In most games and betting variations of poker it’s perfectly fine to just call the initial bets pre-flop without making an open-raise. In Omaha high, Omaha eight-or-better high/low split, and in all of the seven stud games, it’s a part of a normal, winning strategy to call the bring-in on third street or big blind pre-flop with certain kinds of hands. In no-limit hold’em, however, just calling the big blind pre-flop before anyone else has acted is almost always a mistake, and is a mistake that bad players make over and over again. Players who open limp with a weak range make excellent targets in no-limit hold’em, and here we are going to look at the plays you can use to take advantage of this common mistake.
If someone open limps and it’s folded to you in late position, you can make a raise with a wide range of hands because you have a few advantages going your way. This type of play is called an isolation raise because it almost always isolates the limper so you get to play a heads-up pot. When you make this late position raise, you will often get the limper to just fold, so it’s similar to stealing blinds except you get an extra big blind of profit the times it works. If he calls, he’ll still be out of position with a weak hand, and will often fold to continuation bets on the flop. Working the pre-flop and flop betting streets together allows you to really pick this player apart because they can’t continue out of position in a big pot without a big hand, and it’s very rare that they will make big hands.
It is worth considering that big hands aren’t something that you get in every play like https://jasaqq.cc online as playing in a live casino is an entirely different experience because for a big hand you need an even bigger pot that is rare to find.
After a player open limps, the other players left to act also have the option of just calling the big blind as well, and this is referred to as limping behind. If you’re in late position, limping behind a few other players who have also limped can be a powerful tool because your pot odds are very high and your implied odds are also very high. Hands like small suited-connectors and suited one-gappers go way up in value in these multi-way spots, as do small and medium pocket pairs. Often you’ll be getting the proper pot odds to call just by the money already in the pot, so any implied odds, or money you’ll get from the post-flop betting, is just extra profit.
Knowing how to go after open limpers is a very important skill in no-limit hold’em, especially in today’s micro-stakes and small-stakes games on the Internet where many people still open limp and play badly post-flop on a regular basis. Live games at the $1/2 and $2/5 levels are also notorious for this specific type of bad play. If you play aggressively in position against open-limpers, you’ll quickly take their money a little bit at a time.
