Open Limping (Not Trolling, I Promise) - Page 3

i think the game has to be very very loose and aggressive for this to be good. i have played in a few live games (not high stakes) where the catalyst would raise every hand, either open raising or 3betting and most people knew this. when i would be OOP against him, sometimes i would limp with the intention of raising his raise, after some people called, effectively created dead money because they'd expect his raise but no my re raise.

i do not think a game in general will typically be loose and aggressive enough to merit open limping (and its very likely limping in LP is always bad)



fwiw the game i would open limp in, would usually be 4 to 6 handed and is not high stakes. i think mixing in some open limps in a very aggressive game could be a useful tool if you are playing an unobservant opponent.

chris u are an idiot

Whenever this discussion pops up the arguments against limping are so laughably weak. People were taught that limping is bad in 2003 and they still believe that today without questioning it for a second. It's like a religion.

I think open limping can toughen up your raising range by putting some very nice hands that you were folding against 3-bets anyway elsewhere. Everyone does this postflop constantly and it works, but for some reason doing it preflop is considered unthinkable. I also think that's what Collins was doing at that FT, and it seems very useful in tournaments where the entire game is preflop.

If you don't know what I mean, read the story in the spoiler
+ Show Spoiler +

If there's some game-theoretical solution for hold'em, would open limping be a part of it, or does that give away too much EV to the blinds? I don't know, but neither does anyone else! Add to this some exploitative ideas: it may just be that your opponents play more poorly when faced with an open limp, not hard to imagine because they haven't trained against it for a billion hands online.

edit: whoops didn't notice I'm not supposed to post here since this is high steaks. My sincerest apologies.

On November 29 2011 22:56 wobbly_au wrote: chris u are an idiot

wtf manner

So... if you were to construct an ep limping range as your basic strategy for a FR game 100bb deep, what range do you think would be best? I'd try something leaning towards {Axs, small pairs, big trappy shit} since if a limp/reraising dynamic gets built up there's a lot of options for 5bet shipping in there.

I see two big problems. The first one is simply the number of big hands that might get wasted in the course of balancing our range. Once opponents had observed your strategy, you would need to limp close to a majority of big pairs you get dealt in ep to balance your range if you want any chance at l/rring them a chunk, and yet your opponents will likely have got a little more wary of raising you and just be over limping a lot of speculative stuff in position, ruining a lot of big pairs for you.

The second problem is that as people overlimp you now have a 3x bigger pot/stack ratio which greatly increases your positional disadvantage. All in all it doesn't seem worth it as a general strategy but pretty good to do in some specific spots involving big fish.

Also if you notice live players that ALWAYS limp reraise their big hands then you should start 3betting their EP opens light.

Oly's post is good.

Jelle's post is moronic.

Jelle I think its funny you compare limping to religion because in the same way the burden of proof is on those who say there is a god rather then those who deny it, its actually on you to prove why limping is good instead of our "arguments against limping". More to the point you need to also prove how it is better than a raising strategy.

You bring up some ridiculous made up game and extrapolate to get weird conclusions. So for some reason we start off with a strategy of opening 50% of hands UTG and folding 85% to a 3b... I think another way to improve on this strategy is to simply open less hands. Id love it if you could explain it in the actual context of poker with real hands to see exactly where the benefit comes from.

The way I understand it is the goal and holy grail of this strategy is being able to play a wider range of middle strength hands that you would otherwise fold to a 3b. But with this comes the reality that our opponents get to play an even wider range in position for cheap. Also lets not forget that for the pleasure of seeing flops with middle strength hands in small multiway pots, facing wide ranges, we also have to pay by doing so with some of our strongest hands losing tons of value in the process.

The assumption that limping will cause our opponents to play poorly is pretty baseless. How? why? I dont get it... "because they are not used to it" is not a valid argument imho.

I keep coming up with more and more arguments as to why this is bad after saying I didnt have to, so Im just gonna shut up now and if you want to prove me wrong Id be more than happy to listen ^^!

wobbly's right i am an idiot. hes fine

and just to clarify, the catalyst in the game i played was a big fish

sorry if im way off base with my comment

edit: the way i was thinking about it in that game (the only game i've open limped in) was my limp was essentially a straddle.

normally i'd think it's stupid, but so often in that game everyone but the whale folds after calling the whale's initial raise, so i'm almost always HU against with lots of added money to the pot. i thought it was fairly good since no one ever caught on, but i guess it is bad.

i am an idiot

evilsky great post. A+

dont take it to heart chris.. ur obv not an idiot, but your just wrong.

