Just spitballing here:

I keep sitting at these live tables that have several pro regs who love to 3 bet fairly widely when they're in position.

So what's the advantage of open raising, or raising over limpers vs. widening your limp reraising range against people who like to three bet in position? At these types of tables, it is rare that limpers get to see a flop without a raise. There will also likely be more dead money in the pot when you limp reraise. Say - any hand you'd call a three bet with, you limp reraise with?

I've not seen much talk about limp reraising as a strategy, so what are the downsides? Again, I'm not talking about the tables where a limp from upfront has a good chance of seeing the flop 6 ways without a raise happening, that's obviously a leak.

There is a reg on acr at 200 blitz who limps his entire range utg and mp and he was actually decent. Idk anything about the strat but it can't be that bad

Are you talking about raising (over a bunch of limpers for example) or there were limpers, someone raised and then they raised over that raise (3 bet)?

There's a difference.

I’m talking about tables where players like to iso-3 bet a lone open raiser or 3-bet “squeeze” against a raise that has enough callers.

If someone likes to 3-bet wayyy too much I’d rather raise strong hands in rest position and 4-bet them a bit wider than I normally would.

I don't like it, at lest not deep, which my games usually are. Against good players, they fold their weakest hands, flat with the hands that can crush AA/KK/etc. but are easy to get away from, and 4bet their very strong hands and some "bluffs." And they tend to catch on pretty quickly and adjust.

I prefer Metnut's strategy.

Against bad players who don't adjust but just like raising and 3betting, limp/raising is fine, but those players are rare from what I've seen.

Metnut nailed it. For the most part, LLSNL players don't balance. Once they decide on a strategy, they'll do it nearly every time there is an opportunity. You don't see this often because once someone counters, the light 3 better busts out pretty quickly.

I've actually had people thank me for busting that type of player.

But if we widen our limp reraise range, do we mind them folding their weakest hands and getting away from hands that missed against AA/KK?

Just to be clear, I'm primarily talking about the situation where the other players are to your left and you can't or don't want to move for whatever reason.

It seems like 4 betting wider OOP likely commits more chips than limp reraising?

Well it would be a limp 4bet not a limp re-raise since the 3bettor is the re-raiser.

Downsides of limping - it has implications to your raising range. Also it will be much harder to play postflop unless you clearly know what your exact range is.

An all or nothing approach seems more feasible. If you limp you limp your whole range in EP.

Would also need to study 4bet pots OOP since you will most likely be OOP the whole time at low SPRs. That means a lot of smaller bets postflop.

Your standard deviation would sky rocket as well even if it added to your win rate. You are going to be bluffing/bluff catching more since pots are bigger which incentives both of these actions and this will cause more swings.

I'm a big fan of the limp/reraise, so much so that I literally raise no hand until I'm pretty much forced to myself in the CO+.

However, one of the reasons I'm a fan of this method is because 3betting is fairly uncommon at my tables. So if you're in EP and have a tightish image, you're almost never going to get 3bet, but your raise will often get flatted by half the table. Now I'm not particularly fond of that result, which I was I don't open myself. However, if the tables were much more 3bet happy, then I'd have much more reason to raise myself (to 4bet, which in my games is a fairly rare animal and at most typical stack sizes an effective all-in).

Course, I'm guessing if you're up against a pro then he'll probably be smart enough to know who he should be 3betting and who he shouldn't be. The real /derail answer is attempt to sit at fewer tables where you'll be sitting OOP to difficult pros.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Why on earth would we want to limp/reraise when we can raise/4 bet the same strong range of hands?


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I was thinking this, too, but I was assuming the villain raises and/or 3bets.

I mean if they 3 bet too much, the last thing we want to do is let them off the hook by not giving ourselves the chance to 4 bet. If we know there’s someone who 3 bets too much, the solution is to tighten up and 4 bet them a metric f-ton.

