Open Limping

[RDog 0]

Okay, so I was being railed by a few FCP'ers at a final table last night. In the thread, one of the posters gave me a hard time about open limping in early position. Can't say I do it often but with mid pairs and if I have decent size stack, hands like QJs. After the tourney was over I wondered if I missed something at some point so I went back to Harrington's book. In volume 1 he gives advice to limp in early with several different holdings, including those listed above. I do remember in volume 2 him saying that if you have a big M, you may want to limp with face cards, hoping to flop a monster. I know the player that posted is very good so I am just wondering if I am missing something somewhere?

[AlphaOmega 0]

Basically, it depends on how the table is playing. As the blinds go up, some hands go down in value (hands that you'd normally open limp) because the table will start to tighten up drastically as one move or bet can commit someone's entire stack to the pot.If your table is super passive and limping left and right with many unraised pots, then limping from EP is fine with the right kind of hand. Generally, though, this will be far from the case, and you will have to tighten up your standards for entering a pot. As a result of the tightening of your standards, the hands you play will be better, and thus limping loses out to raising since raising is a more optimal play for better holdings.Also, being aggressive is important in the late stages of tournaments. Limping sort of violates that principle, because there are many times that you can "steal" from EP, since some of your opposition will understand the Gap Concept as well as the power of position. This is a very advanced concept though, and would require that most of your opposition understand the before-mentioned concepts.Also, run this by the tournament section if the mods don't move it themselves. You will get a lot of quality input and can learn from a lot of the posters there.

[bcook823 0]

If your a good post flop player, then limp. They were giving you a hard time, because most people shouldn't limp, they just can't play well enough after the flop to justify limping to frequently. In the late stages of a tournament, if nobody will keep you from limping, then I would limp with a wide range of hands. The person's whos namestake is on this website, limps with a ton of hands, from all over the table (he isn't to bad of a post flop player mind you)