On November 30 2011 07:27 EvilSky wrote: Jelle I think its funny you compare limping to religion because in the same way the burden of proof is on those who say there is a god rather then those who deny it, its actually on you to prove why limping is good instead of our "arguments against limping". More to the point you need to also prove how it is better than a raising strategy.

Why is the onus on me? Many people are saying that limping is automatically bad no matter what, I am merely saying that it might not be that simple.

If I need to prove that it's better than a raising strategy I basicly have to solve poker to make a point... I can't do that, sorry. I think that if the perfect holdem solution were to come out, it might include open limping and it might not. I'm on the fence about it.

You bring up some ridiculous made up game and extrapolate to get weird conclusions. So for some reason we start off with a strategy of opening 50% of hands UTG and folding 85% to a 3b... I think another way to improve on this strategy is to simply open less hands.

Of course! I was merely trying to make the point that the 1st range, even though it has slightly less hands, gets trounced by 3bets while the second range does fine even though they both play the same chunk of their range against a 3bet. Of course you have other strategic options like playing less hands or 4-bet bluffing (the strats i talked about continued against a 3bet only with the nuts, of course its silly), ... the potential of limping is still highlighted nicely imo.

The way I understand it is the goal and holy grail of this strategy is being able to play a wider range of middle strength hands that you would otherwise fold to a 3b.

Kind of! Having a very nice hand in your raising hand may not be worth as much if you are facing many 3-bets (and by now, I think most people would say that 3bets are a big part of the game) and you have to fold those very nice hands to a 3bet anyway. Therefore, you can omit that hand from your raising range by for example limp-calling with it instead, accomplishing the goal of making your raising range tougher. The goal is to get stronger vs 3bets, not to play more hands.

But with this comes the reality that our opponents get to play an even wider range in position for cheap.

Is that really true? I can remember that when people first started open minraising, no-sayers would argue: "but if u only charge 2bb people will just call with anything and outplay u in position". Over time, that claim has faded. What kind of hand do you think people will limp behind with? 54o? And they'll make tons of money by doing that? I personally really doubt that, but then again I don't really know. Surely they can play a few more hands since it's cheaper, but all I'm saying is maybe it's not as big of a concern as you make it out to be.

Also lets not forget that for the pleasure of seeing flops with middle strength hands in small multiway pots, facing wide ranges, we also have to pay by doing so with some of our strongest hands losing tons of value in the process.

If this were true I'd immediately agree with you, but I kind of think it isn't. This is what I tried to show with my ridiculous made up game... I tried to show that you need a surprisingly low amount (yet admittedly still decent chunk) of nut hands to make a solid range. Why? Because we can also defend against raises by just calling. Remember that our raising range included a ton of hands that were "just not good enough" to call a 3bet, so they are presumably good enough to call an isolation raise. The strategy I suggest would look something like this I think:

When your limp gets raised, you...:
- Very often call
- Raise some of the time
- Very rarely, but sometimes, fold

the idea being that your range is already preselected to call typical isolation ranges, and if your opponents make such big isolation ranges that you can't call anymore, they will run into your extremely strong hands or those of the rest of the table too often for it to be worth stealing your 1bb

The assumption that limping will cause our opponents to play poorly is pretty baseless. How? why? I dont get it... "because they are not used to it" is not a valid argument imho.

Why not? It seems perfectly reasonable to me to assume that people will play worse when faced with a strategy they are not used to, in the same way that people who played 1,000,000 hands are on average better than people who have played 50 hands. That's just a small point though, if this were the only thing limping had going for it though I'd immediately agree w/u that it's terrible.

I keep coming up with more and more arguments as to why this is bad after saying I didnt have to, so Im just gonna shut up now and if you want to prove me wrong Id be more than happy to listen ^^!

