Every few years, tournament poker strategy evolves. Back in 2005, everyone stopped limping in and started raising preflop. By 2010, 3-betting light was the route to profit. By 2013, people were flat-calling again, and by 2015 everyone was defending their big blind with extremely wide ranges. What’s next?
Well, we’ve already seen it a little bit in some higher-stakes events, and it’s reasonable to predict that poker might come full-circle in 2018 – limping is making a comeback. It’s nowhere near as uncommon as it used to be to see a big-name pro with a stellar record of results suddenly open-limping into a pot preflop. It’s reasonable to assume that this will filter down into lower-stakes online games relatively soon, so let’s take a look at why some players are limping in, and how we can use such a strategy ourselves.
Why are certain stack sizes so awkward?
The stacks we’re talking about here are mostly in the 15bb-25bb region. This is the region in which many players feel very uncomfortable, particularly in early position. They’re not sure at what stack depth they should begin playing a purely push-fold strategy, and they’re not sure how much they can get away with raise-folding either – this tends to lead to them playing much too tight in general.
It also leads to a second problem – when players get 3-bet in these spots, they tend to perceive their opponents as being extremely tight. This is often the case, but it does lead to situations where players end up folding a large percentage of their opening range, leaving them open to exploitation from players who are willing to leverage their stack advantage by forcing their opponents into 4-bet-shove-or-fold scenarios
How does limping solve these problems?
By limping in at these stack sizes, in early or middle position especially, we keep the stack-to-pot ratio as deep as possible. This gives us added flexibility in creating fold equity in spots where we otherwise would have none – such as limp-shoving 20bb over a 3bb raise, rather than raising to 2.2bb and hoping for a little bit of fold equity when we get 3-bet to 6bb – and it also creates an added incentive for our opponents to attack us more consistently.
If we can engineer scenarios where our opponents are going to raise-fold to our limp-shoves on a more consistent basis than they will 3-bet-fold to our open-raises, we create situations where we open up a leak in our opponents’ games that would not otherwise exist. Essentially, we’re choosing to employ a strategy that generates additional mistakes by our opponents, rather than plays into their hands by allowing them to stay in familiar territory.
An example scenario
Let’s imagine we’re UTG+2 with 20bb at a fairly aggressive table. We’ll think about our range in a moment. We decide to limp in, and an aggressive player behind us assumes that our limp is weak and decides to attack it by raising to 3.25bb. When it gets back around to us, our decision is actually fairly simple – we can limp-fold some hands at the bottom of our range if we decide that this particular raiser is one of the tighter ones behind us; we can limp-jam with the expectation of significant fold equity; or we can limp-call, with a range of hands that can expect to realize a good percentage of its equity, by virtue of being very flop-friendly. In this case, our intention would be to check-jam the flop when we flop a good portion of equity.
When choosing our ranges for this approach, we should expect pocket pairs and strong Ace-x hands to be the best ones to limp-jam – we’ll struggle to limp-call them effectively, and we also unblock a lot of our opponents’ hands that will raise-fold to a limp-jam. When thinking of limp-calling, a range composed of stronger, suited-broadway hands with some AA/KK traps mixed in would usually be appropriate. Finally, our limp-folding range could be composed of some offsuit broadway hands or middle-strength suited connector hands, that might have played well in a limped pot but don’t have enough EV to limp-jam or limp-call.
Obviously this strategy has to be applied differently against different opponents – we might decide to limp tighter at tighter tables, or mix our strategy between limping and raising – but the reason we do it is to generate mistakes. It takes some time in order to get it right, but you’ll be surprised how often people raise-fold to a limp-jam, and you’ll also pick up the occasional small pot when it does limp around and you take the pot down postflop.
Further applications of limping
We can also take this approach a step further, and while limping at deeper stacks isn’t something you’ll see from high-level players very often at this point, there’s an argument to suggest it’ll come back into style in a few years’ time. We may reach the stage where in ten years’ time, your average high-level MTT pro employs limping, 2x raising, 2.5x raising, 3x raising, and all-in shoving ranges in every spot with regularity. After all, any strategy is viable if it can effectively exploit the weaknesses of our opponents.
It’s worth keeping this in mind as your game develops – there’s no such thing as a universally ‘bad’ strategy, there are merely strategic principles that make certain approaches easier to execute effectively and profitably. If your game is at an advanced level, there are all kinds of unconventional things you can do to push it forward even further. However, if you’re still learning the game, and your skill set isn’t built to the point of knowing the basics inside-out, I would suggest getting a good handle on more simplistic strategies first, before you begin to employ complex range splitting techniques or mixed strategies.
