If a poker hand is a conversation, open limping is essentially saying that you don't like your hand relative to however many players are left to act behind you, but that you want to gamble. Sound like a winning mentality to you?

I strongly disagree with the last two posts.

In certain games, open limping is a way to put the minimum amount of money into the pot against the maximum number of opponents with hands that benefit from that scenario.

In other games, perhaps most games at higher stakes, players will not allow you to do this (they will "punish limpers"). And in such games, you shouldn't open limp (and indeed I never do, really).

But if you face a bunch of opponents who simply never punish limpers, why would you not limp the hands that would benefit from that scenario?

one problem with a lot of posts/threads on here is they often defiant to the argument we my opponents are terrible so whatever leak I have that basically no good player does isn't really a leak for me.

There's probably a few hands in ideal game conditions where limping is ok, but most people that refuskrky limp aren't good enough to tell when that is and end up with their default limo small pp, suited Ac utg no matter what the game is like.

meh...it's hopes and dreams...but they're colored by data. my normal game is 40, which almost never (like 1/[insert some large number here] chance) involves a table that's all loose passive where it's only 1 raise pf and 6-7 way. usually it's raise->reraise, then 2-4 way for 3-4 bets.

but when i play 15 or 20 on a waitlist for 40 (or if it's a crappy 40), sometimes the game is very loose passive where i'm quite literally the only person open raising most of my hands pf. as a result, when i'm utg, i'll limp the standard 6-7 way for 1-2 bet pot hands (small pairs, axs, etc.). so yes, hopes and dreams of a 6-7 way pot for 1-2 bets; however, those hopes and dreams are based on seeing 75-80% of pots end up that way. i'll take those odds.

esp when only like 5% goes raise->reraise behind me. in those types of games, some people even cold call w/ 3b'ing hands after a limp a raise and a call b/c they very seriously feel that they won't get anybody out and don't want to be in the lead in a big pot w/ more than 3-4 players ("oh, woe is me, my AA was cracked again" kinda people).

this should help get to 100 posts.

And FWIW, I agree with you totally that the game conditions where open limping is acceptable are not as common as people think. As I said, I basically never open limp, unless you count stuff I do when there are posters or additional blinds. If a player never open limps, they aren't missing much, even in the games where it is an acceptable strategy.

I was just bristling at the certitude of some of the posts. No, you can actually conceive of game conditions where open limping is fine. They just happen to be game conditions that are most often seen at 4-8 and below.

Around these parts we give good advice, not advice on how to become the best 4/8 player.

not specific enough.

1/3 of the way there

This is probably going to be one of my last posts here since I know I'm going to lose this argument against people much better at this game than I am. I'm going to stop playing devil's advocate, since I don't open limp myself pretty much ever either.

The thing is... the only reason why I don't open limp is not because I understand why it's bad. I do it because everyone I consider to be a good player says not to do it.

That itself is probably a legitimate reason to not open limp, but it's very unsatisfying without hearing concrete quantitative proof or strong logic at the very least. I want to figure out why it is bad if it is bad, if it is THAT bad, if it's ok to do so in very few game dynamics, or if it is ok to do so in MANY game dynamics.

I usually just follow the formulas of strong winning players since poker is complicated and I don't have the intelligence to figure out the stuff myself. What caught my eye to second doubt the "never open limp strategy" is I've seen a player most of you would consider world class and another player most of you would consider an expert (better than the 2011 online tags) implement this strategy at the 40/80 and 100/200 level. Either they figured out something I don't understand (which I think is 75%+ likely) OR I misevaluated the situation (5% likely imo) OR they ran multiple standard deviations good (multiple deviations unlikely) OR they like to experiment (20% likely educated guess).

I guess these percentages probably means nothing since my judgement can be horrible or I'm delusional or I can be trolling (which I'm not).

Without blinds it is obviously pointless to play poker. That is of course assuming everyone plays the optimal strategy.

If the blinds had to post a penny at a 1M/2M level then the correct optimal strategy is probably to raise with only aces. That of course is one extreme.

If there was a million dollars in overlay at a 1 cent/2 cent game then the correct optimal strategy should be to raise favorable hands and limp every other hand. That of course is another extreme.

if there was a million dollar overlay you'd still raise

And it gets said around here a lot, but looking at what one player does at 100/200 will hardly ever teach you anything because they're doing things for reasons that are tough to decipher in a hand history. You have no idea what thought process they were using for the hand, and never will anyone here without a lot more information.

