Limping in EP first in w/ AKo and AQo (et all)

[lil feller]

Before I start, let me get out a couple of disclaimers.

1. I'm sure this has been done before, and I searched, but couldn't find a good thread on it. If anybody has a link, i'd be forever in your debt.

2. I'm sure i'm going to get flamed and lose all credibility (if I had any to begin with) for even bringing this up. If so, so be it.

3. This is a serious issue to me and my poker, and one I've thought about a lot. It all started when I read a Rolf Slotboom article years ago that advocated limping (occasionaly) first in in EP w/ the big broadway cards. My understanding is that Rolf does'nt carry a lot of weight here, and thats fine, but to me the article had some merit.

Now, on to the question.

Assume your standard online midlimit game. VPIP of 26ish, PFR of about 8%, aggression factor of 1.5. Full games.

I'll often limp first in in EP w/ Ak, AQ, AJ, and KQ (suited or not, but this is about non-suited) for a variety of reasons. During my time here i've seen that sort of move get trashed, but haven't really seen any strong arguments either way. Here's my take.

Reasons NOT to limp

1. Raising thins the field and gives you a better chance of winning unimproved

2. Raising gives you momentum, which may give you a better chance to win unimproved

3. Raising gives you value. You likely have the best hand at this point

Reasons TO limp

1. Raising encourages hands you have dominated to fold prefop, limping encourages those same hands to raise.

2. Raising gives away information about your hand. If your opponents know that you have standards, a PFR instantly puts 2 broadway cards in their mind. If you sometimes limp w/ these and sometimes don't, your hand remains hidden

3. You stand to get more action after flopping to your hand, and having your hand still be good, if you didn't raise PF.

There are probably other reasons for both that i'm missing, but I think this is a good start.

Please, fire away.

lf

[lil feller]

nobody has anything to say about this?

how about a link, or maybe some search help?

lf

[Clarkmeister]

It works well in games that are tightish but very aggressive. Meaning 2-3 to the flop for 2-3 bets. This gets you "isolated" by worse hands - hands that would've folded had you raised. It has to be balanced, of course, but it's a very valid strategy.

[lil feller]

[ QUOTE ]
It works well in games that are tightish but very aggressive. Meaning 2-3 to the flop for 2-3 bets. This gets you "isolated" by worse hands - hands that would've folded had you raised. It has to be balanced, of course, but it's a very valid strategy.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the sort of game i'm talking about. Cleary if you know you'll get called by KJ and AT anyway, you may as well raise. What sort of frequence do you think is best with say AKo. Limping 20% of the time? 50%? I really have no idea.

lf

[MrStretchie]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It works well in games that are tightish but very aggressive. Meaning 2-3 to the flop for 2-3 bets. This gets you "isolated" by worse hands - hands that would've folded had you raised. It has to be balanced, of course, but it's a very valid strategy.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the sort of game i'm talking about. Cleary if you know you'll get called by KJ and AT anyway, you may as well raise. What sort of frequence do you think is best with say AKo. Limping 20% of the time? 50%? I really have no idea.

lf

[/ QUOTE ]

I like to do this in SH games for the same reasons Clarkmeister outlined.. I'd say rather than a percentage, just do it in good spots. First off I'd rarely make this play with AJ.. and less with AQ than AK. That's because these hands are Seriously downgraded with multiple opponents, whereas AK is less so. Especially if they're offsuit.
Asside from that, if I've been raising a lot lately with lesser hands (steal or isolation attempts usually), then I'll go ahead and raise. Otherwise, I may limp, as long as it doesn't look like the field will be too large.
Of course, if it's a tight game but there's one loose player who will pay off, always raise.

One more point - although it's certainly a valid play, I don't believe it should be the standard. No more than 30-40% IMO. That's plenty to disguise your hands - beyond that you're just giving up value.

[pokerhooker]

Hi lil feller,

Your list is a good start, and I think the benefits of your reasons to raise outweigh the benefits of limping, therefore I would raise more often, and occasionally limp/limp-reraise for deception.

Out of position, and without carrying the initiative to the flop that a preflop raise would grant you, you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself to hit your hand, as well as hoping your opponents were dealt and decided to get aggressive with dominated hands in the first place.

You don't explicitly mention it, but I believe your whole goal is to exploit the aggressiveness of your opponents and their tendency to want to isolate limpers deemed as weak. That's fine, but I'd still prefer to do that with true monsters.

[ike]

IMO you're making a pretty big mistake if you don't do this fairly often in tight aggressive games. I want to be able to limp JTs UTG and observant opponents aren't gonna let me unless sometimes when they raise my UTG limp with AT they're sorry.

[lil feller]

I'm not a game theory expert, in fact i'm hardly equipped to include it in my post. However, lets say you find yourself in a game where taking this approach seems like a good idea, some of the time. You decide that 50% of the time you see AKo or AQo UTG or UTG+1 you're going to limp. Would it be insane to say "ok, if my Ace is black, i'm limping, if its red, i'm raising?"

[toke]

I'd rather limp when I'm dealt paint first and raise when I receive the ace first.

[W. Deranged]

Lil'

I'm no game theory expert either, but I figure I'd give a try at reasoning through one application of this idea.

