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Limping With Aces
Daniel Negreanu is one of poker’s most outspoken and opinionated players. He keeps a blog on his website, where he writes about all manner of things – from poker strategy, to golf betting, to love and relationships. In a recent entry, he wrote this:
‘...In order to win a WPT event you can't be afraid to let them catch up, even if that means they outdraw you sometimes...You've probably noticed that I've slow played AA several times- a cardinal sin according to some poker literature out there. Well, if you fully understood the difference between a $1000 WSOP event and a $15,000 buy in WPT event with 30,000 in chips, you'd understand that what you do pre-flop is nowhere near as important as the decisions you'll end up making after the flop.’
Daniel has often said that advice in poker literature has to be taken with a ‘pinch of salt’, and he’s right. Mindlessly applying what you read in books without a hint of critical thought is not the route to better poker. In fact, some poker literature is plain terrible (one book leaps straight to mind, in which the author recommends folding pocket aces preflop in a standard tournament situation because you’re ‘too likely to be outdrawn’).
Although some prominent poker books do overemphasize preflop decisions in No Limit Hold’em, for the most part they agree with Daniel. Most of the money won or lost in deep stack No Limit Hold’em is done so after the flop, and your decisions from that point onwards are far more important than your decisions on the first betting round.
In this article I’ll focus on the decision of what to do with aces – should you limp in as Negreanu often does, or should you raise? What factors would enter into those decisions?
It’s important to remember that the standard, straightforward play with aces is to raise, and that by limping in you are mixing up your play. One of the biggest mistakes beginners and intermediates make is to mix up their play too much or when the situation doesn’t call for it. There are definitely times when you should hardly ever limp with aces, and there are definitely times when limping with them should be your standard play.
Be honest about your skills. If you are not a strong post-flop player, then limping with aces is not a good idea. By limping, you’re letting your opponents enter the pot with a lot of marginal hands, and unless somebody else raises, you’re probably going to end up in a multiway pot. Your opponents are going to put you to some tough decisions in such a scenario, and it won’t always be easy to know when you’re winning and when you’re not.
For example, what do you do if you’re in a multiway limped pot with two black aces, and the flop comes J♥ 10♥ 7♠? Lets say that the big blind bets. Not only is it easy for you to be beat in this situation, but you could easily be ahead also – and it won’t be easy to tell which. The big blind could be betting a huge range of hands, from a smaller pair or flush draw to a straight or two pair. Not only that, but one of the players still to act might have you beat. In general, it will be difficult for you to win a huge pot when you have the best hand, but you could lose a big one if you have the worst.
If you’re going to limp with aces, you absolutely must be able get away from your hand after the flop when you’re beat without losing your entire stack. Daniel Negreanu is an excellent post-flop player with a keen sense of when he’s beat – are you?
Another factor affecting whether or not you should limp in frequently is the tournament structure. This is one of the things Daniel is talking about - $1000 WSOP events start with blinds of $25/$25 and just $1000 chips (40 big blinds), whereas WPT events are well known for their generous structures in the early stages, with up to 600 big blinds in starting chips!
When the stacks are short relative to the blinds, there isn’t as much room for imaginative play. Often, if you raise preflop with aces you’ll get action, and may even get all-in. In any case, it’s easy to double up when the stacks are so short holding just one pair, and the action may be over after just one round of betting, limiting your chances to make good decisions. The only real reason you might consider to not raise is if the table is playing too tightly and folding a lot of hands to the blinds.
However, when the stacks are deep, like they typically would be in a cash game or a tournament with deeper stacks, you’ll almost never get all your money in with one pair and have it be the best hand. To avoid losing huge pots in these games, you have to play much more defensively and deceptively with marginal hands – and one of the ways you do that is to limp in before the flop.
One further reason to not limp before the flop is if the table is playing very weakly and loosely anyway. In this situation, you can raise preflop without worrying about giving away your hand, and you’ll often still get called by several players. The post-flop scenario will be similar to if you had limped, except the pot will be bigger. The weaker and looser your opponents in general, the more inclined you should be to make the straightforward play and just raise in an attempt to get maximum value for your hand.
So what are the benefits to limping with aces?
