In most modern live cash games played in North American Casinos, they often have a buy-in structure of between 100 and 150 BB.

Its often stated by many experts that its almost never correct to open limp.
I know quite a few people advocate over limping with hands such as small pairs and SC's

The problem with the modern NL live structure is say we open with a marginal hand such as 22-88 from EP and are 3 bet, we often don't have the correct direct and implied odds to make the call.
The real shame is if we open to 4X with 22 and get one caller in MP, then get a 3 bet on the button to 17X, we cannot call profitably.
Yet hitting a set vs an over pair or TP GK is one of the most profitable situations.
My question is should players be either folding these hands or should we build an open limping range of small pairs and maybe some SC's to balance our range. Maybe even add in big pairs when playing on really aggressive tables.
It would seem that we may give up something in terms of information but maybe we can balance with small pairs and SC's which have enough flop texture coverage.
The advantages are that often we are last to act without having put much money in the pot.

We can play pretty well in terms of pot odds and reading the relative hand strengths before we commit too much money to the pot.
We are OOP so surely we would prefer a smaller pot.
The major disadvantage is we give up the aggressive advantage of open raising.
FWIW I don't know if the above is correct and is clearly opponent and table dynamic dependent.
Any thoughts?

I don't do much EP open-limping, but when I do I'd say the vast majority of my range is small PPs. Now this definitely exploitable and a bit face up, but against your run-of-the-mill 1/2-1/3 players I don't worry about it that much. The other small portion of my range is made up of small SCs/gappers and the occasional weak broadway hand. I'm still folding these combos fron EP at what I'd guess to be 80-85%, but in games where open raises will get several callers but is otherwise very passive, I'll occasionally mix these in.

Here's my disclaimer though, I'll usually only implement this in soft games where I know I won't be punished. When I play 2/5-5/10, or any lineup that I feel is pretty tough, this goes out the window and I fold most of this range from up front as I should, and open raise the part of this range that I do play. In general it's not optimal to do much open-limping, and I mostly only do so in games where I know I can get away with it without being exploited.

Totally agree but if we construct a range of small PPs and SC's, how do we get exploited if we are getting a great price to call a raise.
Yes we are OOP but we can cover enough boards with SCs and PPs to check raise with great equity range of made hands and draws.
I agree, in tougher games its harder when people know whats up but the vast majority of games in casinos are lower limit games with very few good players.
In NL cash games there is a large correlation between sessions wins and hitting sets. I want to get into pots vs bad players getting the right price to hit a set.

We can easily get exploited in a number of ways by any decent/good reg who pays attention with this strategy.

The most important one is that our likely range is extremely faceup to a good player when we limp/call a raise from early pos. Villain can put immense pressure on us regarding a number of boards knowing with high certainty wich hands we cant have and so forth.

Its absolutely correct we wont be exploited hard for this on many tables at low stakes, so we dont have to worry too much about it- but its simply not true to say we cant be exploited with this approach.

I know quite a few people who lose money at poker, too.

Advocates of opening limping (and you seem to agree with them based on this thread) play what I call bingo poker. The goal is to see lots of flops and you win your money by out flopping everyone else (Bingo!). The problem is that it is easy to remember when you get hot and hit lots of sets. However people forget all the times they run cold and bleed chips when they miss. In live poker, you don't have a database you can look back and see how you really did.

Back when US players could gather a database online, it would become clear that small pairs were unprofitable if all you were doing was calling them and playing a fit or fold strategy post flop. When you are playing them in EP and limp, that's about all you can do. In a 3 or 4 way flop, someone is likely to have TP and isn't going to fold to a pf limper who bets. They aren't even going to fold to your c/r. Try to bluff LLSNL players out when they are mostly calling stations is unprofitable.

The 4 pillars of pf poker are Hand Strength, Initiative, Position and Skill. I believe that winning poker involves having at least 2 and preferably 3 of these advantages over your villians. If your are limping small pps and SC in EP, you've given up 3 of them before the hand got started. Most LLSNL vastly overrate their skill level compared to their villains.

If you feel you aren't playing enough hands (and that's the real reason people advocate limping hands), it is far better to open up your range on the button. Most of players net winnings can be attributed to getting AA and playing on the button.

