The limpers are everywhere
Sitting in a 1-2 game in the bowels of Las Vegas. Only one or two people, including our Hero, are raising.
Most people limp. Some even limp with big pocket pairs, queens or jacks. They all want to see a monster flop, win a bad-beat jackpot and sail off to gambling nirvana.
In this hand, every player has limped. Every. Single. One.
Our Hero is in the BB. He peels back and discovers Ac-8c.
So, what is the smart strategy? Raise small? Raise big? Or limp with everyone else and hope to make something?
And Part Deux: Presuming you do raise and three callers stick around and you are out of position, what do you do when the flop comes Q-7-3 rainbow. Which it will. I know, you check, and everyone else will check too.
But a king will come on the turn. You will check again, right, and someone will bet and you will fold, right?
Is there any really smart way to play this hand in this situation?
8 Replies
I usually overcheck there, for exactly the reason given. I don't want to play a marginal hand OOP in a bloated pot.
If you do decide to raise and get multiple callers, play fit or fold. These guys didn't limp/call QTo to fold when they hit TP.
I think I would consider big overbet raises preflop where 3 people are not going to call and start picking up a lot of dead money. It might make some angry…
Now, the limpers with monsters expose themselves and you can play correctly
Everyone limped, so raise 40 or 50 and take the fifteen bucks. Obviously, not too often and waiting for a hand in position could be better, but the idea is that in a limp-fest seek ways to make them uncomfortable - then you can read them
You don’t have to do exactly this, and I just mean give them difficult decisions, being confrontational with the cards, not personal - you can still have a good time and call along some if you want. But if you play the way they expect, they will play better against you. Make some unusual plays. Food for thought
If they're limping strong ranges, you probably should open tight ranges.
A8s in bb is hard to play, probably just check and see a flop and check/fold unless you flop nuts. In multiway pots, you want to only play nutted hands/draws only.
If they're limp/calling weak ranges, you can open looser preferably in position.
If you know they limp/call with random trash, and will pay you off with super weak ranges postflop, you can open/iso alot wider.
Also if there are lots of limpers, when you do open, you probably want to open big to narrow the field and to get max value.
If you have position with some decent hands that either flop big or nothing and don't mind everyone calling, you can raise small to juicen up the pot.
A8s oop isn't a hand that you want to juicen up the pot. I rather open with 55 oop then A8s unless you're uber deep and they are uber whales.
Even if you open gigantic to like 40, what's going to happen is they either all fold or you get 1 or more callers that might or might not tight ranges. Which then you're playing a guessing game. It's kind of burning money. So two scenario, opening small lights up money, opening big lights up money with A8s oop.
This hand in particular in the game you describe would be an auto-check. The upside of having this many limpers is that if you make the nuts, someone is likely to have a strong second-best hand that you can win a lot of money from. And if you miss you just fold and move on.
I would never raise this hand. You have the perfect situation delivered to you on a silver platter if you check. If you could play family pots with suited aces against weak players all day, you would just be printing money. Bet 2 pair or better, fold everything worse, get paid big if you hit the flush, life is so easy.
If you raise, you'll now play a medium strength hand, out of position, probably multiway, and if you hit the Ace then given description you're probably much more likely to be against better Aces because all the weaker ones folded. You've somehow taken the perfect situation and made it miserable 🤐
me if you raise preflop:
Spoiler
Yeah, this hand plays well in a multiway limped pot. Just raise strong hands for value.
As played, obviously let it go on this flop.
Seems like a trivial check preflop to me. Playing make-a-hand poker is fine in this spot when we have a nutmaking hand and meanwhile we play our non-nut hands far better than our opponents do.
Raising seems like suicide, although I love those who advocate for it because it is basically how I make all my money as a big preflop LRRer. A big raise often isolates against better hands (a passive AK/QQ shows up often in many games) and good luck folding those at what will be a small SPR postflop. Raising small at a typical smaller stack game serves no purpose whatsoever as the SPR in a very multiway limped pot will usually already be one that stacks can be played for postflop.
GcluelesshowtomakemoneyatLLSNLnoobG
I think I would consider big overbet raises preflop where 3 people are not going to call and start picking up a lot of dead money. It might make some angry…
Now, the limpers with monsters expose themselves and you can play correctly
Everyone limped, so raise 40 or 50 and take the fifteen bucks.
If a lot of people are sitting at 100bb = $200, we sure are putting in a *massive* amount of chips preflop to win the limps and it has to win at a pretty high rate to be profitable, imo. Getting someone to expose the fact they've limped a monster for the hugenormous price of 1/4+ of our stack ain't a great play (and it doesn't matter if it allows us to play the rest of the hand correctly because it already cost us far too much to do so). IMO.
GcluelessNLnoobG
