I started playing in a pokerstars home game tournament with local people. I don’t know any of them, just that they are local. There is a common thread with how a lot of the players play. Limping. A usually hand early on in the tournament will play out like this. UTG will Limp. And 3 or 4 players will call the limp.

So you routinely have many people seeing a flop. When I have a hand, I will raise. I will get some folds, but most people will come along. And we are seeing the flop 3-4 handed.

I know these players are rec players and not playing optimally, but I still have a hard time with putting them on ranges and what to do after the flop.

I have a few questions on this.
1. What raise size would you guys recommend with 3-4 limpers in the hand?

2. Do I need to tighten up due to the amount of people in the hand?

3. Do I ever just call the limps with good hands?

Any info will help as I am not use to seeing this many limpers.


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Do they sometimes raise ?
It's not exactly the same if they are 50/0 or 50/15.

My rule facing one limper EG is raise 4BB IP, 5BB OOP.
Then one more BB per limper.

But I can't remember where I found that, so it may not be optimal.

The ones who limp don’t raise very often. When they do, you know they have something good. What gets me is I’ll raise, similar to what you just said, and they will come along most of the time. Then it’s just a **** show, because if I don’t hit the flop hard, odds are one of them did.


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I typically add 1BB to my raise size for every limper, and even another 1-2BB if I'm in the SB and BB and going to be playing OOP. As for the hands I'm raising, I like to keep my range full of broadways hands with the occasional bluff candidate. Most games with a lot of limping tends to see a lot of sticky players who aren't folding.
As for hands that I'm going to limp behind with, mostly made up of suited connectors and suited gappers, pocket pairs, suited Kx Qx, and wheel suited aces. Hands that benefit from seeing a cheap flop and can get more value when they hit their hands due to more people seeing the flop.

ABC poker postflop. You aren’t going to profit often from making fancy plays like cbetting light and triple barreling to force a fold. You have it exactly right; if you don’t hit the flop hard, someone else did. Just fold, be patient, but make them pay when you do hit.

Personally I’d focus on premium hands and ones that make big hands when they hit. Limp behind with small pocket pairs and suited connectors. Raise premiums. I’d lose marginal hands like offsuit broadways like KT, QJ and the like. Play suited weak aces mainly for flush value; pot control with them on ace high flops. Don’t play unsuited weak aces at all.

Just keep in mind—these are weak players, but that doesn’t mean you’ll beat them every time. Tournament poker is inherently high variance. Even against this pool, you’ll hit dry spells where you won’t win anything over many tournaments. You should be able to profit long term though. It’s frustrating, but the most important thing is not to allow that frustration to affect your play. If it is, I’d suggest taking a break from these tourneys.

Just raise less often and limp more stuff with massive implied odds.