Use common sense when limping. When in ep, we should really only limp with hands that can flop a monster and not top pair. So like small pocket pairs. Raise everything else. Often we're going to be first in the pot, so we should use that to our advantage.

I'm willing to limp smaller Axs in MP and small pp. Suited connectors down to like 76s are in my limping range, probably up to JTs or QJs.

In LP, I'm limping the pp, suited aces, RIO hands (K9/QJ/JT), almost every suited connector, suited one gappers, some suited two gappers, unsuited connectors down to a certain point.

Very important: don't limp the unsuited low Ax. Most of these omc will limp any ace, and there just isn't enough merit or playability with a low unsuited ace. It can also get us in trouble. Now, if there is like 1 or 2 limpers and we see A3o OTB, we should be raising, but that's different.

Strawman. Their problem is that they only raise their A+ premium hands.


Strawman. There's a wide range of action between never limping and limping almost every hand.

Most people would be better served if they looked up the definition of Reciprocity (or go to Tommy Angelo's website) and took the time to understand how it relates to this situation

I'm not saying don't limp, but there is a line somewhere in the sand where we should be deviating significantly from how we play a subset of hands comparatively to our opponents

There are actually people who advocate never limping, including in this thread, so not a strawman.

I'm trying to lead the discussion towards describing that wide range. At a limpy table, I'd say fold more than they do, raise more than they do, but don't raise so often that you discourage them from limping with a wide range containing too many hands.

In live poker games? The only players I see doing that who seem to be consistent losers are maniacs. Nobody is saying we should play like a maniac.

On most hands you won't be raising so I don't think they would be discouraged enough that they stop limping with a wide range. They will still be able to see a decent number of cheap flops. Probably the biggest "adjustment" someone will see when they raise these guys a lot is some bitching from the old guys because that's their only defense against the aggressive guy.

Not as much now, but after Black Friday, I saw a lot of internet-y guys who weren't maniacs and seemed to never limp. They either learned to tone down the aggression or went broke because they couldn't handle getting five callers every hand no matter their raise size.

Okay. I wouldn't recommend raising it up like that if people are that loose. If I don't have much fold equity then I prefer limping in with speculative hands instead of raising them in late position. It's obviously a bad thing if someone has one gameplan/style and sticks to that no matter what.

My experience has been that a table where it often limps around a lot will often let you steal the pot preflop a few times, but after a certain point they often get fed up and decide to start calling your raises and you end up getting massively multi-way raised pots against players who have decided to play a bit more unpredictable ranges.

My goal is to try to steal a limped pot occasionally, but not so often that people stop limping or start slowplaying. Against most tables, this means that my non-premium hands that I raise with are going to be bluffs, since I choose not to sacrifice the hands that have some value in a limped multi-way pot. As a player with a tight image, I want to play as many marginal hands as I can (for a definition of marginal which is different than others....I see A9o as a marginal hand that I limp behind with on the button maybe half the time when others would limp any ace in a potential family pot). My value raising range is mixed. Most hands I raise with some of the time but not all of the time, with varying ratios. That's actually a natural consequence of my personality and not something based on reading a poker book (although there are books that advocate that strategy).

But I understand there are limpy tables where I am not going to be stealing much. Since I am stealing with junk, I am wary of short stacks at the table who might decide that there is enough money in the pot to gamble and shove it in. Then, I stop stealing with hands where I wouldn't call if I knew that the short stack had exactly QJ or 88.

You shouldn't be focused on stealing with raises. You should be raising strong hands to build the pot to take it down post or at show down.

This is cash, (not tourney where stealing blinds and limps is necessary)

that's nice.. but its pretty devoid of theory on WHY certain hands are good for limping or raising or folding in certain situations and WHEN those situations are. sounds like a lot of randomization without direct causal purpose... "stealing with junk"... "most hands i raise some but not all the time, varying ratios" "based on my personality" (as opposed to math/reasoning)..

not to pick on you, asian.. b/c i respect your posts in general.. but this is representative 95% of the entire thread. there isn't much understanding of poker theory in ANY of the responses.. even the ones i agree with.

If you get five callers PF no matter what the raise size, then it would be the callers going broke not the raiser, I would have thought.

Everybody likes J8s.

I'm not focused on stealing preflop. I do it often enough that other regs understand that I can't possibly have a strong hand all of the time, but rarely enough that they still probably fold and aren't inspired to start a leveling war where they become less predictable.

Isn't this where the "understanding table dynamics" part about poker starts to play a very important part of our game?