There are a lot of "nevers" in poker which really mean "don't do this 98% of the time, and when you're good enough for the other 2% you won't have to ask"

I don't want to play suited aces and small pairs for 3-4 bets and I don't want to play suited two-gappers for 2 bets, even if there are the requisite number of people to give me proper equity.

That's the problem with EP in MSLHE, you know it's almost certainly going to be 2 bets somewhere and often 3.

You have a point. But, it wasn't that long ago that you "never" checked back a flop HU. Poker has changed and evolved and saying you never open limp is silly. I do agree most players do it for the wrong reasons, but to say it's unequivocally bad is just wrong.

I'm talking specifically about games where you don't mind playing them because when other people come into the pot, even for 2 or 3 bets, we still have a reasonable equity advantage. Or at least, not a significant equity disadvantage. The whole "you don't want to play these hands for 2 or 3 bets" without context is silly. That's mostly true because in most games you'd be a big equity dog. The games I'd open limp in this is not true.

With all this said, playing 150 hours a month of 40 - the game conditions are probably right <5% of the time, but ****, edges are small these days.

The implied odds you need when you, say, set mine for 3 bets is huge. You're 8.5:1 to flop the set, so for 1 bet 5 ways, you can easily make up the 4.5 SB you need to make the odds work. For 3 bets 5 ways, you now need 15 SB postflop just to break even. It's worse for AXs and suited 2-gappers.

If you can count on, like, 7 to the flop, that'd cut down IO required, but that's probably outside rational expectation for a MS game.

It's definitely correct to open limp in some 10/20 games. It's definitely not correct to do it "to mix it up".

It's bad because it defines your range way to much and you are often doing it out of position. It is often fine in some smaller games because you are playing against opponents who have no concept of range and won't try to put you on a realistic set of hands based on your actions.

That's like 75 percent true.

But it's also fine in any game where lots of people are limping and nobody's raising, even if they were better post-flop handreaders, because there isn't much that can erase the equity advantage of, say, 33, in a 7 way limped pot.

A raise followed by 7 folds can erase it.

Even in games where nobody raises, people still raise jJ and AK

Why are you arguing against yourself. You've previously said that there exists situations where limping would be ok. lawdude describes one such situation and you shut him down.

I know you're probably right but I could see there being some strategy where limping hands like 96s on the button or 88 utg in a 9max game might work out well. I'm a bit out of touch with LHE ranges so my examples might not be great, but there's gotta be hands that are barely -EV to raise because you have to put in too much money too often but have good equity/playabiltiy. Of course the big flipside is that if you limp utg the big blind can check and see 3 free ones with his J2o, but that's still a decent spot if we have to openfold otherwise.

Of course your raising range now gets screwed a bit because we have to balance the limps sometimes (not 100% sure we do, we can also just play really passively and call down appropriate frequencies just realising our equity).

I don't think the bots limp so it's probably wrong, but I can see it being a good strategy vs good but imperfect players sometimes. Especially if you limp with a very well thought out strategy your opponents might not punish it hard enough or overadjust and go completely nutso with raising every limp.

Because you can't possibly know that it's going to be a 7 way limped pot when we limp UTG. It may be likely in certain game conditions, but my point is that even in the most passive of games, UTG +2 may wake up with KK raise and everyone else folds.

Also I think his advise is better suited to smaller passive games. Even though the OP states 10-20 this is a mid stakes forum and mistakes games are very very rarely 7 way limp fests.

Also I've played a lot of live 10-20. There was never a spot where i felt the game conditions warranted limping UTG. Maybe j seas wrong or maybe that game was more aggressive than most, but just my experiences.

For the record, I have played in a fair number of 15-30, 20-40, and 25-50 games in Southern California where most pots were limped at least 5 ways. 7 ways, I'd say is fairly rare.

I just don't open-limp, because in general, I don't think the EV advantage of doing it in appropriate games is that important, in the scheme of things.

But I would certainly say that the idea that there aren't yellow chip games that play like 3-6 is quite false in Southern California. Certainly the norm is to have at least a couple of people at the table who know what they are doing and raise a fair amount, but these games do materialize and I wouldn't even call the 5-way limped pot scenario at 20-40 to be all that rare. As I said, though, 7 ways is fairly rare.

If you find yourself in a yellow chip game where it is happening, however, go ahead and construct an open limping range.

If I were a bettin' man, I'd bet this thread won't make it to 100 posts.

it's 50/50

I have this move that I do, I call it the Callipygian. When it's folded to me in EP, I put out one bet instead of two. It looks like open limping, but it's not. It's the Callipygian.