When you are facing multiple limpers in a game, you should raise liberally in position.
Why? Most of your opponents are limping anything halfway suited or connected. They want to see flops, damn it. They came to see flops. Seeing flops is more fun than folding.
Don’t be surprised if your opponents are limping mediocre aces, unsuited broadways, suited connectors, suited gappers, and small pairs. They just want to get to the flop cheaply. They’ll start putting money in postflop once they hit some kind of hand.
Let’s say you have A-Jo on the button at a nine-handed table. Everyone at the table has around 100BB. UTG2 limps in. Lojack and hijack also limp in. There is 4.5BB in the pot right now. How much would you raise to? Or would you limp?
You shouldn’t limp in behind them. You have position right now and what is likely to be the best hand. You want them all to start paying.
You should raise. How much should you raise to here?
Most people say four or five big blinds. Some people decide to get real spicy and make it six. You should raise more than all of that. You should make it 9BB.
Why should you make it so much? Why should you raise to two times the size of the pot? You should do this because if everybody folds that’s fine for you. You just made 4.5BB with no variance. Nice! However, if someone calls you, what kind of player do you think is calling? Do you think it’s a strong player who limps and then calls a 9BB raise? Or do you think that’s one of the weaker stations at the table?
It’s generally going to be one of the weaker stations that calls you. If a player has a clue, they’ll know they’re generally not supposed to limp and call 9BB.
Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily thin the field every time. You might be playing versus several gambling stations. That’s fine. They’ll likely all check to you on the flop. You can take a free card if you want at this point and keep the pot size smaller.
Getting to see six of the final seven cards for your hand is a huge edge. You’re getting a four-card flop whenever you want one. Everyone else is only working with three cards. This is great news.
Sometimes, one of your opponents will donk lead into you on the flop. However, that won’t happen too often. Most people like to check to the raiser. So we generally get to decide how big the pot gets to be.
More importantly, sometimes we get a heads-up pot or a three-way pot versus some of the weaker players at the table. This helps us win some huge pots when we flop to our hand.
If they hit and we miss, we can check and take our free cards. If they hit and we miss, sometimes they will just call our continuation bet. We can then check back the turn if they check to us and see the turn and river. This is a huge edge.
If everybody misses on some kind of boring board, we’ll pick up a lot of pots with a small continuation bet. If we hit and they miss, we’ll pick up the pot often with a continuation bet. If they hit and we hit, we’ll often hit a better hand because we started with a better starting hand range. This is when the fun begins. Now we can start betting for serious value.
This situation is similar to the last one we described, where we wanted our opponent calling out of the big blind with too many hands. The only difference between that situation and this one is that these players voluntarily decided to put their big blind out there. If these players aren’t being careful about what they limp with, they can still be exploited. If they’re limp/calling out of position with mediocre hands versus large raises from strong ranges, they’re putting themselves in one of the worst situations in poker. They are playing huge pots out of position with capped weak ranges they can’t defend.
There’s only one wrench that can be thrown into our plans here. Let’s go back to the initial set up of our hypothetical hand. Tell me, which player should we be most worried about?
Let’s say you have A-Jo on the button at a nine-handed table. Everyone at the table has around 100BB. UTG2 limps in. Lojack and hijack also limp in. There is 4.5BB in the pot right now. How much would you raise to? When would you not raise?
You should be careful when UTG2 is a nit. If UTG2 normally doesn’t play many hands, you have to be suspicious when they suddenly limp from early position. That could be a weak hand that just wants to see the flop. That also could be Aces, Kings, or Queens that are trying to trap.
Why should you worry less about the hijack or lojack limping in? Generally, people don’t limp behind with major pairs. They’re worried at that point that they’ll be in a limped family pot and their big pair will get cracked. If there’s already one limper who is looking for action, they are fine with raising to try and get them involved in a big pot.
You can buy your copy of How to Beat Players Who Never Fold from D&B Publishing, Amazon and all good book shops now. Alex Fitzgerald's other books include Exploitative Play in Live Poker, The 100 Biggest Mistakes that Poker Players Make and The Myth of Poker Talent.
