Why To Avoid Limping In Tournaments

Most players limp from time to time during tournaments, but doing it too often can really be costly. Limping seems week, because ordinarily the act of calling waives control of the hand to someone else at the table, yet limping is not always a bad move. Can limping ever be a viable strategy when all of the poker training you hear about online always tells us to play more aggressively?

Well you’ve probably heard this one before, but the answer is of course “it depends”. There is to be sure, a strong argument to limp in certain situations. The problem with limping however, is that naive players tend to do it excessively, and from the incorrect position. Repeated limping in early position in online poker tournament is a recipe for losing.

There are two huge factors that make early position limping costly. Players that still have to act can throw a big surprise by re-raising. Oftentimes you will be forced to call a raise because you have committed yourself to a proper mathematical call, with a average strength hand. In the early stages of the tournament you should not really be paying too much attention to mathematically proper calls. You should be giving far more care to preserving your stack and identifying profitable chip up situations.

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.

So when should you limp?

There are of course times when you do want to limp in a tournament, and typically that will be when you are holding a strong hand and want to trap your opponent. By limping in you’re showing weakness in the hope your opponents will bet, allowing you to extract more money from the pot. A good player may even limp with the intention of outplaying their opponents post-flop, but in a standard online tournament, starting with only 1500 chips, there really isn’t a lot of room for this type of manouver.

Players limping from early position are often holding smaller pairs, suited connectors or Ace-X. So if you’re in late position and you have a big pair, ace-king, or maybe even ace-queen you should be attempting to take command of the pot by raising pre-flop. Two out of three times a continuation bet is going to take the pot down for you.