Too many absolutes being given on this forum. Every decision is dependent on the current conditions.

I'm simply going to disagree with this. I don't think I'm winning money at my game by barrelling people out of multiway pots more often than anyone else (if anything, my opponents make the mistake of attempting to bluff in a multiway pot when I don't). I make my money against people who simply don't fold their mediocre hands enough postflop, whereas I do; plus I value bet better than my opponents postflop.

Sure, having position and raise/cbetting plus possibly winning an orphaned pot here or there will add to the winrate. But I don't think this makes up the majority of the winrate.

GcluelessNLnoobG

That's ahead of most decent 1/3 players.

I keep reminding myself, while I am trying to improve at poker, don't lose sight of the easiest way to make money here. Value, Value, Value!!!!

I've fallen into the trap of looking down at QJs in ep. Thinking, "I'm so much better than everyone here post flop. I'll limp for cheap." Next 2 players limp, someone raises, a few calls and "hey, pot odds + I'm so good." and I call.

See a flop of Q210ss and face a cbet. What the hell now? They may be on a draw....

Limping is fine in almost any situation imo, but limping just to hit a flop and "stack a donk" is not a good reason to limp. If you want to limp and actually profit from it, I think you should have some sort of balance as well. You should be limp/raising occasionally, limp/folding, and limp/calling. You need to have an edge postflop as well if you're limp/calling a lot, which I think is the major fault I see when playing live cash.

Completely agree.
We make our money from people not being able to fold post flop(EG. someone stacking off with AK on a AJQ board.)

If stacking a donk is not part of your game - then you fold JTs UTG... Please understand - I am not saying abandon all other lines.. I am jut saying accepting 100 bb from a donator once a session more than makes up for the 1 bb you waste once an orbit.

There is still salvaging to be done with other boards and lines - but it is the big score that swings it to +EV preflop.

Also, there are no absolutes "always" "never"... Very V / table dependent here... and if your games are any like the ones I sit in... there is plenty of money being donated.

The reason people don't advocate limping is because the average strategy is some form of tag.

Limp calling is horrible oop unless the guy is a maniac. So you limp oop to play aggressive postflop vs passive face up opponents. Its really hard for a tag to limp fold. They think its really weak. How many tight players you know limp fold 44,55 or 88. They can't do it, so tags would rather say limping is bad. I'm glad I'm a lag now officially.

When players are sufficiently worse at playing post-flop in limped, multi-way pots than they are playing post-flop in raised, multi-way pots or raised short-handed pots.

If I can at all affect how a table plays, I like to make plays that discourage light 3bet iso-raising and encourage the table to turn into a limp fest.

Limp-calling is great against a button who raises 30% of his hands if there are several limpers in front of him and c-bets most flops.

Maybe a tight passive strategy would work. All the hands tags limp oop are garbage. So limp calling is terrible. But of course tags will come in here and say "implied odds bro".

Type in 55 vs 30% in poker stove for me? I want to see what it says.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

3,955,422,240 games 0.000 secs 791,084,448,000 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 48.446% 47.98% 00.47% 1897827540 18415620.00 { 55 }
Hand 1: 51.554% 51.09% 00.47% 2020763460 18415620.00 { 55+, A2s+, K5s+, Q7s+, J8s+, T8s+, 98s, A7o+, A5o, K9o+, Q9o+, J9o+, T9o }

That's what I figured. Small pairs play terrible postflop.

In a game of small BI's, such as 40-60bb effective, IMO, limping against players of weaker ability is more profitable than playing a nitty game and waiting for optimal hands to raise.

The answer to this is the same answer to why we set mine. It comes down to implied odds + our villain's mediocre post flop skills and tendencies to stack off w TPGK type hands without even wondering what the Hell we are shoving with.

Now, does this mean we shouldn't raise or squeeze or make the occasional steal?. No, we can still do those things. We can still be aggressive.

But in poker, our profit will come from exploiting our villains leaks and mistakes. There are active and aggressive ways to do so...but there are also passive ways to do so.

We should know how and when to employ all of our different tools.

Or put another way, if all you have is a hammer, then all your problems will look like nails.

