November 4, 2013
Hello,
I think some TPE videos have shown coaches doing this but not sure and I don't remember if the coaches approved of themselves doing it.
I have been sometimes open limping the SB when these conditions are in place, in order of importance:
-The BB's stack and/or my own stack is a standard reshove stack
-My hand is of moderate strength and can flop well but cannot call a re-shove (A2o, JTs etc.)
-It’'s late in the tourney, especially the final table
-BB has a history of enjoying a good reshove
-It is not really a bubble, rather the bubble/FT bubble has just broken*
-Even though BB likes to reshove, he also has a history of playing poorly postflop*
-I have recently shown down lousy hands after making a standard open raise to steal or have recently shown weakness after making a standard open raise to steal*
*probably not as important
In experimenting with this, I have found that pots are sometimes successfully kept smaller, and that the BB is often willing to fold to a small bet on the flop. I can't know what would have been, but it seems possible that I have avoided being reraised a decent number of times. The idea is to A) flop a monster, B) flop small value and play a small pot, or C) lose nearly the minimum.
I've also lost at least one or two large pots because of this.
Is it something worth doing?
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
Open folding the SB sucks when there are antes in play. Some of the best cash game players are now open limping the SB because even without antes the pot odds are so enticing. Of course if your opponent folds too often to raises or rarely 3bets and plays badly postflop, then you can get away with raising almost anything from the SB, but you've done a good job of spelling out conditions under which it's not going to be profitable to open raise any two. That leaves you with three options:
1. Develop a raise-call range, a raise-fold range, an open shove range, and an open fold range. This is what a lot of people do, but it's unfortunate to fold anything getting 5:1 against a random hand.
2. Same as (1), but open limp with the hands you were going to open fold. The problem with this is that your limping range is transparently weak, and many good tournament players will blow you off of it with a raise. This is a viable strategy against weak opponents though.
3. Open limp 100% from the SB. This is the only way to protect your limps against a good player. Open limping the occasional monster isn't sufficient because you will still have air the overwhelming majority of the time. You also need to defend appropriately once you do this. In other words, this may lead to you limp-shoving or limp-calling a shove with A6o.
It may be possible to do (3) and still have an open shoving range with certain hands that have enough equity to shove 20 BBs or so but REALLY want fold equity. This would be a few of the hands you mention, like A2o, JTs, 22.
The thing you didn't mention about limping, which I think is really most important, is being able to steal after the flop. Your average tournament player is much more capable of handling wide range situations pre-flop than post. Many will reshove appropriately against a small raise but won't recognize when Jack-high is too good of a hand to fold to a small stab on a dry flop.
But yes, the short answer is that I think this is something you should experiment with. 🙂
January 19, 2014
Hello,
I am interested to read your thoughts on limping, I do a lot of limping in the early rounds and it seems to be working for me.
I will preface this by saying that I am pretty new to poker, 8 months, and I play mostly live tournaments $40 to $200 .
So I am hoping you or anyone else who reads this can give me some feedback if my reasoning is just bad….
This strategy is for the first 2 or 3 rounds of a tournament.
- I like to limp 50% of the time , even from utg and the button, so I can see more flops and see them as cheaply as possible . I have heard this described as “fishy” but I just like to keep the pot small when stacks are so deep……
- Limping is contagious, once one or two people start limping, other people seem to adjust and start limping as well
- If it’s an aggressive table, I will still limp knowing I am going to get raised and planning to call because I don’t want to get 3 bet.
- I like to limp from the small blind, and rarely raise my big blind unless I have a premium hand or if the button is stealing too much.
I feel like people are a lot more willing to give up on a pot when they have only invested 1 or 2 bbs in an early round when stacks are so deep, so they are less likely to float or call with middle or 3rd pair. So even though more people see the flop you can still steal the pot pretty easily or get it heads up with a 1/3 to ½ pot bet…
In general I find that I am able to increase my stack at the early levels better by being more aggressive after the flop than before….
If this reasoning is all wrong please tell me, I might be developing really terrible habits…
TPE Pro
December 30, 2013
I also like limping when villain is hyper aggro, and where I can have a limp/3b-ai range. This happens a lot on some of the similar conditions you spoke of in OP:
one or both stacks are in the re-shove territory,
(sometimes) when we have a hand with moderate strength but dont want to r/c
(sometimes) when we have a monster or otherwise have a hand that will play fine on flops vs a check
Although the situations are relatively rare, having this facet in your bvb limp range can make your limp less readable and exploitable
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