 130. 50% of 300 is $150. Your equity can decrease while your expected value increases.

Your ev isn't increasing when you are oop in a multiway pot with AK.