Mugging Limpers

Often to advance into the deep stages of a NLHE tournament you need to accumulate chips in spots in addition to those when you hold premium hands. The most common example is stealing the blinds; but by now this is such an obvious play on the button / cutoff. I've read that Andy Bloch / Layne Flack have another play - they raise under the gun to steal the blinds! This is because a raise under the gun - usually means aces / kings / AK and so the other players need to find an exceptional hand to play back. In theory to be raising under the gun they must have a monster.

A play that I have found works well is that of picking up limpers money. Say the blinds are 50 / 100 and I am in late position with 3k in chips. If there are 3 limpers infront of me - the pot is 450 (incl blinds). I tend to play fairly tight and so my raises tend to get respected. In this situation I can raise to 500 to try and pick up the pot. I am risking 500 to win 450. So the play really only has to work about 50% of the time to be +EV. I find that the blinds and early position limpers are unlikely to call as they are worried about players re-raising behind them (who may have been slowplaying a monster). The later position limpers tend to fold too as they probably just called with marginal hands such as J10 due to the pot odds offered by the multiway pot. So the EP players fold because of the LP players and the LP players were only ever in because of the EP players and so fold too (if they were strong they would have raised before wouldn't they?).

If I get re-raised - easy decision I fold. However, if I get called it's really not that bad. I have position and my opponent is only likely to hit the flop 1/3 times. I tend to think that limpers have similar hands such as A10, KJ, JQ, K10 etc so if a player calls with AQ, I believe that a number of his 'outs' are dead as they were held by other limpers and so are now in the muck. This is why I tend to make this play with hands such as 78s, 89. I don't want to be dominated by making this play with A10 and be up against AJ.

I have only started making this play the last few weeks and it may work better for me than others due to my tight table image. But I estimate that I win the pot uncontested pre-flop about 65% of the time, but get re-rasied 15% (and so fold) and get called 20% of the time (of which I win on the flop 40%). So I estimate that I win over 70% of the time - which certainly is + EV play.

Any thoughts on this type of play / and any suggestions on any other plays to get chips when holding less than premium hands.

This is a play I like as well, but it's dependent on having good reads on the limpers. I like to keep close notes on how often each player limps and how they respond to raises. What size raise does it take to get a fold out of them? Do they ever limp monster hands? How often do they call pre-flop just to fold to a continuation bet.

My favorite play actually is to raise a borderline callable amount, 4x-5x, with suited connectors against weak limpers on my button. In early stages of Party tournaments, people will often call any reasonable raise with anything they thought was worth limping which includes any A and any two suited cards. Then they fold to your continuation bet the 70% of the time they miss, and you take down a very nice pot: limps + blinds + a call.

Also pay attention to how often these weak limpers use the probe bet. You may sometimes have to make a pot-sized raise against a villain who limps, calls, and then makes a tiny bet into you.

If you take a look at Punker's two Super Weekday tournament reports in the Anthology, you'll see this is a play he uses and discusses.

[zambonidrivr]

where can i find this?

"If you take a look at Punker's two Super Weekday tournament reports in the Anthology, you'll see this is a play he uses and discusses. "

thanks

[rockythecat99]

Its in one of the sticky threads. "Anthology to 2+2 wisdom".