I can't prove anything! You misunderstood me if you thought I was claiming to know everything I was really just throwing my thoughts on the subject out there, of course I'm not nescessarily right. I do feel, however, that many of the arguments of the "limping is always bad" crowd are flawed.

ugh sorry Evilsky i need to learn to make my points more to the point :/

omg lol. in an online game u should never really limp. only time to limp is if there is a whale behind u who plays 80% of hands if limped to him but only like 20% of hands if raised to him. even then it sucks when someone behind him tries to iso so it would only work if there are some passive dudes behind u (or if the fish is so fucking bad postflop that its to their advantage to limp anyways).

all in all there are VERY few spots i open limp...haven't done it in over 2 years. there are a ton of spots when i limp behind tho, mostly vs ppl who have tried to employ this open limping strategy. i gots the position tho, bam.

didn't really read any of these massive WALLS of text but your overall pf gameplan does not need to be THAT sophisticated. DAMN!

edit: fixed spelling -_-

I played with phildo recently deepish but not itm in a live tourney and he open limped 100% of his hands with like 20-50bb stacks all around. I think his goal isn't to be polarized to super weak and super strong hands, it's to limp hands that you are limp/calling or limp/folding with mostly and force the blinds to play OOP vs you when they will make mistakes when seeing a flop.

I think he realizes that tournament push/fold poker is pretty much common knowledge and throwing in a limping strategy and getting to play more postflop benefits him more than immediate fold equity of a raise. Also explains why he defends super wide to small raises in the bb. (J6s to utg open and 48o were two hands I saw get to showdown that he defended). Also note that in live poker your opponents' bet sizing and timing aren't the only pieces of information you get so you can limp and effectively know how strong or weak your opponents are after the flop much easier than online. I've been thinking about adding some open limping to my game in MTTs but haven't as of yet except SB vs BB.

As to cash game limping I haven't had much trouble vs it. If people are known for limp/raising a lot I treat their limps as opens and iso them only with hands I would 3bet to their opens and if they limp/raise I treat it as a 4-bet.

Only example I have seen in high level videos is Giggy who throws in a complete call BvB once in a while.

EDIT: and I open limp a lot in live games with stuff like 22-66 and 76s because people don't fold postlop, noone will attack me and they will pay off when I hit anyway. I can't see that ever be the case in even NL50 normal games these days.

From a tournament example you can look at Collins who brought this 'revolutionary' limping strategy to ME FT and failed badly against aggressive villains

On November 30 2011 13:47 thewh00sel2 wrote: I played with phildo recently deepish but not itm in a live tourney and he open limped 100% of his hands with like 20-50bb stacks all around. I think his goal isn't to be polarized to super weak and super strong hands, it's to limp hands that you are limp/calling or limp/folding with mostly and force the blinds to play OOP vs you when they will make mistakes when seeing a flop. I think he realizes that tournament push/fold poker is pretty much common knowledge and throwing in a limping strategy and getting to play more postflop benefits him more than immediate fold equity of a raise. Also explains why he defends super wide to small raises in the bb. (J6s to utg open and 48o were two hands I saw get to showdown that he defended). Also note that in live poker your opponents' bet sizing and timing aren't the only pieces of information you get so you can limp and effectively know how strong or weak your opponents are after the flop much easier than online. I've been thinking about adding some open limping to my game in MTTs but haven't as of yet except SB vs BB. As to cash game limping I haven't had much trouble vs it. If people are known for limp/raising a lot I treat their limps as opens and iso them only with hands I would 3bet to their opens and if they limp/raise I treat it as a 4-bet.

was me btw, just forgot my password for a min

I played on this pot limit live game and it was very loose but not too aggressive when it comes to 3bets, and I would limp premium hands UTG and UTG+1 pretty much 100% of the time. By raising I would verrrry rarely get 3betted and would just end up playing a 6+ way pot oop, but by limping I could limp-rr a lot since the fish loved to pot vs a lot of limps to build the pot, and still not folding to limp/3bets and not hand-reading them to be premium hands mostly.

Also when there were straddles (all positions allowed), especially button ones, limp-rr EP was soo good because you could re-pot really big and the straddler would a lot of the time pot any2 when limped to him.

And the times when they started getting suspicious I could just exploit that by limping hands like T9s/low pps and getting to play them multiway w/o getting iso'ed.

I'm completely sure that it was best in that specific game.

EDIT: pot limit holdem