A More Refined Discussion of The Limp-Reraise

[Chazbot2000]

This is just personal preference but I've come to hate the limp reraise in almost every circumstance.

1) It advertises AA or KK. You've just told people exactly what they need to have to beat you, so either you won't get paid, or you'll get beat down by a bigger raise if they have AA.

2) I don't see how you can play AK or QQ or JJ with a limp reraise because you're out of position on the flop. So all sorts of scare cards come out on the flop and you CAN'T follow up with it (everyone who called you was expecting AA or KK, so you know they're seeing the flop with a great hand that likely beats yours with position on you.

3) You might not have a chance to reraise. You could just get 4 more limpers and wreck a totally great hand like AA because you let all the drawing hands in.

The only time I'd use a limp reraise is when I think I have a good chance of getting someone all in before the flop when my AA is the best hand. So if I had two or more agressive preflop raisers, a min reraise preflop could induce a bluff on their part and you could trap the rest of their chips.

[coltrane]

you don't always have to reraise though, you could sometimes limp-call...and it doesn't matter what hand you have, I think the principle is the same....by limping UTG with any hand you want to play, I feel you give yourself more options than by open-raising.....position is more important than starting hands in big-bet (you know what I mean).....since you're UTG, you certainly aren't going to OPEN for 10+ times the BB (but you can raise over 10x the BB when there's limpers/money in the pot) even with a big pair....so if you raise say 4x the BB UTG, what does that really accomplish?.....you could now get 5 callers and the pot's bigger and you're out of position....if I have AA and I'm out of position, I either want very few callers with a lot of money in the pot (which can be accomplished by limp-re-raising or limp-calling depending on the situation) or if I have to play the hand multiway then I want the pot to be small.....

[hectorjelly]

I have to confess, I do this a lot. I really hate raising from utg so I limp with a lot of hands that would warrant a raise in any other position, if theres no raise Im comfortable playing a small pot out of position with these hands. In my experience a raise from utg can often bring 5 or more callers, as once you get one caller, they all decide to give it a shot since the pots grown.

If the pots raised I can then call, fold or reraise based all the obvious factors.

I think the most important factor are the stack sizes. As it grows deeper the reraise becomes less of a proportion of the total stack, and so harder not to give pp's the right odds, implied or otherwise, to call.

I was playing tonight, 6 seater 2 4 no limit game. 4 Average players and one very good player, who I play against a lot. We both have around $500, I get QQ utg and limp utg. Everyone calls and the villain openraises from the button to $30. He does this quite a bit, so I pop it back to $100. He calls. The flop comes up all rags, he wouldnt have raised with a low pp, so Im not worried about a set here. I bet out $200 and he thinks for a while and folds, he shows KK. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[Chazbot2000]

"you don't always have to reraise though"

Well I suppose you don't have to, but this thread was called a discussion of the "limp reraise." If you're just talking about limping in early position, that's a totally different conversation.

As to your second point, I don't know why I can't just raise 4x the BB (a standard raise I'd make with AK, AQ, down to JJ) when I'm UTG with AA. This accomplishes everything I want: it builds the pot, thins the field to just a few players, and keeps people in who have hands like AK, KK or QQ that I thoroughally dominate. You're much more likely to get action from your opponents hands on the flop even after you bet into them whereas a limreraise would kill your action.

[kurtcobain]

I dont really want to protect my limps. The only hands I limp w/ in EP are pocket pairs, and then I want open raises behind me so I can crack big pairs with a set.

The only time I limp reraise, and its very rare, is as a bluff. It screams AA/KK so there's no point in actually having it, since its never going to showdown...either you take it down there, on the flop, or your fake aa/kk gets cracked and you have to fold and post a bad beat story.

[coltrane]

yeah, you're right about the topic being "limp re-raise" so I apologize, but the point was related.....and as far as your second point, in deep money games I've found that raising 4x the BB doesn't deter very many people from entering the pot, and you still have to act first with them knowing you have a good hand and you not knowing what they have (and now the pot could be relatively big with multiple callers - not so good for big pairs or AK)....you are right though that if you always make the same raise they don't necessarily know you have aces....but if you always limp UTG that is deceptive as well.....and if you are constantly mixing up your play per the situation, I think that's fairly deceptive too......

[creedofhubris]

I've been thinking about this a lot. I've noticed that the limp-reraise is no longer as useful against the stronger players on my site; they know me by now and will fold to my large limp reraises as long as I'm not giving them odds to hit their set, unless they've got KK, and even then they're likely to play KK very weakly.

I think a mix of cold-calling raises (particularly when it will be headsup), and reraising large with something like JTs that I mightve happened to limp with utg, is the solution to adopt against smart, observant, aggressive opponents. Plus the occasional "classic" limp reraise once you've shown down a suited connector.

Against chumps who frequently make the min raise, I will limp reraise huge with hands like TT, JJ, QQ, and AK, in order to get headsup, and because I probably have the best hand and may get them to drop. (I've started limping with just about everything under the gun lately, including AK, which is what allows me to mix up my limp reraises.) A limp reraise will certainly knock out the stronger, more observant players in that situation, trapping dead money in the middle. Plus, an opponent who calls will be running scared unless they have AA or better, so I should get a cheap showdown if my massive flop bet doesn't scare them off.

[Rick Nebiolo]

Great thread.

A while back when WPT Champion Paul Phillips was still posting on RGP he started or was involved in a series of threads that essentially discussed limp reraising with big hands sometimes in order to protect early position limps with small pairs (a Shaina play I guess [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]).

Here is a link to one of the later threads that sort of summarizes the concept (well my post tried to). If you want to look for more use Google's Advanced Group Search and Google Phillips for a date period going back about a month from the one I linked to.

~ Rick