Limping with Aces

	The primary benefit of limping is that you disguise your hand. If you limp, your opponents can’t narrow down your hand

Daniel Negreanu is one of the most outspoken and opinionated players in the poker world, and the strategy side of the game is undeniably one of his favourite topics. In a recent entry on his popular blog, he wrote the following: ‘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 A-A several times; a cardinal sin, according to some poker literature.’

Negreanu 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. One book leaps straight to mind, in which the author recommends folding pocket Aces pre-flop in a standard tournament situation because you’re ‘too likely to be outdrawn’. Although some prominent poker books do overemphasise pre-flop decisions in no-limit hold’em, for the most part, they agree with Negreanu. 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 in 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? Also, what factors would enter into those decisions?

Benefits of limping

The primary benefit is that you disguise your hand. When you raise pre-flop, 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. Pocket 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 as a result.

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 your opponents make these mistakes against you. One example he has cited on numerous occasions 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 all poker players would like to find themselves on the right side of.

Relling ‘em in

Another reason you might limp is so that you can re-raise when one of your opponents raises. If you’re medium-stacked, you might be able to get all of your chips into the pot pre-flop, 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 – who is of course 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 re-raise.

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 play catch up.

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.

According to Negreanu, another important factor which affects whether or not you should limp in frequently is the tournament structure. He writes: ‘If you fully understood the difference between a $1,000 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.’

Okay, so $1,000 WSOP events start with blinds of $25/$50 and just 40 big blinds. On the other hand, 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 deep – like they typically would be in a cash game or in a major tournament – 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. But, when the stacks are short relative to the blinds, there isn’t as much room for imaginative play.

Often, if you raise pre-flop with Aces you’ll get action, and may even get it 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 not to raise with a short stack is if the table is playing too tightly and folding a lot of hands to the blinds.

Prey on the weak

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 pre-flop 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, of course. The weaker and looser your opponents are 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.

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. But you have to be honest about your skills. If you are not a strong postfl op 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 multi-way pot. Your opponents are going to put some tough decisions to you in such a scenario, and it won’t always be easy to know when you’re winning and when you’re not.

What do you do if you’re in a multi-way limped pot with two black Aces, and the flop comes J♥-10♥-7♠? Let’s say that the big blind bets. It is easy for you to be beaten in this situation, but you could easily be ahead – 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 beaten. 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 to get away from your hand after the flop when you’re beaten without losing your entire stack. Daniel Negreanu is an excellent post-flop player with a keen sense of when he’s beaten. The question is: are you?