Something nobody has mentioned is rake considerations. If I open limp in a game and it's a small pot it is still raked $5 in most places, excluding Vegas. This is a huge factor, IMO. It's very hard to build a pot and win a sizeable amount in a limped pot with a $5 flat drop OOP, especially if you have opponents who play super passively because "there's no money in the pot." I see this soooo often.

I didn't mean to say that these are the only ways we win, although it does look like that's how I meant it. Winning big pots from donks who don't fold is obviously one of our main sources of money.

The point I was trying to make is that limping many hands preflop falls into a fit-or-fold strategy (even though we win more on average when we 'fit'), and good players can do better than this.

I'm not against all limping in live play. Overlimping in position is fine. Limping 55 UTG when I think there's a chance that the limp will make it through the table is fine, or my stack is deep enough to play for a raise. (although my default play is to raise on the smallish side with 55 from up front or fold it depending on the table).

But I am against limping JTs in early position - we will hit a draw much more often than our 2pr+. Because we're out of position, the draw will cost us more to reach, and we'll win less when we get there. Chasing these draws and failing to get paid enough when they come in will ultimately end up negative, IMO.

mtag - sure there are much smaller implied odds when drawing out of position - but that does not mean a draw can not be played profitably. There are even instances where the direct odds justify calling (i.e. 5 limpers @ $3, flop open ended draw to the nuts, V1 bets 5, 2 callers, ... so now pot is $30 with you needing to invest $5 to call - you don't even need implied odds!) At passive tables where often people have no idea about betting based on pot size - you can make a fortune chasing draws even OOP.

agreed if you can find a game like that, I play in a monthly tourney and the cash games afterwards follow the style you lay out above (works even better when these same people play Omaha, lol).

The best part is that after they give you direct odds to call, then they pay off when I overbet shove the river after hitting.

Fair enough. As I say, I'm very wishy-washy on these weak suited broadway hands in EP and it wouldn't surprise me at all that you are correct. If I was ever on a downswing and had low confidence in my game, I'm sure this case is the very first place I would consider tightening up in.

Bump.

I found this thread searching for discussion on open-limping.

One point not mentioned itt is that when you limp you cannot predict which players you will be up against in the hand. Sure some guys play nearly 100% of their hands, but you know what I am talking about. I usually loosen up and limp here when a fish is on tilt or the stacks are way deep. Standard.

Also if the blinds are loose/aggressive at all you wind up with poor relative position postflop.

I think limping EP has value in any loose FR game where an open-raise will persistently be called by 3 or more people. Against 3 or more opponents you never have enough FE to profitably capitalize on it, so showing initiative preflop is nearly pointless -- you just end up dumping more money when you whiff and fold. If you limp though, you can end up increasing your edge in one of two ways:

1) In a soft/stationy game, you can limp in Axs/Kxs/Qxs, small pairs and middle connectors because you aren't gonna get blown off the hand almost ever, see a flop 5ways or 6ways super cheap with gigantic SPRs, then take down a huge pot when you hit because at least one of the fish will stick around and hand you his stack (not that it really needs to be huge -- when you see a flop with K2s for 1bb you just need to extract ~20bb from flushes and trip Deuces to profit; if you see it for 5bb though you need to get someone's stack). In those games you can probably open-raise your big pairs and 2-broadway type hands despite the balance issues because no one's gonna exploit you. Unless of course you have one or more habitual isoers at your table, which brings me to...

2) In a very tough, aggro game where people see flops wide and are competent in wide vs wide dynamics postflop, most open-raises will get you 3 or 4 callers and you end up OOP, in a bloated pot, versus reasonably good players. REALLY a bad spot to be in with less than JJ+, and even overpairs hate life in this kind of a field if the board has completed draws (or trips that conceivably any Villain could have). So, since in such a game no limp survives without someone iso-raising over it, you just limp your big hands and then repop to iso the raiser. Then your overpair or AJ+ type hand (and semibluffs with like Axs or KTo etc.) either takes down a ****ton of dead money, or it sees a flop HU with a low SPR so you can actually play some poker with it.

That's just for LIMPING though. Limp-calling a huge raise is almost always bad -- if you're not reasonably certain no one's gonna try and iso you, and your hand can't 3bet and take back initiative, DO NOT LIMP.