Is there any reason to open limp UTG?

[irish79]

couldn't agree more! Look UTG is not a position you really waht to get in the habit of playing too often. Typically I like to stick to pocket pairs, catch a cheat flop playing for a set. a 55,44,66,etc. is a lot easier to get away from then an AQ or AJ. I've been caught with my hand in the cookie jar too often in EP, with and AQ or AJ once and Ace falls on the flop. Your hardly ever in control of the situation from EP and a smart player realizes that and can keep applying pressure. Thats why pocket pairs that turn into sets (although few and far between) are great from UTG because you can break those players with marginal hands playing them strongly because of there postion.

[Little Lew]

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couldn't agree more! .... stick to pocket pairs, catch a cheat flop playing for a set. a 55,44,66,etc. is a lot easier to get away from then an AQ or AJ. ...... Thats why pocket pairs that turn into sets (although few and far between) are great from UTG because you can break those players with marginal hands playing them strongly because of there postion.

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Just came back from AC and my experience there was typical of prior visits. The tables are often very loose, very very passive and small pocket pairs can be limped for a single bet with almost a certainty that the bet will be called around to the BB. [In fact, my best pot of the day was flopped FH 6s/Ks with PP 6s that almost gave my opponent with Trip Ks a stroke.]


I am not as comfortable doing this on-line as most times the games are not quite as passive or loose I will have found that I will have to pay a raise about half the time with fewer players.

[elmitchbo]

i was taking a look around chris ferguson's page the other day and he advocated exactly what you're saying.

in his 'tips' section he flat out says never limp, period. if a hand is good enough to play at all it should be good enough to raise with, and if it isn't good enough to raise then you should just muck it. i thought that was pretty interesting, as i've had similar thoughts from time to time. in my home game everyone wants to see every flop for nothing..... at one point i decided i would start charging admission on every hand i played. it worked pretty well in that situation, but i'm not sure it would work against more sophisticated players.

lots of good players have success seeing flops cheap and taking the lead if they hit, or if they know no one else hit. daniel n. comes to mind. i see the benefits of this style as well. it's hard to handle... kind of like a passive-aggressive mother-in-law.

i think the first strategy is more applicable to tourney games(my preference), and the second is more useful in a ring game.

[binions]

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Also when I open limp I feel like I'm trying to get 'lucky' in that nobody raises me.

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What's wrong with getting raised? Ever heard of position?

There's absolute position, and relative position. Absolute position is the button. Relative position is the last person to act if the preflop raiser leads at the flop - ie one seat to the right of the preflop raiser.

If you limp UTG, and UTG+1 raises, would you rather be on the button? Or UTG? I'd rather be UTG. I get to see how the whole field reacts to the raise. I can choose to call the raise, fold if it's heads up, or even re-raise.

If I call and catch a flop, I can bet into the raiser, or check to the raiser if I think he'll bet the whole field into me.

Even if I check to the raiser and he checks, if everyone checks behind I am in position to take the pot on 4th street with a bet because it looks like I was trying to trap the preflop raiser by checking the flop.

[k_squared]

I agree that their are lots of hands that you can limp UTG with. I also think that Ferguson was probably talking about tournament play in which he specializes (and it makes more sense in relation to NL than limit). The fact of the matter is that you get dealt a lot of hands that play better multi-way. If you raise with a lot of your weaker playable hands then you open yourself up to getting three-bet and isolated by people later in the field who have position on you. You don't want to fold 10-9 suited, but you also don't want to be playing it out of position against a 3-bettor.

One other thing... their is a reason that having position means acting after someone... it is because it affords an advantage. If you raise weak cards under the gun out of position and think that acting first provides you with a substantial advantage then you are mistaken. Against some players this might be the case, but against good opponents they will notice your tendency to raise with weak cards and constantly be betting into you when you are out of position.

So, while acting first is valuable in certain types of games against certain opponents it is certainly not unequivocally valuable. It is very easy to trap a person who has to act first. You let him bet and call him down. See how far he is willing to take a bluff and then adjust to that. If he likes to bluff you reduce your raising/calling requirements if he gives up his bluffs after the flop you can bet out on the turn when he checks to you... either way give me position!!!

-k_squared

[jtr]

[ QUOTE ]
One other thing... their is a reason that having position means acting after someone... it is because it affords an advantage. If you raise weak cards under the gun out of position and think that acting first provides you with a substantial advantage then you are mistaken. Against some players this might be the case, but against good opponents they will notice your tendency to raise with weak cards and constantly be betting into you when you are out of position.


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Respectfully, K_Squared, I think you've misinterpreted Binions a bit here. I believe Binions is well aware of the general benefits of acting with position; he's simply talking about the special case of having relative position regarding the preflop raiser. You get the idea: the blinds and then you check to the UTG+1 raiser, he presumably bets out, and then you get to see how everybody else reacts to the bet. You've got a positional advantage of sorts yourself now.