Of course he could actually be 3 betting a good range and OP simply thinks he “3 bets too much”, because the rest of the pool only 3 bets KK+


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Eh, I’ve seen enough marginal and poor starting hands advertised and shown down that I can say they have a healthy bluffing range.

Yeah if you have guys like this on your left, my best advice is tighten up and 4 bet more often when you get 3 bet. Because the bottom of your normal range will suffer against 3 bets OOP, but the top of your range gains so much value from being able to 4 bet a lot.


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What hands exactly? Stuff like K7s is a very reasonable 3-bet BU vs. CO for example and would probably look pretty spewy to someone who hasn't studied that spot. Although there are usually limpers and bigger opens so they should be tighter than a "normal" BU vs. CO spot.

Just study calling and 4-betting ranges for various configurations of opener/3-bettor position, and the postflop spots that arise from that.

99.9% of live players don't 3-bet enough and cold-call too much, so it's natural that you're uncomfortable playing in these spots. They're so rare normally and you're usually against pretty face up ranges.

One upside to limping is that you'll instantly be pegged as a fish and be assumed to have a very wide and capped range. Maybe you can exploit a good player for a little while they make those incorrect assumptions about you and try to iso too wide. Even then though I think raising and defending well vs. 3-bets is better. Once they realize you're limping reasonable ranges and not a fish they should adjust their iso ranges and then you're just sacrificing your own ability to build/steal pots preflop.

There's not much talk of it because it's outside the box thinking that most players assume is bad, in large part because this strategy is not taught in any mainstream poker curriculum.

The most clear defense to a limp raise strategy is to limp behind though.

This is all very true. The summary is that: sometimes people are just going to wake up with a hand that can 3 bet you. We shouldn’t be sacrificing value from the top of our range in order to make the bottom of our range playable. By definition, the EV difference between our folding range and the bottom of our range is negligibly small


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Yes, I assume that would be the first adjustment - tightening of raising ranges.

EDIT: In fact once they start adjusting I wonder if you could just randomize open raising vs limp reraising.

But is there an added benefit to changing up the aggression factor? For instance.

Hero raises with 10s in early position. Is 3 bet by the CO with A-Q suited. Calls. The flop comes K high.

vs.

Hero limps 10s in early position. Another limp and CO raises with A-Q suited. Hero limp reraises. CO calls. The flop comes K high.

I think it may increase the likelihood of the early position player picking up pots in 3 bet pots.

EDIT:
The obvious loss I see is the pot limping all the way around.

I'm not sure this strategy greatly increases our losses when we "bluff" limp reraise a better hand.

I have limp raised without AA once and It was to confuse a reg, which it did. Otherwise, I’m saving it for certain 3 bet spots vs. short stacks. If I’m getting 3 bet a lot, it can be annoying but usually is a good thing for me since one of my leaks is opening hands I shouldn’t out of boredom.

You sure they're 'wide'?

I'd just say the nut counter-strategy is to fold plenty/call stronger depending a bit on stack depth/your post flop ability.

I'd also pretty much completely ignore the 'dead money pre' notion and set aside trying to develop a limp/rr strat. Both of these things sound exhausting.

Dead money in the pot is one of the primary advantages of limp-raising. It would be silly to ignore it.

I recently limped AK from UTG ($200 short stack at 2/5), player in MP makes it $30, 3 callers, I ship it for $200, original raiser folds and any-2-card fish calls. This is often how it goes. The players that know what they are doing raise too wide and the players who want to play a lot of hands call too light. In this case, my opponent had A8 so I was like 70% to win a $497 pot while only risking $200. Another added benefit in the all in scenario is that I always realize my equity, whereas in multiway pots from OOP there are going to be a lot of flops where I should just be check/folding.

I guess if your stack is on life support and need to fight for dead-money dollars then you can sit and wait for hands good enough to limp-rip, but this isn't what OP was asking about. In more common live game settings where there's play to be had post, winning the blinds should be a secondary concern.