I'm always looking for ways to simplify starting hands.

Lots of RFI hands depend on the EV of stealing the blinds. Once there is a limper, that calculation changes. So what to do with these hands? Some are strong enough to still be raises. But what about the lower portion of the RFI range -- can these hands be overlimped as a rule, or should they be folded to a limper?

It depends.

The lower portions of our RFI range lose a lot of value when we limp instead of raise, both immediately against the blinds and through the rest of our hand by capping or reducing the overall strength of our range. We also may face raises and squeezea from players yet to act, which is often very unprofitable to Hero. So even against limpers its important to stay disciplined.

But overlimping some good hands that would generally call an open instead of 3! should be ok.

For a lot of players, including myself, isolating a limper too widely can be a bigger concern.

I think limping more actually makes your strategy more difficult to execute, not simpler.

If you have a few examples to share, that might be helpful.

Oh and many rake structures also makes limps/overlimps much worse

That's interesting, can you go into more detail please?

I'm not the best person to go into detail on this.

In any poker the lower the rake the more hands you can play profitably. And being able to win pre-flop without paying any rake can be especially important.

Coaching site pros tend to understand this point the best, and repeat it all the time. I actually caught Dylan Weisman aka Dr. GTO (for omaha) on twitch yesterday and he specifically folded a hand in this exact situation and said it was because of the rake.

I made a straight flush vs him a long time ago

The days Dwan played PLO on HCL he had somewhere around 70-80% vpip and around 10% pfr. He would mostly only pfr as a limp rr to iso someone who was deepstacked and oop vs him. If there is no one in your game folding blinds or folding a limp to a single raise you are just lowering the SPR as the pfr so worse players can play 60/40 flop bingo easier.