I was surprised to read this sentence in your post, because this sounds to me like a great argument *in favor* of playing “bingo” poker. If we’re up against opponents who will pay off 3+ streets of betting with top pair, it makes a lot of sense to cheaply see lots of flops because we get paid off so well when we “hit”, as you mentioned here.

For a serious response, yes it's possible to have an open-limping strategy, but it tends to be quite a bit more complicated than a raise-or-fold strategy. Any open-limping strategy cannot involve limping very specific hands only.

This is a horrible "strategy". If you're at a game where you can get away with this then you're better off picking up the dead money pre flop. And why stop at pps? Might as well open limp gappers, connectors and all suited junk too. If you're at a table of limp callers and there's say 5 ppl per limped pot then chances are your set won't even hold against most straight and flush run outs.
As ridiculous as a game like this is most people still know not to stack off in a limped pot with less than a set. So how do you go from a limped multi way pot to whole stacks without running into another set or better most times? The point of sets is to win stacks not bloat a limped multi way pot and hope one of the other 5 ppl will stack off in that limped pot with less than a set.

I agree with a lot of OPs post. There is no better money making situation in poker than hitting a set and even moreso hitting a set against an over pair. I'll tell you that 57% of all of my profit comes from flopping a set. That doesn't even include turning or rivering a set. So, folding any pp should be avoided whenever possible. They are just too profitable.

That doesn't mean you should play every pp no matter what. It means you should do whatever you can to be in a situation to be able to profitably play all pps. As OP said, if you raise a small pp in EP and get 3 bet, you are normally going to have to fold (unless deep). Odds are high that the 3 bettor will have a premium hand and often a big pp causing you to miss out on the most profitable situation in poker. Hitting a set vs an over pair. If you had limped that small pp you would be able to see the flop. So Yes I open limp more than most good players.

I know that when other good players limp in EP and then call a raise, they almost always have a small to mid pp and I play accordingly and punish them for it post flop. I also know that when I limp a small pp in EP and call a raise from a good player, he will do the same to me so again, I have to play accordingly. I dont just set mine and fold the flop every time I miss.

Against a normal reg or against a passive fish who only raises AA-JJ and AK you can just set mine. Against a strong player you will have to mix it up and check raise some scary flops like 678 and put pressure on him like he was planning to do to you on a flop like AK5.

I also agree with Venice that most fish play "bingo poker" and limp way too often just trying to outflop everyone else. However, the way we make money at poker is by winning more money when we:

Have QT vs KQ on a QT4 flop than we lose with KQ vs QT on a QT4 flop
Have 99 vs 77 on a 652 flop than we lose when we have 77 vs 99 on a 652 flop
Have QJ vs JT on a J63 flop than we lose when we have JT vs QJ on a J63 flop

We can do this by limping as well as by raising as long as we play well post flop and know when to continue and when to fold. Hand reading and having reads on specific players cant be underestimated. Sometimes limping these hands can be better than raising them. If people are folding JT to a raise, then we will never be in a raised pot with QJ vs JT on a J63 flop if we had raised preflop with QJ.

If we play well post flop we can limp in more spots than the "experts" would like and still make good money by winning more than we lose when we are in both sides of situations like this.

My win rate did rise substantially years ago when I started raising a lot more preflop, but my point is that limping is not as bad as the "experts" will have you believe and limping small pps in EP is something than can be done profitably if we limp other hands as well.

So to quote SABR42...."yes it's possible to have an open-limping strategy, but it tends to be quite a bit more complicated than a raise-or-fold strategy. Any open-limping strategy cannot involve limping very specific hands only"

I'll do it in soft 1/3 line-ups but not in most 2/5+ where I just open fold 22-66. I will occasionally l/rr AA-KK UTG at clueless aggro tables where players haven't picked up on what an EP limp means. At these tables the l/rr is usually more profitable than opening yourself.

It depends how likely it is to get threw. In my experience if there are two + agro preflop players at the table it’s just not getting threw enough and you should fold a lot of your llmps. Limping big hands becomes a better play at an aggressive table. Some tables are passive enough that you can profitably limp a few extra hands

At really weak tables in EP I open limp 66 - 88 and any suited aces and suited broadways I don’t want to raise with. Folding 22 - 55.

