BankItDrew's posts in one of my stats threads made me start thinking about limping in spots that I don't already limp in, and that's really the motivation for bringing this up. Also, some posts with ISF and others have had me thinking along similar lines before. I wouldn't be surprised if this is also tied into the amount of tables I'm usually playing, but here we go.

The main example of the spot I'm concerned with the most right now goes like something close to this. Say it's 9-handed with 100bb effective stacks and I'm in the cutoff seat. It's folded to the player 3 seats off the button who open limps, and then it's folded to me.

The majority of hands that I play here I've been playing for a raise. After a lot of thought and looking at hand histories from myself and others, I'm starting to have other ideas. I'm not sure yet if these ideas have a higher or lower EV how I've mostly been playing before, but I'm sure they could add to my game in some way, which is the point of bringing all of this up.

Say I have K8o, the limper is 20/8/1.5 and the blinds are both tight. To me, this is a clear spot for a raise if we decide to play it. I think so because our hand doesn't play very well multi-way and we have a good chance of picking up the pot right here. If our raise is called, we have the initiative and position with a somewhat decent high-card hand, which I think is enough to make this at least 0EV in spots that we're called.

However, what if we have 53s, the limper is 30/5/2.5, and both of the blinds are decent TAggs? I think that my standard play here is to fold, but what about limping behind instead? Our hand plays fairly well multi-way, and we'll have at the very least good position against aggressive players. I won't dive into any math here, but with our positional advantage, I think we can make a +EV situation out of most any draw that we pick up against these players. Thoughts?

Now bigger SCs and PPs I've also been playing for a raise against one or two limpers and have been limping behind against two or three or more limpers. In a way it feels like it would be a better decision to limp behind with smaller PPs (something like 22-55 at least) and to limp behind with most SCs (although I think I'd prefer to raise T9s and up in most cases).

At the very least, changing how I take on these spots would allow me to increase my VP$P against opponents who likely rely on their HUD stats a lot more than they should, making me appear to be not quite so tight (14-14.5 VP$IP and 13 or so PFR). It would also serve to space out my VP$IP and PFR numbers since they've seemed to run very closely together for the past couple of months.

This ties in a lot with spots where I should just complete the SB behind limpers but I'd rather save that for another time and just focus on the hands where our positional advantage will be greatest.

Any thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? =P