hi guys,
I have a little question.
In 2NL it happends al lot that people just raise 2bb in early/middle position. But when I get pocket pairs like 77/88/99 and somoene raises 2bb I don't realy know what to do. Do you guys raise her?(how many bb). Or do you just call ?(why)

It depennds.
I played around 60k hands at NL2 and I didn't notice many people opening 2bb.
For sure big leak is calling small pocket pairs from blinds because you play OOP and it will be hard to win whole his stack( of course if villain is a aggro fish with full stack it can be profitable. )Mindless setmining OOP is waste of money.
When you have pocket pair always ask yourself a questions: who is opponent?, will I play in position? does my hand have showdown value( if you don't hit a set). Bigger pp like TT or 99 have SV on most boards so you win the pot without set

What? I can't imagine ever folding PP on BB while having to call 1 BB to take a look at the flop. Not doing that is a mindless waste of money. I strongly encourage OP to setmine when it's cheap, especially multiway pots. Because it is profitable. Being out of position makes it harder to extract money, but it is still very profitable. Especially on 2NL.

If you have some small pocket pair, like 22-88, always try to limp in and call raises (if they're not that big). If you don't limp in and raise from EP, you don't want to get reraised, that's for sure, so it's important to see the flop as cheaply as possible. With 99+ you can always raise, because those pocket pairs have a SD value and are pretty strong most of the time (especially pre).

No. Never limp. Ever, if you want to move higher.

Okay, you raise with 22 from UTG (which I think isn't profitible anyways) and you get reraised by an opponent. Do you really think it isn't a waste of money to call a 3bet with 22 from UTG?

if you have many limpers just limp
if sombody reis just cal dont cal 3b
if you ar first to act reis
from utg position until MP+1 try oupen from88and up
fromMP+1 position oupen all pair

wbc87 leave some com...

I honestly don't have time to explain it to you, as it is probably pointless anyway. But if you're willing to test your strategy, go open up even 5NL zoom tables, start limping PP's everywhere and donate your hard earned money back to the community.

Edit: I ofcourse meant openlimp, not raise from BB 22 when everyone on the table limped.

If you don't have time to explain that, why did you even got involved in this discussion?

Maybe that's variance but when I checked filter in poker tracker I saw that calling 22-66 from blinds cost me 4 buy ins within 60k hands
I agree with you that it looks differently in multiway or against aggro fish which I wrote before. Another thing you're wrong is that it's not 1bb but 2bb because 90% of players open 3bb. I don't think it's a good play against steal where range is obv. wider. Let's assume TAG opens K9s from the button and you call 2bb from BB with 33. You hit 10.5% of the time and even if you hit imagine that flop comes 344, how much you can win now?

Im sorry arnsaa1, you're right in everything you said. Keep playing 2NL forever.
Limping PP's EP is a very weak and generally bad play (well maybe not at 2NL, but almost everywhere else). If you're not able to understand why, i really don't want to be wasting time writing an essay explaining it to you, no offense.

@Woocash
I wasn't talking about the specifics such as defending PP vs steal etc. And the 2bb open was mentioned up in the post so that's what i replied to. I said generally it's profitable to open standardly any PP almost any position at 2NL. At 5NL you get 3bet with more than KK and AA, so you'd want to open small PP's more in MP leaning towards LP. So really opening 22 from UTG is not a good idea at 5NL. I'm having almost all PP's in solid green in HEM2 on 2NL zoom.

Meh, it just seems that you're the one who has no clue what's he talking about. You've been discussing here all day long and you still keep saying that you don't have any time to explain me why is it wrong to limp in with small PP from EP. You don't need a whole essay to do that, can't you just explain it in a few sentences? If not, what in the world is your theory about that? Like you made some big scientifical research "why is it wrong to limp in with small PP from EP" or what? How come you need a whole essay to explain this?