Let's say an opponent has AJo in middle position. Let's say you raise with some reasonably standard range UTG and UTG+1: AA-88, AK-AJo, ATs, KQ-KJs, KQo or something like that... it's not all that important. Notice that there are certain hands that AJ is well behind, certain that it's racing and/or close to, and certain that its ahead of.

Let's say that your limping range is a little bit broader: You bring in some extra hands that villain is ahead of or racing: 77-55, QJs, J10s or something like that.

Now, it is possible that a smart opponent will overtime deduce that AJ is on average ahead against the range of hands you limp with but behind the range of average hands you'll raise with. It will therefore be correct whenever he is first to act behind you to fold when you raise and to raise when you limp.

Now, obviously poker is a multi-handed game and this is a very specific situation, but you see the idea.

What game theory will tell us is that if you "drop" enough of the big broadway cards down into the limping range from the strict raising range, you can make it such that villain will have a much harder time making such easy decisions. If you structured your ranges correctly, it would be possible to find a frequency with which to raise/limp AK and AQ such that an opponent with AJ would always be dead even to be ahead/behind you. (This is not possible with any range of raising hands; the problem does not always have a solution in the given space defined by the range of hands)

My intuition is that when this is aggregated across all opponents and all hands they may hold, occassionally dropping AK and AQ down into the "limping" range will be a game theoretical improvement over simply always raising them, against intelligent and watchful opponenents.

If you were to take a game theory approach, you are absolutely correct (IMO) that doing it randomly will be the best way. You would need to use some combo of things to get exact frequencies, though. Given the 16 possible combos of AK you could certainly randomize to units of about 6% though.

[MrStretchie]

Excellent reply Deranged. I'm going to have to do some study of game theory. Sounds like interesting stuff.

[bobbyi]

If/ when I limp with AK/ AQ, I would generally perfer to do it when I'm suited. In the unlikely case where others limp and no one raises, I have a hand that plays well multiway anyway and when someone raises and I three-bet and build a big pot, I would rather have AKs than AKo.

[MortalNuts]

When I read your post, I thought of these two old threads:

Clark limps with AQ (http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=595923&page=&view=&sb=5&o =&fpart=all&vc=1) and
Clark limps with AK (http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=698846&page=&view=&sb=5&o =&fpart=all&vc=1)

I found both of these interesting, so maybe you will too.

cheers,

mn

[jdock99]

Playing live 20-40 HE, I knew a player who I am pretty sure is a pro and a winning player who would always limp in EP with raising cards and play passively before the flop and on the flop. Then if he flopped real good or the board was unthreatening he would wait to the turn to checkraise or if things looked even a little scary he would check-call down with hands such as TPTK.

I actually liked playing with this player because he was so passive and consistent. Basically I knew to treat his early position limps preflop like a raise and not raise with hands such as AJo and just shut down on the turn/river if he called me on the flop. Although me and the other "aware" players handled this player very well, in these particular games there are plenty of aggressive, unaware players who would give him way too much action with dominated hands postflop because of his passive play preflop and on the flop. However, I do not think this player would fare well in higher games, and to the best of my knowledge he never moved up or even tried for that matter. So maybe this line has merit against aggressive unaware players such as might populate the mid limit games that Slotboom plays in and writes about.

It seems in higher limit games most of the players who "mix it up" do so by fast playing marginal hands, normally in steal situations in position, and do not do slow by slow playing strong hands out of position, although you do get the occasional limp-reraise UTG player with AA or KK.

[Net Warrior]

If nothing else, when you limp you let bb play for free. That alone makes it worthwhile raising.

[SA125]

[ QUOTE ]
It works well in games that are tightish but very aggressive. Meaning 2-3 to the flop for 2-3 bets. This gets you "isolated" by worse hands - hands that would've folded had you raised. It has to be balanced, of course, but it's a very valid strategy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent point. I'm think also that it makes up more bets post flop in multi-way pots in a loose game when it hits if your hand wasn't given away. The downside is more cracked hands, but the upside is those who see the flop with any A they get and call down every time it hits. Add in those who call down with any PP or piece of the flop and it's good for a lot of c/r'd flops and BB's to the river. Not all of those A lovers coldcall A4o, but they'll limp everytime with it and call it down.

[lil feller]

Both great threads, thanks for the links.

I wonder if anybody with a monster sized DB and a knack for using the filters could come up with some numbers (like bb/hand) when limping with these hands, as opposed to raising first in.

lf

[imashyboi]

I think limping with AKs, AK, AQs, AQ really depends on the table's condition. If the table is aggressive I don't have a problem limping here with any suited AK or AQ but I'm still raising them if it's unsuited. I don't see why you'd want to limp here if the table is loose aggressive, I think your getting the most out of it when you raise rather than limping in cause there's going to be callers anyway.

The downside of limping with these hands is they're going to get cracked one way or another. Either by some mircale 2 pair, set trips, or something else that might beat top pair. If you don't have a problem losing a big pot then limping here would actually be profitable. What I hate the most is when you give the blinds a free shot to the pot, I think that's a huge mistake.

I personally would rather attack the blinds cause at least I'm getting my money's worth when I get a high broadway.