In cash games nobody limps from sb. People put more money in when oop. What changes in tournaments?

In tournaments with antes you don't want to fold the sb much because you are getting such a great price like 4:1 . That means you are playing >90% of hands. The best way to be able to play this wide of a range which is mostly going to be weak hands is to have the option to limp and see a flop cheaply as well as raising some hands. Obviously you can't just limp weak hands you need to mix in a few stronger ones as well that can limp/call or limp/reraise

Pokercoaching gives this as the explanation: "You should limp more when deep-stacked. This is due to positional advantage that the big blind has. The deeper you are, the larger the positional advantage is, so the SB player has incentive to keep the pot small."

I don't understand it at all. Obviously you want to fight for the pot more due to antes, but that doesn't explain differences in limping strategy for different stack sizes and comparisons to cash games.

So are we talking about an open limp, or completing when there's been other people in the pot before us? A contextless half quote really doesn't tell us

Others have folded

the premise here is that a limping range is necessary to maintain minimum ev of zero considering the game as a whole vs perfect players. extending from this we can conclude that (ev of limping range + ev of raising range) is a higher value than (ev of a strategy that plays raise or fold) in the small blind.

however, the premise itself isnt necessarily true imo.

in fact i find the opposite to be true in practice. ask yourself if you'd rather lose 10bb with an underflush or underfull house, or 100bb.

of course when youre short stacked the big blind will attack limps. but look at the minimum defense frequency of calling vs a big blind shove with various stack sizes. most players settle on shoving vs short small blind limps around the 12 to 15 big blind marker(as they should imo) or raising 2.5x to 3.5x with deeper stacks. depending on antes and stacks your minimum defense might be somewhere between 15% call frequency vs deeper shoves, and 50% call frequency vs a pot sized shove(think about how short u have to be for the shove to be pot sized. whatever minimum defense frequency is in a particular spot, thats how much of your range needs to be slowplays. because really if u raise all strong hands, while limping a weak capped range, your stack off range in limped pots is not going to be very profitable(if at all). this creates big liability unless u limp very strong hands(do not recommend vs passive players as these players allow u to throw away minimum defense frequency. vs them i shove strong hands and limp weak hands no problem as exploit).

this leads to further discussion of shoving ranges at sub 12 to 15 big blind stacks. every single human opponent is flawed. they all fall into one of these categries:

folds too much
calls too much

vs the former, shove a stong range that is wider than what you estimte as equilibrium given stacks. (this weakens limping range to the effect that it becomes liability vs players that will shove often vs limps, but the value gained by making them fold is worth the cost of eliminating your limping range).

vs the latter, tighten up relative to equilibrium(because by calling too often they knock u out more often, which actually transfers ev to the other players not in the hand; the closer u are to the bubble or a money jump the more this is true; this is not true heads up) however the bonus here is that players that call too much typically play passively vs limps.

since typically when youe really short stacked, its later in the game, you should have these reads to guide u most of the time in small blind.

if u dont have reads(perhaps u got moved to different table), i think limping deep stacked becomes even more of a liability, and limping when short stacked becomes a perfect place to trap with strong hands while limping only a small range of hands that have to fold. i raise everything else that i play.

interestingly after they see u limp a strong hand in sb, this typically grants opportunity to limp more drawing hands; theyre gonna check more often vs your limps in the future so u can seize ev with draws.

however all that said, there exists an ante size that would cause me to limp deep stacked in sb after everyone folds to me(because the price is too good) but typically i go with all of the above.

That point doesn't really have to do anything with tournaments but with big bet poker in general. The deeper you are, the bigger the positional advantage. Or in this case, the positional disadvantage in the SB.

With smaller stacks, there's an easy way to negate the positional disadvantage: Go all-in. With large stacks, you should try to keep the pot smaller and minimize the risk of committing ICM suicide.

idk man just because you raise pre in sb doesn't mean you're gonna get stacked all that often deep stacked unless you're really bad. i mean how often do u stack off bvb 45+ bb deep? if you're doing it a lot with a good opening range then yeah you're throwing money away. but if u play good poker considering the size of your stack, or your opponents stack, you'll be fine(nobody ever said he had us covered, we could have 60bb and he could have 40bb, so we can take some thinner +ev choices than if we were covered).

the last part seems like poor logic to me. if you're stacking off correctly when deep, you're gonna have a lot of very strong hands in all of those ranges, naturally it should take a stronger hand to stack off at 80bb compared to 20bb. limping preflop to protect against something that happens so infrequently seems like a basic error in strategy construction.

meanwhile when you limp and call a raise, there are hands in your range that are correctly calling profitably, yet these hands come with the sunk cost of the 1/2 bb call. read: a breakeven call preflop vs bb raise in a limped pot goes to the flop at -.5bb.

