why NOT to limp preflop - 6max NL

[KRANTZ]

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There are plently of successful players that limp a lot.

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maybe, but they are not beating HSNL...

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What is HSNL? Is 10/20 HSNL? At 10/20 there are many players who limp a lot and win. For example, FSUPlayer (Old Screen Name Howard_Roark) was 31/14 for 5-6 handed in my old database and he is a 3 ptbb/100 winner over his last 200,000 hands.

I rarely open limp, but I definitely overlimp fairly often.

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There are spots where it makes sense to overlimp (closing the action, for one, after numerous limpers). But open limp? Like you said, rarely.

Re: beating HSNL - table selection, baby. If you're at a table with the 4 dragons you are not going to beat them by limping, unless it's done in a veryyy tricky fashion. And just because FSU is 31/14 does not necessarily mean he's limping a lot, right?

[Jeff W]

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And just because FSU is 31/14 does not necessarily mean he's limping a lot, right?

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Well, I don't want to dissect his game piece by piece, but he does limp a lot. Maybe I'll take a look at my database and find someone with a similar style who's not a known 2+2er and go over their play.

There are many different winning pre flop styles at 10/20. There are many regulars who play passively pre flop and do well(at least I assume they do since they'd probably be broke otherwise). The main thing to avoid is not so much limping/open limping, it's getting into reverse implied odds situations.

[KRANTZ]

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There are many different winning pre flop styles at 10/20.

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agreed, but which one wins the most?

raising = you're a pain in the ass to play against, your opponents's hands are easier to read

limping = good players pick on you, your opponents have an easier time reading your hand

in my eyes, anyway. anyone a big winner who likes to limp preflop care to talk about why they like to limp vs raise?

[Jeff W]

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agreed, but which one wins the most?

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Probably the more aggressive players. I wasn't arguing that the chronic limpers are the biggest winners, just that their style can be a winning one(and probably a pretty big winning one by most people's standards).

[thedustbustr]

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You limp a hand like Q3d and flop a flush. The BB had 2d4d-JdTd and would have folded to a preflop raise. Stacked.

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a lot of your points don't really support your claim, or they can go either way.

you limp 44, c/f a j high flop; ok great you lost a bb. you raise 44, cbet a jack high flop and get called, you lose 10bb, and you might even fold the best hand.

you don't win big pots, but you aren't limping big hands - you're limping crappy hands, and either trying to semibluff (and the bluffs are smaller = less money when they dont work) or trying to extract a small amount of value from marginal hands.

i agree with your premise, but i don't agree with your logic. I think it's better to be aggressive preflop for the simple reason that it's much easier to hand read when you are betting, rather than calling.

[iceman5]

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The absurd setup situations being presented obviously don't do much justice as far as illustrating the arguements between raising and limping. Those situations happen so infrequently that even if there is some value gained from limping a hand in a situation where you may get a weaker hand to come along and flop a 2nd best hand like that, raising will generally still make you more money in the long run because the majority of situations wont be setups like that, and you will be gaining $ from the initiative and subsequent fold equity / +EV situations created by raising, whereas by limping you are passing up on that. That being said, table dynamics could certainly sway a raise to a limp, especially (but certainly not exclusively) due to stack sizes present.

JKrantz is correct in bringing up the fact that by raising, you knock out certain hands out of their ranges, though. It is one benefit of raising and certainly needs to be mentioned. It is especially true with hands such as suited connectors. You really cant be too confident in the strength of your hand when you get a lot of action when the flush completes in a multiway limped pot and you are holding two rags of that suit. When you raise and eliminate a wide range of suited hands above yours, and are playing against fewer people with far thinner / more defined ranges, your situations become much clearer.

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I agree with you and I agree with most of his other points. I was just saying that his flush over flush example was a poor argument for raising being better than limping.

[Keepitsimple]

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raising = you're a pain in the ass to play against


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this is key imo. always try to be a pain in the ass.

[Dan BRIGHT]

Open limping = great for metagame when you wanna look like a donk

[JKratzer]

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I remember in someone's stats post a few days ago several people advocated a 1:1 VPIP:PFR ratio. I didn't say anything, but thought to myself that they were crazy. I think playing something like 25/12 is far too passive preflop.

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either there's a typo somewhere or you misunderstood what they were trying to say.

1:1 = 15/15
2:1 = 24/12

[KRANTZ]

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you limp 44, c/f a j high flop; ok great you lost a bb. you raise 44, cbet a jack high flop and get called, you lose 10bb, and you might even fold the best hand.

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postflop play is a completely different story, and of course i'm not advocating just c-betting that J high flop and giving the hand away every time I'm called. variance could be a little higher, for sure, but you're creating +EV spots that you wouldn't otherwise get.

and i agree with you and iceman: i picked some bad examples. it's difficult to find specific examples since it is so either/or. but i think we can all agree that raising puts the onus on your opponents to take a stand, and if you're better than them postflop you can raise a hand like 34d, flop an A25 board, and cause them to stack off with an ace where they otherwise might not have stacked off.

my original example sucked, but i'll use q3d again here. if you had raised it and flopped a flush, you would absolutely stack a lower flush. but if you had limped, a good player probably would not stack off with a lower one. couple that with the times you both miss and you steal the pot on the flop, and there's no argument.