The problem with threads like this is every poster has a prototypical thought of a table of Vs in their head, and it never matches another posters table, so we end up in circular arguments where everyone agrees but they don't because everyone has to win the Internet forum, so no one backs down

Limping is super table specific. Some tables you can limp super wide. Other tables you won't be able to limp very much at all.

agree with this post. but i suspect that there will be MASSIVE disagreement about which table conditions indicate limps with which holdings.

if there was consensus understanding of poker theory by the posters, then that disagreement would more likely be MILD instead of MASSIVE.

Spelling that out would require writing a book. I can point to books that propose mixed strategies. I'm kind of reluctant to go deeper into discussion until someone demonstrates they have read some of those books or have derived some of those ideas on their own.

But let's go with the idea of using junk to steal. You have NLHE:T&P as a book that, honestly, everyone who posts regularly should have read. Specifically, I'm going to require you to have read Concept #27.

Let's say you are on the button. There are hands you would at least call with and sometimes raise with for value. There are other hands that you are normally going to fold. If a bunch of people limp in, there are times when the money in the pot is sufficient that you think a raise is +EV just on the chances that you take the pot down right there, so sometimes you bluff. Actually, any two cards could be considered a semi-bluff in that spot. You shouldn't pick those semi-bluffing hands from the hands you would call with, especially hands that you would limp-call with if one of the blinds raised and most of the limpers call, because you make your hand worthless if you get three-bet. So, your semi-bluffing hands should come from your hands you otherwise would fold.

The example given by Sklansky and Miller is raising with K7s when squeezing two callers after a preflop raiser because it has a better chance of making a hand than complete trash if you get called. We're talking about a limped pot here, where I think K7s is usually a call after several limpers. In this scenario of raising on the button, my range is going to be heavily towards pairs and big cards. While you don't need to be perfectly balanced at low stakes, you may need some balance when playing against opponents who are paying some attention.

What are the worst flops for a range strongly weighted towards premium hands? Flops where your opponent can plausibly represent a small or medium straight. So, I'm probably picking out hands like 64o or 74s if I am folding those in limped pots (and those may be calling hands against some lineups).

You're going broke if you keep raising hands like KJo and don't respect your opponents enough to fold top pair in appropriate spots.

I do try to account for that, which is why some of my posts are about finding the inflection point where the best play changes from A to B.

If we get back to the idea of a daytime game with a lot of old men limping, this probably isn't going to be a great game, but it's also not inherently unprofitable. Sometimes, this table ends up being one where you should be focusing on small pots and not big pots. Thus, you should raise less often than normal because you don't really want to play big pots without strong hands. You're making a mistake if you approach this sort of table with the idea that no limit is all about getting someone to double you up.

If we, on average, stole the blinds + 1 limper just once an hour (once every 3 orbits), we would add about 2 bb/hr to our winrate.

Course, it doesn't always work out that easy, as there will be times we'll be caught with our hand in the cookie jar and won't be able to get it out. But hopefully we'll time things so that our steal attempts are +EV instead of -EV, while at the same time improving our image (i.e. we won't be seen as the guy just raising KK+).

ETA: Of course, the counter-argument would be whether overlimping our speculative hands is more EV than attempting to steal with a preflop raise. This is an issue I'm struggling with lately, and I'm not really sure where I stand on it.

GcluelessstealingnoobG

This is part of the best answer. But you also need to work on your raise sizing so that they'll call with dog poo like QT off. Overall, it's just a question of how to obtain maximum value for the hands you choose to play. But without training them to play better PF.

You basically want them to stay with their ranges but raise the stakes, which is the gist of what several members have stated.

Keep in mind that you should have a range on range advantage in most situations in the game as described.

This allows you to both go for fat value with middling hands, and to apply pressure to weak ranges that will tend to want to fold on later streets. You just need to work on your hand reading to figure out which is which.

The big problem with overlimping imo is that we have to hit the flop hard to be +EV with speculative hands. This happens so rarely (to me at least) that all you end up doing is slowly bleeding away your chips.

As an online player just recently started playing live, I am struggling with this also.

If we play better than our opponents postflop (by folding our mediocre hands far quicker than they do in multiway pots, playing a tighter range overall especially thanks to taking position into consideration, etc.), I'm guessing overlimping (to a reasonable extent) is still going to be +EV.

GnotconvincedeitherwaywhetheritismoreEVthanraising ,butprobablytabledependentG

the idea of reciprocality is nothing more than a subset of "make the most +EV decision in the moment"... its not all that useful outside of providing some psychological comfort at times..

what i mean by that is.. never, in properly deciding what action to take, would you ever think, "well, my opponent would actually do this here, so im going to do that instead" or any thought even remotely close to that... so, "most opponents limp too much, so im not going to limp as much.. reciprocality, biatches!" doesn't apply as a mathematically (or logically) accurate reasoning process