Why You Should Never Open Limp
There is very seldom a time where open limping would be considered the optimal. Aggressiveness is one the best attributes a poker player can possess, and this is completely lost when a player elects to open limp. There is not a single play weaker than the open limp, why make a play that is so easily exploitable? You are probably playing poker with the hope that you could make some money, but open limping is the easiest way to burn your money.
Why Open Limping is Smart
There is a fantastic reason to open limp. Say you get a mediocre hand and are not sure you want to invest money in the pot, but you want to see a flop. The best solution would definitely be to open limp, that way you don’t have to spend more than the big blind, but can reap all of the benefits of hitting the flop hard. This is all in addition to the fact that the other players will have no idea what hand you might have because an open limp is impossible to read.
WRONG
These are the primary justifications you will hear from players who are convinced that open limping has a time and place. They are completely incorrect. These approaches are extremely faulty and will end up costing you a ton of money, a little at a time.
Why these justifications make no sense
“You can make just as much money if you open limp and hit as when you raise and hit”.
No. This can be evidenced by the pre-flop raise alone. Which gets more money in the pot, when a player open limps and another player calls or when a player raises and is called? Of course the answer is when a player raises and is called. Later on in the hand this becomes even more relevant. Aggression begets aggression. If you are aggressive and raise pre-flop you can more easily bet the flop, turn, and river so that you will get paid off. If you call pre-flop you will have a much tougher time getting the other player to put there money in. When you play a “stop and go” style the other players will react in the exact opposite way. As you stop they go and as you go they stop.
The other big draw to open limping is the misconception that it is hard to put an open limper on a hand. Are you kidding? Perhaps the easiest players to put on a hand are the open limpers. They have weak hand; that is a near guarantee. Some players will open limp with extremely strong hands, but for the most part you can narrow down an open limpers range to crap. When the flop comes 8 6 T you can consider it coordinated with their hand. If the flop came A 8 Q, however, you can safely say that it missed them. Open limpers love to play connectors and suited hands. The types of hands that don’t have showdown value without improvement assisted by the board are the exact hands that players like to open limp with. They fear that they will raise pre-flop and then get called and miss the flop. So what, you won’t win every pot. It makes much more sense to be the aggressor.
If you miss, raising is still a better choice than limping, even in retrospect
If you decide to open limp and then miss the flop, you are stuck. Betting the flop won’t scare off nearly as many hands when you limp pre-flop as it would had you raised pre-flop. Players are more apprehensive to stay in a hand when faced with repeated aggression, and when that first bit of aggression is made on the flop you have lost the ability to instill fear in your opponents.