Normal tables I raise or fold in EP.

At aggressive tables I’m experimenting with l/rr 3 combos of AA, 1 AKs and 2 Axs and otherwise folding anything I’m not raising.

I didn't say they would pay off 3+ streets of betting. It will be hard to move them off of one. It gets expensive after that. Most LLSNL players can't limit themselves to one bluff every hour to 1.5 hours. They feel the need to bluff far too frequently. Especially when they are otherwise folding a lot.

+1.

Basically this is your answer. If you’re playing on a tight table it can be profitable to open limp with some low PP’s and SC’s, but if you’re on a table with more observant and aggressive regs or pros it won’t be so straightforward and you’ll need to balance your limp range. You’ll also have to accept that you’re going to limp/fold some spots. On the flip side, you’ll want to include some hands that you can limp-reraise and play for stacks to take advantage of dead money that builds up in pots.
(This doesn’t just mean AA/KK)
As always, you just have to be paying attention and decent enough at math to understand when you are and are not getting the proper odds to call.
In short, yes, you can profitably have a limping strategy on certain LLSNL tables, but you need to do it properly.

I'm a fan of open limping but then again, I play in uncapped games. In that situation, I always limp whenever I hold a club in my hands. That automatically plays me in a 75% raise, 25% limp strategy which is hard to exploit.

In uncapped games.

In capped game, just bet. With 100BB in front of you, good hands are hard to find. Bet them.

What is very interesting in this thread is we have a lot of differing opinions.
All have good points but it suggests that its often very close.
I totally agree with those who say its player/table dynamic dependent.
I can see all three options on the table in different situations.
I saw a video recently where a player said that you should never open limp.
Surely it depends!

I know its been mentioned in this thread about an EP range being exploitable but often we all play in a way that's exploitable but most people don't exploit us because they are losing players who are not really reading hand ranges.
Most winning players play super tight from EP and the SB in tougher games so in a way their ranges are narrow and exploitable.

Can we construct a limping range that covers most boards and also lends to a wide range of check raise situations.
If we only CR sets then its a little face up. We need a slightly wider range that also has good equity when called.

This might be one of the best posts I have ever seen on 2+2, and I have been here a while!
I don't disagree with anything written. I actually suggest we need a range of hands not just specific hands, but ones that cover enough flop textures where we can do a few things against a raising range.
Small PP lack any pre flop play ability and rarely have much extra added equity so we need SC's and some AXs type hands in the mix.
I'm very open to range suggestions.

The meat and potatoes of live poker is we all get the same hand distributions but its what we do with those hands that separates winners from losers.
How we get away from certain hands that might stack an opponent if the cards were reversed.
Flopping sets often put you in some of the best equity situations in live poker where you often have opponents drawing thin to dead.

+1 and if I lived near a casino it would be really fun to test out some limp/rr or limp/call and get exploitatively out of line at 1/2 or 1/3.

Limping whenever we have a club in our hand will have us limping more than 25%.

(Unless we only have one card in our hand.)

I mostly play 77+/ATs+/AQo+/KQs in EP (I'll tighten somewhat at more aggro / poorer tables). I limp them all.

I used to play looser than that, but I've simply concluded that it's unlikely hands much looser than that are profitable in most games from OOP. It's simply where I've drawn my line, but you're free to draw your line somewhere else.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Yep, you'd be limping around 44% of the time.
Even if you would limp only when you have exactly 1 club, that would mean 38% of the time.

Raise or raise not. There is no limp.

Obviously limping with no strategy or plan is worse than playing raise or fold. But just because bad players limp a lot doesnt mean that we cant ever limp. In live low stakes we absolutely should be getting into as many pots as we profitably can and I think incorporating a good, semi balanced limping strategy will make you more money in the long run than never limping.

If you can find a table where people will stack off in a limped pot without the nuts then more power to you. Most people, as ridiculous as some games are, do not do this. So even if you land the nuts it's hard to get a stack. Also if a decent player notices your weak limping range they will scoop your dead money up pre flop. If you limp fold pre flop oop more than once an hour you are a target. So now you have to limp good hands oop too which can work, but really is complicated and personally don't think is worth the effort

You don't have to win a stack at a time to win lots of money playing poker.