New Poker Strategy Material

I’ve got a new series going up on Tournament Poker Edge. It’s a continuation of my hand history review from the $300 2x Chance WCOOP, with a new emphasis on late game play and stealing and restealing dynamics.

I also just published an article entitled Open-Minded About Open Limping in 2+2 Magazine. Open limping isn’t something I do often, but it is something I do occasionally, and under the right circumstances I think it’s worth considering. I also think that questioning the received wisdom about how you’re supposed to play poker is one of the best ways to get better and find new edges.

Let me know what you think of these!

14 thoughts on “New Poker Strategy Material”

    • If I recall correctly, Phil Collins the poker player did quite a bit of open-limping at the WSOP FT. I wonder whether this is a Collins tribute blog commenter or perhaps even the man himself!

      • Nope, I’m just just an internet troll trying to be funny.

        I remember listening to Kristy Arnette interview him and he recollected an interaction he had with someone at another tournament who asked if he was one of the November Nine. When Phil told him yes the guy said “I didn’t recognize you until you limped”.

  2. He did open limp a lot. He even pulled the limp-re-raise, but ran into the AK of Pius on that play (correctly folding AQ iirc to a four-bet).

    • Yeah, I remember that hand well. I think some of the commentary suggested that this was a _failure_ of Collins’ strategy. But surely it’s the opposite–what a coup to run AQ into AK in a steal situation and lose only 6BB or whatever it was!

  3. I am big fan of yours Andrew. Been relly enjoying your TPE videos and this site. I found your article about open limping very interesting. You mentioned that openlimping should be aplyed almost exclusively only from early position. I was thinking maybe it could also be aplyed to some tournament situations from LP? for example: 1. if we are on CU or BU with 20-30bb efective stuck size and behind us is agressive 3betor (or more then one) what if we limp range that you described in article that consists of small pocket pairs, suited conectors, brodways and also some monsters and asume that agressive 3betor will also be isolation rising our limps often and then try to exploit them by profitably jaming small pocket pairs and small suited conectors, calling his rise with good brodways and high suited conectors in possition and deciding how to proceed with our monster range depending on how deep we are. This way we can ether be the one who puts pressure on by jamming or play range with good postflop playability in possition against wide range. 2. If we are on week passive table that is tipical to early/ mind stages of low stakes MTT we could limp wide range of speculative hands and see flop and expect our oponents to have low postflop hand strenght requirements to pay of 3 streets or even stuck of ( for exapmpe if we limp 76s from MP and we see flop 4 way and board comes J76 there is big chance that player holding hand like JQ or even any jack will make mistake and overplay his hand.

    • Here or my thoughts on Andrews play. The reason the villain folded to the limp raise is because that line represents a really strong range. He essentially 3bet from early position. And just like an UTG raise is representing a much stronger range than a button raise, an UTG 3bet range is that much stronger than a button 3bet (and way stronger than an UTG open raise). To put it another way there’s a certain type of passive recreational player that if they 3bet my I’m set mining with QQ, and if that same player limp raises UTG I’m going to once again set mine with QQ (if I’m getting odds). Now Andrew’s perceived range is probably a bit wider than QQ+, but still very strong. The villain probably had a medium strength hand that he wasn’t willing to play for stacks.

      As far as limping LP 20-30BB I think it’s a bad idea for these reasons 1) you risk failing to build a big pot with a big hand 2)the strength of your strong hands are already concealed by position 3)if you limp jam with small PPs and SCs villain may feel math obligated to call with a wide range that crushes that range (maybe not with 30BB effective, but certainly with 20BB) 4)you will not hit the flop hard very often with speculative hands, and you won’t be able to rep much, and finally 5)If you do manage to get stacks in with a limped pot there is a high chance that an over pair will be no good.

      The one exception is kind of the counter point to #3. Just like there is a certain type of player that if you take a donk flop, check-call turn, check-raise river line they become super spewtards, you may be able to induce a similar response by doing a LP limp-raise. But those type of players will probably react the same way to a min raise.

      Phil Collins said that he limped because he had 2 aggro players directly to his left and he didn’t want to inflate the pot OOP, especially considering the life changing pay jumps between 9th and 4th or 5th. He also said for his strategy to be effective he had to limp everything (he was going to play). Those type of considerations are a level or 2 above my current thinking.

    • Everything I write for 2+2 does. Most of the Cardplayer articles never get published online, and when they do, I don’t always know about it. So I plug them when I can, but it’s not often.

  7. Really enjoying all your TPE work, especially the latest series.

    The Limping article is still in the To Read stack.

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