Poker Articles

A Bit of Maths: Early Limp
By Paul Samuel
(The UK's answer to Mike Caro or Lassie)

1. Introduction

I play cash games and tournament and certainly in the former case I often ponder the problems you heap upon yourself by limping early with non-raising hands.

I think if there is one symptom of my cash game disintegrating it is increasing the type of hand I am willing to limp with early on.

I mean occasionally if I feel the game is right I will limp with a big hand - when I expect a raise from a loose or aggressive player but as a rule if I arrive early - I arrive hard, that is with a raise.

Lets dig deeper.

2. Analysis

If you must limp early there are two major reasons to do so:

1) You have a monster (AA or KK) and expect a raise.

2) You wish to create a multi-way pot to create the right price for you to see a flop.

Looking at the latter and most commonly used (abused) logic we can expect our behaviour to drag in the button, small blind and big blind thus giving us at least 3:1 for our money.

We don't want a re-raise because this may clear down the field and reduce our pot-odds and will put us in a position of either having to lamely lay down our hand or throw more cash into a pot that is starting to look more like a pot-hole.

In fact making a few assumptions and drawing up a table we have:

Table 1 - Approximate raising odds

Ok it looks like gobbledygook but roughly speaking what we are saying that if you limp from seat 4 about 58.26% of the time expect a raise.

Now consider three typical 'limpy' hands, T9s, KQo and 55 (not suited - haha).

Lets look at the chance of hitting the flop for each of these:

We have:

Table 2 - Chance of hitting flop

Do you see where this points ?

For seats 4-6 we have to halve our 'hit' odds since about half the time we will walk into a raise a result we do not welcome.

Based on three callers (Button, SB, BB) only the T9s gives us a breakeven to hit the flop and not face a pre-flop reraise !

3. Conclusion

If you must limp from early position without a monster (i.e. KK, QQ) do so with suited connectors.

For all other half hands (including small pairs and KQ) either come in for a raise or yes - throw it in the bin.

Is that what you expected ?

I know there are some assumptions and a few ifs and buts but experience will tell and the story will be much the same.

See you next month and have a great Christmas and a prosperous new year.