The primary benefit is that you disguise your hand. When you raise preflop, your opponents will typically narrow your range of hands down to big pairs, big cards and so on (assuming you’ve not been raising constantly with trash and showing it down). Aces will always be one of the hands that they consider when they’re playing the pot against you – and consequently, their decisions might be better.
If you limp, your opponents can’t narrow down your range of hands anywhere near as much, so they’ll have a lot more to consider when making their decisions. Some of your opponents may actually rule out aces from your hand range altogether, because they would never limp with aces themselves, or because they’ve never seen you do it before. All of this can cause them to make big mistakes against you later in the hand – and your opponents’ mistakes equal profit for you.
Ironically, David Sklansky, who is often lumped in with ‘textbook’ players and considered unimaginative, agrees that one of the biggest reasons to limp with aces is so that your opponents make these mistakes against you. One example he has cited numerous times involves a hand where you limp with aces, you flop a set, and your opponent makes two pair or a lower set. He argues that in this situation, the amount of money you can win is almost unlimited, as your opponents will not expect to see aces and will play as if they have the nuts. Indeed, this is the kind of confrontation that all poker players would like to find themselves on the right side of!
Another reason you might limp is so that you can reraise when one of your opponents raises. If you’re medium stacked, you might be able to get all of your chips into the pot preflop, which would be ideal. If you’re deep-stacked, you might be able to force your opponent to fold or make a very big mistake by calling.
To limp for this reason, you would want at least one of your opponents still to act to be aggressive – in fact, this move is an ideal way to exploit someone who is playing too aggressively. Once they raise, you spring the trap and reraise.
Of course, there are downsides to this too. When the move backfires and nobody raises, you’ll often find yourself in one of those tough situations where you don’t have a lot of information about your opponents’ holdings. You might kick yourself when you get outdrawn – but as Negreanu says, you can’t be afraid to let them catch up.
One last point. If you’re going to limp with aces, you have to consider limping and limp-raising with other types of hands too if you’re playing against observant opponents. If you only make this move with aces, your opponents will quickly cotton on to that, and you’ll be sending a crystal clear signal to them every time you enter the pot this way. Another good hand to limp-raise with is A-K, which is the type of hand that just loves to see all five cards. You can also consider limping with hands like kings and queens – although again, you’ll often find yourself in some tough post-flop situations if you do. The ideal situation to put yourself in is one where you can enter the pot, and your opponents simply won’t have a clue what you could have. That sure would be ace!
‘If you limp with aces, you’ll never go broke with aces.’ TJ Cloutier
Example 1: Limptastic
(from Poker After Dark Episode 2)
With blinds of $300/$600 and deep stacks, it’s folded to Huck Seed in the small blind, who looks down at A♠ A♦. He calls the remaining $300. Gus Hansen, in the big blind, squeezes A♣ 7♥, and raises to $1800. Huck thinks for a moment, and raises to $5200. Gus folds.
While this hand might appear insignificant, it’s an excellent example of how limping with aces can work out to your benefit. Huck knows that Gus is an aggressive player, and is likely to raise with a wide variety of hands. By making this move, he’s getting Gus to commit money to the pot, and by reraising him, he’s forcing Gus to lay down marginal hands like small suited connectors which have the best chance to outdraw him. Not only has he got value for his hand, he’s defended against drawouts.
Example 2: When Limping Goes Wrong
(from Learn from the Pros Episode 3)
With the blinds at $100/$200 and stacks of $10,000, Christian looks down at A♦ A♠ in first position and limps in. Three other players limp and the big blind checks. The flop comes J♣ J♠ 5♦. The big blind checks and Christian bets $1500. The three limpers fold, but the big blind moves all in for $10,000. Christian thinks for a while and calls. The blind shows J♥ 3♠, the turn and river are blanks, and Christian leaves the table in disgust, muttering under his breath about the bad beat he took.
This hand illustrates the key danger in limping with aces. Christian allows four opponents to enter the pot with unknown hands. On the flop, he is most likely still winning, but he has no information about what his opponents are holding and cannot be completely comfortable. When the big blind moves in, he makes a huge mistake by calling the raise. A player with better post-flop instincts could have laid the hand down and saved themselves a lot of money. Christian would’ve been better off not getting himself into this mess in the first place.