[k_squared]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
One other thing... their is a reason that having position means acting after someone... it is because it affords an advantage. If you raise weak cards under the gun out of position and think that acting first provides you with a substantial advantage then you are mistaken. Against some players this might be the case, but against good opponents they will notice your tendency to raise with weak cards and constantly be betting into you when you are out of position.


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Respectfully, K_Squared, I think you've misinterpreted Binions a bit here. I believe Binions is well aware of the general benefits of acting with position; he's simply talking about the special case of having relative position regarding the preflop raiser. You get the idea: the blinds and then you check to the UTG+1 raiser, he presumably bets out, and then you get to see how everybody else reacts to the bet. You've got a positional advantage of sorts yourself now.

[/ QUOTE ]

While I understand your point regarding relative position, I actually don't agree with you that it is a major point of emphasis in the situation of determining whether or not to limp in UTG. Your relative positional advantage comes only when you are facing a group of players who will raise very predicatably. Otherwise you leave yourself in bad position by playing UTG, which leaves you at a disadvantage.

Is your default play to check the flop no matter what?
What do you do when someone behind bets out? Can you be sure also that a raise will limit the field to you and the 2 blinds... many of the games I play in this is not the case... If you will check the flop all the time you do hide your strength but also will give people the chance to draw cheaply to their hands by not putting pressure on them, not to mention anytime you do something predicatbly you give an advantage to your opponent. Many authors warn about the tendency to check to the raiser.

To be clear, I do think a relative positional advantage does exist, but that UTG it is the place where it will be of the lease import because more often than from any other position you will have multiple callers even when a raise is put in (as a result of their being more people to act after). I also believe that the advantage you derive from checking and hence taking on the relative position is diluted in part by the fact that you are going to be put into a position where you are not going to be able to call with many hands you would bet with (Gap principle... better cards to call... especially if you are out of position nd even more so if facing a field, unless it is a drawing hand in which case the appropriate pot odds are where they derive their strength).

In general, I feel like the place that relative position takes on the most importance is when you are in middle position make a call and face a single raiser from late position who will bet out every time it is checked to them.

I also agree with Binion that getting raised is not necessarily a bad thing! Often times it helps thin a field in which case you will have a much better sense of where you stand following the flop. You can also take advantage of an aggressive raisers tendency to continue betting following a raise.

Sorry for the rant, just trying to flesh out my thoughts in regard to the comments made regarding limping UTG and jtr's comments about raising. My point remains though, that relative position is not as good as having REAL position except in special circumstances.

-k_squared

[ChipLeader]

YOu would limp many hands and for many reasons. Sometimes ill open a suited connector, sometimes ill limp it and call up to one bet. The advantage of limping is giving marginal hands a chance to beat good ones. If you open bet a hand like 78s, you'll have to lay it down if it gets capped on its way back to you and youll be losing two bets.

Same with low - mid PPs, and even hands like TT or JJ, which are often times behind even when they flop as an overpair. There have been countless times i have had QQ and JJ, and even KK, and been behind to a higher PP, but its hard to lay it down if youre betting it up. If a hand is good enough to play, it is good enough to raise, but that doesnt mean its always the right play. AA is obviously good enough to raise but there are times when a limp is the right play to make.

You also limp some hands worth raising to mix up your play, we all agree that is key.

[Jordan Olsommer]

Here's the text from Chris Ferguson's site that someone else referred to:

[ QUOTE ]
1. Never limp in. PUMP IT or DUMP IT!
One of the most important rules of Hold'Em -- Limit or No Limit -- is to never, ever call as the first player to enter a pot before the flop. Either pump up the pot with a raise, or dump your cards in the muck. If your hand isn't strong enough for a raise, it's too weak for a call. This tactic makes it more difficult for your opponents to read your hand, and it makes it impossible for the big blind to ever see a flop for free when you're in the hand.

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For the vast majority of situations, I agree. In fact the only exception I can think of offhand would be if we did a sort of thought experiment and imagined an incredibly loose-passive game where everybody wants to have fun and limps in to see a flop and calls every raise. You're dealt 22 under the gun. In this hypothetical situation it would be correct to limp, because you basically know ahead of time that you're getting the correct odds to hit your set (in essence, the incredible passiveness of the other 9 players at the table sort of does the work that having position does in a normal game). Then again, this is a pretty far stretch.

I think the only hands that should even be considered for limping regularly are pocket pairs, and the only ones for limping occasionally (to throw people off) would be hands like suited connectors and every now and again a big hand (but only if you're playing against observant players, of course - the sole purpose of that move would be to essentially buy a "get into flop free" card later on in the evening when you want to see a cheap flop from up front with a pocket pair or something.)

