Limping In Poker Tournaments, And When To Avoid It


All players limp now and then for one reason or another in tournaments. Limping seems week, because ordinarily the act of calling waives control of the hand to someone else at the table. But is limping a viable strategy when all of the poker training you hear about online always slants to play more aggressive?

This may sound very familiar but the answer is of course “it depends”. There is absolutely, a reason to limp in definite situations. The trouble with limping however, is that naive players tend to do it excessively, and from the wrong position. Repeated limping in early position in online poker tournament is a recipe for a poor strategy..

Limping from early position can be very costly. For a start, you don’t know what players behind you are going to do, and you could end up limping and then being forced to call a larger bet, or fold because your hand simply isn’t strong enough. Don’t forget that in a tournament you’re not playing for cash, and so mathematically correct plays are not always best – your only concern is increasing your stack and a bet saved is as good as a bet won.

Don’t forget that limping with weak hands will also result in the wide majority of flops not helping your hand whatsoever. This gives way to your antagonists taking control of the hand, you getting caught in an expensive bluffing game, or are you having to involve yourself in a challenging decision.

It is possible to use limping to your advantage nonetheless, and this is almost always done when in position or in an effort to set a trap to extract more money when you have a solid hand. Good players in fact, will use this as a tactic with the intention of out-playing their opponents post-flop, while making good use of pot management and player profiling. However, if your starting stack is the usual 1500 chips in an online tournament you’ll won’t have a lot of room to pull this off, so strategically, limping is better in order to keep your costs low unless you are deep stacked.

Low blind limping can often be attributed to players holding lower pairs, suited connectors or weak aces. So if you’re in late position and you have a big pair or a strong ace you should be trying to take command of the pot by raising pre-flop. Usually a continuation bet is going to win the hand for you.

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