why is limping so bad?

[cpk]

I'll take the counter side:

- Open-raising kills certain types of games. People tighten up, and get defensive. However, the same players will loosen up to limps in front of them, and they will play inferior hands. You can exploit that by open-limping with marginal hands.

- Say you have a marginal hand like AJo in EP. If you limp, you might get 2 limpers plus the blinds, all with inferior hands. If you raise, you'll get no play from these hands, but you might get isolated by someone whose hand figures to be better than yours. If you end up being dominated, you'd prefer to be out only 2 bets instead of three.

- Marginal hands playable in EP and MP usually benefit from more action. You don't mind letting the blinds tag along.

- In softer games--especially live--people aren't paying attention to how you play to begin with, so you really aren't giving up much by giving away information by sometimes limping and sometimes raising.

That said, in a tougher game I am dropping my most marginal holdings from consideration and reverting to open-raising. Another possibility is to use a system of limp-reraising and open raising that totally confuses your opponents. Either technique avoids the information leakage that can hurt you in a tougher game.