Back during the poker boom, I made my money playing LHE. Two months ago, I started playing tournaments on ACR, and had a nice score. Since then, I started playing live, however my local casinos rarely run a decent LHE game, so I've since switched to 1/2 NLHE.

Now, with that said, I need to figure out good ranges for each position, specifically geared towards 1/2. I've always believed that if you're entering a pot, you enter raising, or calling a raise; never limping. Is this still generally true? Is it different for low stakes such as 1/2?

I definitely could use a refresher in starting ranges, as I feel like certain hands are costing me.

Theoretically true that you shouldn't limp but in practice you will probably want to develop a limping range, else your open range may be too wide. Especially in 1-2, a lot of tables will play passively, especially pre-flop, which allows us a limping strategy.

In general our villains in 1-2 are sticky, call too much, and play too many hands so our hands that can make the nuts (suited aces, pocket pairs, etc) have huge implied odds assuming at least 100bb deep.

So e.g. if you are dealt 44 or A2s, are you opening this in MP? Or folding? If you are opening this, you are probably opening all suited A's and all PP and at that point you're opening too many hands. Folding is too tight for hands that can make the nuts, so we often overlimp these.

This is really too general a question for this forum. I suggest looking at almost any NLHE beginner's book to get a starting range guide (other than Phil Helmuth's). Sure, they will differ some but the reality is that where they differ is going to be on hands that are marginally profitable anyway. They'll let you know where to raise vs. limp. The why to do so will come later.

Locked.