Since you ranged him on 7x only, that means you would fold AK in this spot. ��

What you would do with AK is irrelevant to how much you should raise when you have the nuts. Also the relative likelihood of villain holding Ax vs. 7x changes when you have AA vs. AK.

You can split his range up into 3 buckets:
1. folding to any raise
2. calling a min-raise but folding to allin
3. calling any raise.

Bucket 1 is irrelevant. Bucket 2 has to be at least 3 times bigger than bucket 3 to make a min-raise better than pushing. That's almost certainly not the case.

It is relevant, because you're so certain that a player in this position always has trips, that means if you did have AK, 72, 73, 74 you're folding.

So if I'm understanding you correctly redsixerfan, your argument here for your river punt is that you have to raise small because BB is capped. I hadn't thought of that. You are a certified brain genious. Case closed, end of thread.

I'm not certain of that at all. What I'm saying is that whether he has a bluff, Ax, or 7x, he's not 3 times less likely to call a shove than to call a min-raise. With a bluff he's always folding, with a good 7x he's always calling, and with Ax or a weak 7x he may call or fold, but the difference in his call frequency vs. a $14 raise compared to a $40 isn't going to be enough to make the small bet correct.

That's a better way to express it. But I certainly don't believe someone at these online stakes always has a 7x when played this way.

It's been a while since I've commented on a 2+2 hand history but this one looks kinda fun. I spend a lot of time thinking about poker theory and technicals. But let's set aside theory for now.

Fundamentally, why would you want to limp AA?

Firstly, you pay a price when you limp. You are paying a lot more rake to incorporate a limping strategy, but in exchange you get to play a bit wider and open up more exploitative paths (in both directions). Most players forgo a SB limp to simplify their strategy, as it's basically the same EV theoretically. But there are certainly exploitative reasons to limp.

The reason to limp traps and value hands is because you think that's how you can make the most money, right? A solver will exploitatively limp a ton of value hands in the SB if the BB raises the limp more than 40% of the time. So the question is, are players raising your SB limp with 40%+ of range? Are they blasting off with random polarized garbage as they ought to be? This chart shows BB's response to a SB limp, 100bb deep, 50NL rake:



I suspect most low stakes players are not nearly aggro enough preflop for your value hands to want to limp. So the new question becomes, are they aggro enough postflop for you to make up for that missed preflop value? Are you able to get stacks in when on the right side of a cooler? It doesn't seem like it. So exploitatively, I think limping AA backfires.

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What about limping in general? There are plenty of low-stakes exploits that involve limping in spots where GTO would never limp.

There are some cool preflop exploits that involve limping a polar range in early position against a table of opponents that ISO too wide. The trick is to ensure you have enough value to re-raise. This probably worked better a few years ago when many regs just isolated with their entire opening range lol.

The best spots to limp are generally spots where you're often out of position, or have a discount to enter the pot. The worst spot to limp would be something like limping the BTN deepstacked, forgoing a massive edge and minimizing the pot when you have the best seat.

Is the bolded part true though? My logic says that playing passively needs a tighter range, since we can't then win the blinds without contesting. Especially when there's a tight opponent on the BB. We can raise almost ATC for instant profit, but when we limp we can't really call a raise with a wide range, since the opponent is tight and is very likely to check about 80% of times. Limp calling OOP with a loose range is something calling stations do. If we limp, we mostly hope for the BB to check back preflop and not hit anything - and then we only win the blinds when we bet the flop, ie the same money we would had won by raising preflop. In NLHE, it's a bit far-fetched to assume we both hit the flop well in a limped pot, except we hit it a little better. It happens quite rarely, it's much more likely that aggression wins the pot.

I can sort of understand limping against more loose and aggressive opponents, who regularly 3-bet us preflop and force us to fold. But then again, when opponents 3-bet too much, we can also defend by 4-bet bluffing, which is IMO a better move most of the time rather than limping.

A good rule of thumb is develop a strategy to beat your opponents not the rake. Profits come from beating players, not saving a cent or two of rake over a 3 hour session.

To clarify, I'm describing a strategy that mixes limps and open raises from the SB. There are plenty of exploitative reasons that could cause you to play tighter or wider than theory would suggest, in fact opening SB 2.5x with a very wide range is a common low-stakes exploit. But let's start with a baseline:

SB open/fold strategy - Playing 43% of hands


SB open/llimp/fold strategy - Playing 49% of hands: (side note - there's a lot more limping when rake is decreased)


The takeaway here is that adding limps allows you to play more hands.

A pure limp strategy would presumably allow you to play even wider, but it's a very weak strategy because you would sacrifice so much money to rake and miss out on ever stealing the blinds (which accounts for most of your EV in this spot).

Comparing the expected value of the limp/open/fold and the open/fold strategies, the limping strategy adds EV to the middle and bottom of your range by allowing you to realize more equity, but comes at the expense of the top of your range. The net gain is very marginal, which is why most players just simplify to open/fold.

This is not how you play a limped pot. When BB checks behind their range is also capped, so SB should lead the flop and checkraise at a high frequency. You also have to reraise a lot facing a BB iso pre. If you limp with the intention to play super passively, then I agree it's a punt in most cases.


I suspect you didn't read past the first paragraph.

You're giving him too much credit.

Hey redsixerfan i have now defeated 2knl and will start to play 5knl.

When can we begin coaching. Not sure i can defeat this stake without your guidance bro.

Now that many of the biggest pros are admitting to limping and even putting out videos teaching the strategy behind it, you all got quiet all of a sudden....................................

The first comment on this thread is me saying limping is fine

I also said that the most shocking part about this hand is not the limp but that you didn’t manage to stack the guy regardless, but that post was deleted by someone who is not me…?

Admins deleted and gave you infraction points. Trolling and insults are against rules.

They gave me infraction points and didn’t tell me?
They gave me infraction points for having a point of view?
This is news to me.

Also, what was the insult? It’s possible to say a hand is played trash without it being a personal insult even in 2023.