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 Limping vs. raising in LP behind limpers
I'm making my first attempt at a strategy post. I'm a relative noob at FTR and only play at 50NL (hopefully rolled to move up soon), but I've been inspired by some recent posts and books and think it will help my game if I write some things down and get feedback. Feel free to flame away.
I'm halfway through my second read of Sklansky & Miller's NLHE T&P and it's really changing the way I approach the game. They emphasize pot control and playing for stacks as the crucial skills for a successful ring player. Maybe this is "duh" for most of you, but the plays they recommend as a result are often opposite of FTR common wisdom. For example, they recommend limping UTG with certain hands, open-limping from the button and even min-raising occasionally pre-flop. (I don’t quite understand their reasoning behind the last one.)
Ok, onto the topic of this post… on the button or in the CO and a limper or two (or three) has entered the pot in front of you. Until recently I raised here with my premium hands, any PP, suited connectors >78, suited aces, any two broadways, and occasionally suited kings, suited gappers, unsuited aces and trash. The tighter the table and more likely to fold to my 4XBB+1XBB/limper raise, the more likely I was to raise it. I felt like a big bully and enjoyed scooping up my $1.25-$2.25 pots and occasionally getting players to play back at me when they got tired of my raises. This was fine, and I was a winning player over a small sample size (~10,000 hands), but after reading T&P I realized that a) you don't make your money at ring stealing $1.75 pots (I'm not saying it doesn't help your win rate, but stacks are the thing), and b) it might be better to see a flop with hands that give good implied odds (low PPs, Axs, suited connectors, suited gappers) and hope the flop hits you and another limper. So over the last 5,000 hands or so, I’ve changed my strategy in this situation to mainly limping behind limpers with 22-77, suited connectors <JT, suited gappers, and suited aces <A9. I still raise a lot, but it's with my premium hands plus any two broadways, Ax, Kx, and trash. So far it’s working really well and I’ve stacked a few players with well-concealed monsters. I end up folding the flop a lot, but I bet or raise with strong draws and in LP I’m able to steal orphan pots or float occasionally. I’m looking forward to putting it to the test over a much larger sample size.
A counterintuitive part of this pre-flop strategy is that the situations where I used to like to raise the most (when I thought the table would fold around) are now the times I’m LEAST likely to raise with certain hands (the big implied odds hands like small PPs, suited aces, suited connectors and suited gappers). I want to play these hands, not steal blinds and limps with them. It’s important to note that the strategy changes if the limpers or blinds have been calling my pre-flop raises often. Then I’m more than happy to raise these big implied odds hands and start building the pot pre-flop.
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Originally Posted by BobbySalami
