ddubois
10-19-2004, 05:34 PM
How evil is open-limping? I know in limit it's very poo-poo'd, particularly in MP or LP. The idea is that you always want to give yourself a chance to pick up the blinds. That seems less important in no limit.
Say it's folded to you in MP, and you have a hand you kind of like, want to see a flop with, but don't consider a normal raising hand. Something like a A7s, 66, ATo, T9s, whatever. What do you do?
I lost a big stack today because I open-limped AJs and let 24s in cheap from the SB. He turned a very well-disguised wheel against my TPGK (he actually led out flop and called my misconceieved minraise), and when I rivered a J, I put my whole stack on it.
So, of course in hindsight, I'm having all sorts of doubts and wondering if this situation could have been avoided. One answer is the obvious: play better post-flop. But I'm also wondering about pre-flop. I know people say don't vary your raise sizes in such a way as to reveal the strength of your hand, but is not limping versus raising revealing the strength of your hand? Thus, perhaps in any circumstance I would limp, I should instead minraise, so as to discourage the blinds from catching some wacky crap? Or perhaps only do this minraise when I would open-limp? Or forget this idea and just raise the normal 3.5xBB? The problem with the latter is that I like limping with an AJ or an AQ and seeing if a raise comes and from where. With no raise, I can feel pretty confident that there is no overpair or bigger ace when I hit TPTK. If I raise AJ or AQ an AK might just call, and I end up overplaying my hand post-flop. Another problem is that I really don't want to raise those multi-way-loving hands like T9s; the real impetus for this open-raising is to limit the field with the big-offsuit and pair hands - but if I only do it with those hands, then I've done exactly what everyone says not to do - raise an amount that reveals my hand strength.
Say it's folded to you in MP, and you have a hand you kind of like, want to see a flop with, but don't consider a normal raising hand. Something like a A7s, 66, ATo, T9s, whatever. What do you do?
I lost a big stack today because I open-limped AJs and let 24s in cheap from the SB. He turned a very well-disguised wheel against my TPGK (he actually led out flop and called my misconceieved minraise), and when I rivered a J, I put my whole stack on it.
So, of course in hindsight, I'm having all sorts of doubts and wondering if this situation could have been avoided. One answer is the obvious: play better post-flop. But I'm also wondering about pre-flop. I know people say don't vary your raise sizes in such a way as to reveal the strength of your hand, but is not limping versus raising revealing the strength of your hand? Thus, perhaps in any circumstance I would limp, I should instead minraise, so as to discourage the blinds from catching some wacky crap? Or perhaps only do this minraise when I would open-limp? Or forget this idea and just raise the normal 3.5xBB? The problem with the latter is that I like limping with an AJ or an AQ and seeing if a raise comes and from where. With no raise, I can feel pretty confident that there is no overpair or bigger ace when I hit TPTK. If I raise AJ or AQ an AK might just call, and I end up overplaying my hand post-flop. Another problem is that I really don't want to raise those multi-way-loving hands like T9s; the real impetus for this open-raising is to limit the field with the big-offsuit and pair hands - but if I only do it with those hands, then I've done exactly what everyone says not to do - raise an amount that reveals my hand strength.