In my theory, with small pocket pairs you want to see the flop as cheaply as possible, because you can't beat much without a set or quads, so why would you want to raise from EP and maybe even get reraised by some better hands? If you get reraised, you'd pretty much have to fold your hand, because it isn't worth that much to see a flop. But, if we limp in and there's only one raise after us, it's still profitible to call that raise and see what flop brings us. I've been playing like that all the time and it's working just fine for me.

I've also discussed with some way better and a lot more experienced poker players than me on that topic, and what they said surprised me. Actually not... they agreed with me.

Dear **** lord lol. Ill make it rather easy for you:

a) Yes it probably works on 2NL (i did admit that), because player's there have no idea about poker just yet. I was doing the same thing, but than realised it was just plain stupid and wrong when i moved to 5NL and up.

b) Every rational player will start exploiting you. If your plan is to limpcall pre and checkfold unimproved OOP, you're leaking money. Even if you hit, you're not gonna get paid pretty much ever. YES, Limpcall is THAT transparent.

- You are not the preflop agressor, that is very important when playing OOP

c) Guess what, if you take a look on stakes above your skill range (2NL), you find out, noone really limps anymore after you, you're only getting raised. GL throwing away 4 bb's almost every PP you get

d) This is my graph for your stake - Do i still have no clue?


e) But feel free to limp PP's above 2NL, at least you'll make some regs happy

f) I just checked your posts, you apparently play 2NL and give advice to people on 25NL.

a) Wasn't the thread's author asking about NL2? He was, that's why I said that. And by the way, there's basically little to no difference between NL2 and NL5, so yeah, keep talking that bull**** somewhere else.

b) If you are talking about NL2/NL5, yeah, sure. I wonder how many players would exploit that on those kind of limits. If you're not, then yes, you're right.

c) read a).

d) Show that to your mom.

f) Huh, must've not seen it was NL25 hand. My fault.

Instead of actually learning something that improves your game, you're being a total idiot. I'm done talking to you, you're hopeless waste of time. I admire people that try to help you. Bye.

I see regs limp quite a bit at both NL25 and NL50 and see other people call behind them as well. It always makes me chuckle when a fish limps and then regs limp behind.

Arnsaa was talking about openlimping PP's everywhere with plan to limpcall and apparently checkfold unimproved.

Yeah see it all the time, get regs calling 6x opens just to see a flop with their face up range.

While I think Woster has been a bit harsh in his response, he is nonetheless correct. Your above statement is incongruous with your argument. If PPs are profitable to limp/call from all positions (which they're not; do a refined search on your DB for small pocket pairs from early position), then they must be even more profitable to open with. But still, just run the query on your DB. Just opening low PPs from UTG or UTG1 is generally bad for our range; limping is worse.

It's so awesome if you play vs these guys.


I think you can get away with limping small PP's on NL2, but raising is probably still ++EV.

1. You don't give the blinds free equity.
2. It's hard to get stack in in a limped pot.
3. I guess even some NL2 players recognize that and iso you.

Ooooh! I think it was Mzbourg who used to always use a gif with some guy flipping teh bird to another guy, for some reason that comment got thinking of it, but couldn't find teh gif..

About teh topic, I remember having a similar discussion when I first started playing, I just didn't think limping was an option. Anyway if I had to play NL2 again I would prolly open 55+ from UTG, 44+ from UTG+1, 33+ from UTG+2 and 22+ from every other position.

By limp/calling villain can basically iso a ton and cbet 100% with teh intention of folding when his has less than a set, so you win some small pots and lose some big pots v good opponents (which might be hard to find @ NL2).

Anyway, as always say do whatever is working for you, if one can't convince you that one play is better than another then play however you think is winning you teh most.

Oi! Don't laugh at me!

Open limping PP's EP is so bad lol. Even I can understand that as a NL2 player XD

What about button limps against aggro blinds( with the intention of seeing a flop ip with an spr of 10+)? Something like 22-66 + some suited hands and if opponents are good maybe limp/raise some hands. What do you think of this?

The advantages I can think of are that we are IP with a good spr for our hand and that if villain doesn't raise, we can easily take away the top 15-25% of all hands from his range.

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