In almost all cases though, I think Jesus is correct. (Sorry, it's true, but I just couldn't resist wording the sentence in that way [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img])

Raising:
a) prevents the blinds from seeing a cheap/free flop
b) announces your intention to take control of this hand
c) puts others on the defensive most of the time, so you have chances to win the hand when you dont flop your set or flush/straight draw (whereas your post-flop aggression won't command as much respect if it wasn't preceded by pre-flop aggression, so you won't be able to steal as many pots)
d) it's harder to put you on a hand if you do the same thing every time (this can be offset by raising/limping randomly, though)
e) in my opinion, if you're going to make a play which you think might be marginally erroneous, always make this error on the side of aggression.

On another erroneous note, I must offer this little appeal to authority as it were; Jesus Ferguson is an experimental poker player and thinker almost to a Da Vincean degree. Meaning, he's going to challenge all the mantras of 'proper play' not to be a contrarian, but to see which ones are correct and which ones aren't - in other words, to determine proper play by experiment and calculation, rather than just 'what seems to work' after a few hundred hours in the $200/$400 at the Bellagio or 'what Sklansky/Jones/Krieger/Vorhaus/Miller' says (nothing against them of course, I have of course benefitted greatly from their work - I'm simply referring to the sort of 'gasp! You can't play that under-the-gun! That's only a Group Six hand!!' dogmatic non-thinking that a lot of players couch themselves in). So my appeal to authority is all other things being equal, I'd put more weight on what he has to say about poker than someone who doesn't take an approach to the game that's grounded in experiment and...well, facts and evidence.

Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.

[GreywolfNYC]

[ QUOTE ]
Here's the text from Chris Ferguson's site that someone else referred to:

[ QUOTE ]
1. Never limp in. PUMP IT or DUMP IT!
One of the most important rules of Hold'Em -- Limit or No Limit -- is to never, ever call as the first player to enter a pot before the flop. Either pump up the pot with a raise, or dump your cards in the muck. If your hand isn't strong enough for a raise, it's too weak for a call. This tactic makes it more difficult for your opponents to read your hand, and it makes it impossible for the big blind to ever see a flop for free when you're in the hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

For the vast majority of situations, I agree. In fact the only exception I can think of offhand would be if we did a sort of thought experiment and imagined an incredibly loose-passive game where everybody wants to have fun and limps in to see a flop and calls every raise. You're dealt 22 under the gun. In this hypothetical situation it would be correct to limp, because you basically know ahead of time that you're getting the correct odds to hit your set (in essence, the incredible passiveness of the other 9 players at the table sort of does the work that having position does in a normal game). Then again, this is a pretty far stretch.

I think the only hands that should even be considered for limping regularly are pocket pairs, and the only ones for limping occasionally (to throw people off) would be hands like suited connectors and every now and again a big hand (but only if you're playing against observant players, of course - the sole purpose of that move would be to essentially buy a "get into flop free" card later on in the evening when you want to see a cheap flop from up front with a pocket pair or something.)

In almost all cases though, I think Jesus is correct. (Sorry, it's true, but I just couldn't resist wording the sentence in that way [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img])

Raising:
a) prevents the blinds from seeing a cheap/free flop
b) announces your intention to take control of this hand
c) puts others on the defensive most of the time, so you have chances to win the hand when you dont flop your set or flush/straight draw (whereas your post-flop aggression won't command as much respect if it wasn't preceded by pre-flop aggression, so you won't be able to steal as many pots)
d) it's harder to put you on a hand if you do the same thing every time (this can be offset by raising/limping randomly, though)
e) in my opinion, if you're going to make a play which you think might be marginally erroneous, always make this error on the side of aggression.

On another erroneous note, I must offer this little appeal to authority as it were; Jesus Ferguson is an experimental poker player and thinker almost to a Da Vincean degree. Meaning, he's going to challenge all the mantras of 'proper play' not to be a contrarian, but to see which ones are correct and which ones aren't - in other words, to determine proper play by experiment and calculation, rather than just 'what seems to work' after a few hundred hours in the $200/$400 at the Bellagio or 'what Sklansky/Jones/Krieger/Vorhaus/Miller' says (nothing against them of course, I have of course benefitted greatly from their work - I'm simply referring to the sort of 'gasp! You can't play that under-the-gun! That's only a Group Six hand!!' dogmatic non-thinking that a lot of players couch themselves in). So my appeal to authority is all other things being equal, I'd put more weight on what he has to say about poker than someone who doesn't take an approach to the game that's grounded in experiment and...well, facts and evidence.

Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.

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I think you're right, for the most part. I think Ferguson is entirely correct for the reasons set forth above.
The habit of open-limping is a tough one to break. I used to open-limp with a variety of hands and in general, it was costing me a lot. After much more experience and individual coaching with a cash game pro, I have stopped doing it. My results have improved significantly as a result and my table image gets a lot more respect.