Poker: Dealing with Limped Pots

A limped pot is where a player, or number of players, have entered the pot with a call instead of a raise. 

In cash game poker - there can be a lot of limped pots in low-stakes games and hardly any in the high stakes games. This is a practice that has evolved over time, and here is an explanation as to why.

A few years ago, nobody was fighting for limped pots, mainly because they were multi-way, and there was an assumption that aggression would be called by at least one of the players in the hand. 

There is also a mindset that you have not expended too much money in the hand, so what is the point fighting for a few bucks? But then people started to realise that taking down a limped four-way pot, for example, would increase their BB/100 by four.

So, the intelligent players on poker sites started to punish the limpers by raising pre flop and continuing with their aggression post flop.

If you think about it, it is very difficult for a player who has limped to defend their hand. To start with, what range of hands would a player hold if they have limped into the pot? 

The very best hands would have been raised pre flop and so they will have a lot of mediocre holdings. Mediocre holdings don’t play very well even when they flop a piece of the action. 

Imagine holding [Qh] [Ts], flopping top pair, and then facing three-barrels of action?

Limping into pots can be dangerous because it brings more people into the pot. If you want a fight, then just pick on one person and leave the baying mob to someone bigger.