Why Limping is Usually Bad (And When It’s Actually Good)

Limping in poker refers to just calling the amount of the Big Blind preflop (as opposed to raising). In a $1/$2 cash game, for example, putting $2 in the pot is limping.

If you want to build a winning poker strategy, limping generally shouldn’t be a part of your approach. You should virtually always raise when you open the action preflop.

However, there are a few scenarios where it’s ok to limp preflop. There are a couple of spots where limping can actually be good in a cash game or a tournament.

Let’s look into the benefits of open raising compared to limping, and focus on the exceptions to that rule.

Limping vs. Open Raising

The first player to put money in the pot in a poker game “opens” the action. If you’re playing No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE), you can put any part of your stack in the pot at any time, up to a max of your entire stack.

In a $1/$2 NLHE game, the Small Blind is $1 and the Big Blind is $2. The blinds are mandatory bets that go into the pot before each hand and rotate around the table so that all players pay the blinds an equal amount of times.

Suppose you’re in a $1/$2 cash game and all other players acting before you fold. You now have the option to either call the $2, raise to a larger amount, or fold.

If you just call the $2, that’s a limp. You can also call that an “open limp” because you opened the action preflop and you limped.

If you raise to a larger amount, that’s known as an “open raise.” All other players acting behind must call the amount of your open raise, or put in a re-raise (known as a “3-bet”) to remain in the hand.

There’s one other way to limp into a pot, known as “overlimping.” If a player in front of you limps, and you call that limp, you’ve overlimped into the pot (as opposed to open limped).

Why You Should Never Open Limp

Virtually all of the scenarios where it’s ok to limp fall under the category of overlimping. To be clear – you should (almost) never open limp in a No-Limit Hold’em cash game.

Let’s consider a few reasons that open limping is one of the biggest preflop mistakes you can make at a cash game table:

Good Players Attack Limpers

If you sit down at a live cash game, you’ll often spot a couple of players who mostly limp to enter pots. You might also spot a player or two that raises against those limps often.

You want to be one of the players raising against the limps. If you limp into a pot, good players will attack that tendency and make you pay more money to stay in the hand. The pot goes from a relatively safe limped pot to a raised pot.

If you limp from one of the earlier positions, most of the players yet to act have position on you. If one of those players raises, they now get to act after you on all streets postflop if you call.

You’ve given up the betting initiative in this scenario, and you’re out of position. Those factors are a recipe for disaster.

You Can’t Win the Pot Preflop by Limping

A good poker win rate isn’t all about scooping massive pots or making big bluffs.

Poker pros win lots and lots of pots preflop, by making all other players fold. These pots might not seem significant, but they add up over the course of a session and  a poker career.

Consider the following scenario that could happen at a $1/$2 NLHE cash game:

• The Under The Gun (UTG) player limps for $2
• The Hijack (HJ) calls 
• The Cutoff (CO) calls
• The Button raises to $14
• All other players fold

The Button wins $9 here, including the UTG limp and the overlimps from the HJ and CO. The Button also wins the $3 from the blinds.

If you make everyone fold preflop, you win 100% of the pot 100% of the time. You can’t ever do that in a pot you’ve limped into.

Limped Pots Often Go Multiway

Multiway pots are a fact of life in live poker, and they’re very tough to win. If you’re in a five-way pot, for example, you’re only going to win that pot around 20% of the time.

If you limp preflop, you’re inviting everyone else at the table to stay in the hand at a very cheap price. The more players that overlimp, the better the price becomes for the remaining players to overlimp.

The more players in the hand, the stronger your hand has to be to win. 

For example, let’s say you limp UTG with Pocket Twos, and get four callers. The Big Blind already has $2 in the pot and can just check their option to stay in the hand.

The flop comes T♥6♥2♠. You’ve hit a set, and that’s great! However, so many other players are in the hand that there’s a great chance that one of them has a better set or a draw that can complete later in the hand.

Multiwat pots are tough, to the point where even most poker pros aren’t sure about the optimal way to play them. When you limp often, you’ll play multiway pots often.

Limping Telegraphs Your Hand Strength (or Lack Thereof)

Imagine you’ve been playing in a $1/$2 cash game for a few hours. You’ve noticed the player a couple of seats to your left limps into a lot of pots, maybe playing 50% of hands and folding the other 50% of the time.

Four hours into the session, this player all of a sudden open raises for $15 UTG. What do you think they have?

When a habitual limper suddenly open raises, you can be pretty certain that they have a very strong hand. Even the most passive of players want to start building a big pot when the have AA, KK, QQ, etc.

When this type of player open raises, you can safely get out of the way with all but your very strongest hands. 

Strong starting hands are how you’ll make a lot of your money in poker. If you limp throughout a session and only open-raise when you have a monster, you’re basically turning your hand face up and giving away any chance of getting action.

When Can Limping Actually Be Good?

Upswing Poker’s resident cash game expert Gary Blackwood details some of the scenarios where limping can be an acceptable move in his Advanced Live Cash Game Strategy module for the Upswing Poker Lab.

As we discussed earlier, you should virtually never open limp in a cash game. If you’re doing any kind of limping at all, overlimping is the only way to go.

In an unraked cash game (a game where players pay for time and no rake is taken out of the pot), you can overlimp much wider than you can in a raked game.

In both cases, you should only overlimp with hands that flop a very strong hand. Hands like 55, 44, and A3 suited can flop sets and flushes, and it might be ok to overlimp with these types of hands from time to time.

While A3 suited could make for a good overlimp candidate, hands like K4 suited, 97 suited and 76 suited shouldn’t be overlimped. If you’re going to overlimp a suited hand, make sure it’s the Ax variety that has the ability to hit a flush and win a lot of money from an inferior flush.

Also, never overlimp with weak offsuit hands like A5 offsuit or K9 offsuit.

Live cash games often feature straddles, where a player in a certain table position can post a third blind that’s usually about double the price of the big blind. The most common straddle positions are UTG and the Button.

Let’s go back to our $1/$2 cash game example and say the Button straddles for $5. The action folds to you on the Small Blind, and you can either raise, call, or fold.

This is one of the spots where it’s ok to overlimp from the Small Blind and call $5.

You can overlimp with hands that are strong enough to call if either the Big Blind or Button raises. If you’re at a very aggressive table, you can also put some very strong hands like AA and KK into your overlimping range, and spring a trap with a reraise if the Big Blind or Button raises.

As a side note, in tournaments, open limping from the Small Blind is a big part of the Small Blind strategy for a lot of pros. If you’re focused on tournament strategy, be sure to check out some of Upswing Poker’s tournament modules and standalone courses.