Limping with Aces - Good examples?

[Gonso]

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I want them to pay too much to try.

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Yes, absolutely. Remember the idea here with AA is to get as much in the pot as you possibly can, and you can't do that by chasing everyone away. Let the 93 guy try to hit his hand, but make sure he's making a mistake by paying too much to doing so.

If he's not that sophisticated a player, and you know how to size your bets correctly, you're golden. Charge him as much as you think he'll pay to see a flop. Sure, he'll outdraw you now and then, but that's how it is. However, if you're losing a lot of money against players doing this, you should probably evaluate your deep stack strategy and work on your post-flop skills, maybe even play a little shorter if you have to.

You just don't want to give the 93 guy the implied odds he needs is all I'm saying.

To the original subject. Under normal circumstances, I generally don't like limping with AA for two reasons:

1) It doesn't really blend w/ how I play. I raise a lot coming in, and then continuation bet often, even into scary flops. This kind of requires me to do this with my good hands to give my raises some credibility.

2) Limping with AA is usually counterproductive in getting more money into the pot.

Once you take all of that into account, there's always a case for limping AA occasionally to mix it up, or when you have some goofball maniac who's sure to come over the top of you or something. I've done it less than 5% of the time playing FR - even though my raises vary a bit.

[AKQJ10]

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...you should probably evaluate your deep stack strategy and work on your post-flop skills, maybe even play a little shorter if you have to.

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Sacrilege!

In addition to making you the laughingstock of SSNL (Motto: "Better to donk away money than to look 'gay' or 'wear a skirt'"), it also happens to be excellent advice.

And great explanation of the reasons not to limp, too. If everyone folds to my PFR or flop bet with AA, they're probably also folding when I play A9s or 55 the same. Although it's likely I should also be looking for a new game.

[Gonso]

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Sacrilege!

In addition to making you the laughingstock of SSNL (Motto: "Better to donk away money than to look 'gay' or 'wear a skirt'"), it also happens to be excellent advice.

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Yeah, but then, some of those guys will be posting in SSNL for years to come.

[veggies]

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Its not something I would normally do but a situation occured in a MTT(which I ended up winning)last week.
The table was playing fairly tight with most EP raises resulting in folds all round but 1 player in late position had a habit of pushing if there was 2/3 limpers in the pot,I got AA UTG limped & he duly obliged & doubled me up.

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This is a great strategy in mtt's when the blinds get big and you are almost positive someone behind you will raise it up to try and take the pot right there. However in cash games I think you should only be limping with aces about once or twice every ten times. So very rarely just to mix it up.
Have a good day!

[Red_Diamond]

Your at a stanard table, you peek down utg and find AA. You decided to follow the books, so you do your standard 8xbb raise.

Good luck getting someone to pay you off here. Oh wait, maybe the donkey who just graduated from 6-max and overplays his QQ may pay you off if a K or A doesn't fall. But most time than not, we are not getting that lucky.

[Red_Diamond]

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IIf no one raises and there are 4+ players to the flop, I treat AA like a small pair.

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??????????????????????????????????????????
If 4 or more players see the flop you treat AA like a small pocket pair? This means that you only play it for set value? You just fold if you don´t hit a set when 4+ players see the flop?? That´s plain stupid!! Whtether you fold it or not depends on the texture of the flop, your AA are quite likely to be the best. Even against this number of players and imo it is a huge mistake to let that many players see the flop, pocket aces do not derive their value from flopping sets!!
Maybe you meant what you said in a different way because otherwise this is a big mistake!
cheers

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I don't see anything wrong with his decision here. It cost him the bare minimum to see the flop. Plan A didn't work, no problem he defaults to plan B. Now plan B has missed the flop. He's free to muck AA here if he wants. It cost him the bare minimum.

I think you're a bit too harsh here.

[AKQJ10]

You don't play any B&M poker do you? Even though your 8xBBL was an exaggeration (since most books would say that 3-5 BBL should be the minimum, but "as much as they'll call" should be the actual raise size) most small B&M games have tons of gamblers who'll call 8 blinds like it's nothing.

[Red_Diamond]

I don't know if you can count the odd weekend out for B&M. But I did play exclusively B&M for 3 years running, and now retired to play primarily online from my home office.

[Vicarious]

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Further to my other post - I'm also writing an article about Limping with Aces

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Another confession, didn't read all replies.

If more than half of the players see every flop (historically), I limp. The more callers I get, the more likely I'll get a very huge pot in return. If fewer than 1/3 of players see the flop (historically again), I raise 3-4x.

I don't limp very often, but if a bunch of loose players are around I'll consider the above and pull in a huge pot more often than not.

[Gonso]

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Your at a stanard table, you peek down utg and find AA. You decided to follow the books, so you do your standard 8xbb raise.

Good luck getting someone to pay you off here.

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In most games, if someone fires out 8xbb from UTG, they're usually going to just pick up the blinds. This kind of overbet discourages action, especially coming from the UTG position.

There's nothing wrong with raising 8xbb in loose live games where this might be the standard raise, or in play money or whatever. But this is not the norm. Harrah's AC I'd get this kind of action all of the time - but calling that game normal would be a stretch.

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If more than half of the players see every flop (historically), I limp. The more callers I get, the more likely I'll get a very huge pot in return. If fewer than 1/3 of players see the flop (historically again), I raise 3-4x.

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I think this is going to hurt in the long run.

In the first case, you're allowing for a big multiway pot without charging anyone, and that's a bad mistake. Even on a flop like 972 rainbow, you have no way to know if your hand is best - you can't rule out anything since you didn't raise.

The guy with 97s or 22 is ahead, and you gave him no reason to fold since you never raised. Allowing 5 players to limp when you hold AA out of position is a recipe for disaster. The huge pot you were dreaming of could just as likely get pushed over to a guy holding 92o.

In the second case, you have fewer people going to the flop, and now you want to raise. That's fine; I don't want to go to the flop with 3-4 players either (for the same reason as the lst example). However, you want to bet enough to narrow it down to one or two people, not chase them all out.

Consider:

You get AA UTG in a 1/2NL game, and raise 3.5x bb UTG. If you get only one caller, say the button, you've already got $17 in the pot. This is more money than you would get if you and 7 other players limped in!

It gets better though. When the flop comes, you only have to face one person, not seven. Even better, he's already hinted about his hand by calling your raise preflop. He feels that his hand is worth calling from position against your UTG raise. The deeper you are, the more hands are possible, but I'm getting off the point.

My point is that, while AA is a great hand, it's still just top pair once the flop comes without an ace. You still have a decent amount of equity against a range of possible holdings, but that's offset by a lot of uncertainty, and this is compounded when you're facing a bunch of limpers.