yeah if theyre passive this is less of a concern. but anyone with a clue is gonna raise at least 30% of the time in bb, if not more, with a range that is stronger than ours in probably 99% of instances(it takes a special opponent to play backwards poker vs a limp). vs anyone that thinks in terms of ranges and ev, the bb raising range will be a fraction of any decently constructed limping range. due to the way ranges interact through betting calling checking and folding, the number of flops that benefit the bb will outnumber those that benefit the sb by a large margin. think about it, you're taking the widest range spot available in no limit holdem mtt(think in terms of frequency of playing this spot for a moment), and you're handing over range advantage 30%+ of the time to protect against getting stacked, which shouldn't happen often when deep. since you can't have positional advantage you choose to defer range advantage? i really dont get it.

Limping allows you to vpip more. Mtts have no rake and an ante, both of which incentivize vpiping.

sure thats true, but range width maximization doesn't equal ev maximization.

It’s easier to get paid off in a tournament. Better implied odds and far better pot odds. Very few hands don’t have 25% equity pre.

I prefer small raises over limps but I’m a donkey. And from the small blind limping over raising makes sense.

No, which is why I mentioned two factors in mtts that heavily incentivize range width

theres nothing in any of that which incentivizes passivity.

why not take the logic which incentivizes range width and apply it by expanding our open raise range? this way we maintain range advantage going to the flop(provided no 3 bet), give ourselves a chance to win immediately, deny our opponents equity with bottom x% of his range, and win bigger pots with strong hands compared to a limping strategy.

we accomplish exactly none of those things by limping. and you guys think that the threat of elimination(an event that is more rare the deeper stacks are), and positional disadvantage are reason to turn into a loose passive fish preflop?

with due respect, im still not getting it.

You took the original question about why players should limp more if stacks are deeper to “why should SB limp at all”. You’re obviously entitled to your opinion that limping the SB is bad in general. I’d just like to add that solvers disagree with that approach.

i only do it deep stacked vs passive players that will allow me to realize lots of equity. i acknowledge that there is a range of hands in equilibrium that can profitably limp the small blind probably at any stack size if there are significant antes, however i don't think that knowing this provides much change in ev when im in the small blind vs the usual suspects(aggro donks and good tags mostly)deep stacked in a tourney, and the frequency with which this happens (bvb both players having 50+ bb when average stack is much smaller) is not a high value. thus the benefit of incorporating a limping range in such situations is not a priority for me.

i dont. i think that its much more important to get short stacked limp spots right compared with deep stacks. how often do u get bvb with less than 20bb? i'd guess that the answer is a much higher value than getting bvb with more than 50bb. and the effect on your bottom line when short stacked has a much larger effect on your bottom line because of this.

im not making the argument that u seem to think i am. i disagree with the title of the thread. im sorry if that wasn't clear. this part you said, which i replied to:

is related to neither chip ev nor $ ev. its a way of simplifying the game, which is an effective method of teaching people that wouldn't be able to grasp a more complicated strategy. however, at some point poker players should strive to start thinking in terms of "how do i increase my $ ev in this pot on this street with these cards?"

limping deep stacked bvb vs good players and aggro donks is not going to improve your $ev by any meaningful power.

constructing fold/limp call/limp fold/limp jam ranges for short stacked play will have a meaningful impact on your $ev.

thats why i disagree with the original premise of the thread.

One small way to **** with the minds of solver kiddies would be to simply limp from the small blind. If nobody does it, they won't have run their solvers and they'll be completely clueless. Free money.

Firstly, GTO SB limping strategies are definitely a thing in low rake poker environments, including cash games.

I looked up the SB opening frequencies solved in Modern Poker Theory. These numbers are for tournaments. The lack of rake and the ante incentive the SB to play quite wide.

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The raising frequency decreases as it gets deeper. The limping range is actually getting stronger, since it's being expanded with value hands that would otherwise raise at a lower stack depth.

The reason for this seems pretty straightforward - the deeper you play, the more the capped limping range can be punished. Therefore it limps more value to protect the range.

At a certain point it gets to a limp/shove situation which changes the dynamic, but the pattern of protection is clear.

im not surprised by those numbers. but i am surprised that ive beaten tourneys for as much as i have considering all this.

The best opening strategy is not the only opening strategy.

My chess engine prefers to open with d4, but I'm an e4 man myself. Similarly, just because a poker engine has determined that you can maximize value with a SB limping strat, doesn't mean it's the only way to play.

If you removed the ante and threw in some rake, the optimal strategy would quickly shift to a pure raise/fold strat.