Limping vs Raising in Poker: Which Strategy Wins More Money?
There you are, seated in the biggest game of your life. Phil Ivey is sitting to your left, Andrew Robl to your right. The action is on you.
You reach for a raise…then think better of it.
You count out a call, but then think better of that. Should you limp, or put in a raise? The possibilities swirl in your head. Ivey calls for the clock, and you’re the first person in history forced to decide on a preflop move.
Jokes aside, though, what should you do in this situation?
Should you always raise it when entering a pot, or can mixing in a few limps be beneficial?
We’ll explore both options today, and when we’re done, you’ll never be stumped at the table again.
What Is Open Limping in Poker?
If you’re brand new to the game, “limping” into a pot means simply calling the big blind instead of raising preflop. The term is meant to conjure weakness, to suggest a player who barely sneaks into the pot because they didn’t have the strength to enter with authority.
Raising, on the other hand, is seen as powerful — a true alpha move. When you raise, you make the table react to you and announce yourself as a force to be reckoned with.
Listen to enough internet experts, and you’ll soon be convinced that only an idiot would ever limp into a pot.
So why do so many pros do it in high-stakes games, and should you add it to your arsenal?
To find out, we need to dive deeper into when and why most players limp or raise at the best online poker sites.
The Case for Limping (Pros & Cons)
Despite what many players will tell you, there are some advantages to limping into a pot.
We’ll look at some of the most common ones below, as well as analyze reasons why limping may not always be a smart move.
Why Smart Players (Sometimes) Limp
In most aggressive games, you’ll usually see the first player enter the pot with a raise; in fact, this has become so standard that an open-raise might as well be a limp in some games.
That being said, good players sometimes limp anyway.
Here are some times when limping might be smart:
To Disguise a Strong Hand
If you expect a raise behind you, limping with a premium hand can allow you to then 3-bet, potentially catching some other limpers along the way.
This can build a big pot (potentially with lots of dead money) and give you better value for your best hands.
To Control the Pot Size
Conversely, you may want to limp with a speculative hand like suited connectors if you expect a raise behind you as well, especially if you think you’d get 3-bet if you raised.
This keeps the pot relatively manageable and keeps you from playing huge pots with marginal holdings.
To Encourage Other Limpers
If you have a hand that plays well multiway, you might want to limp in the hopes that other players with weak hands will follow suit
This can build a big pot, but it’s one that you won’t feel committed to. You can then make a habit of betting the flop big if you connect, or ditch the hand immediately after investing the minimum.
Downsides of Limping
All of the above notwithstanding, there are some clear downsides to limping as well, including:
No Fold Equity
You’ll never take a pot without resistance if you limp. In fact, even if you don’t get raised, you’ll give the blinds a free or discounted look at the flop when a raise might’ve forced them out.
Can Make It Hard to Play Postflop
One of the problems with letting players in cheaply is that they’ll show up with all sorts of hands, making it difficult to put them on range postflop.
You may think your K♠️9♠️ is likely good on a 9♦️6♠️2♥️ board — only to watch the big blind flip over the 6♥️2♣️ that you let him play for free.
It Creates a Weak Image
The aggro-bros at your table have a point: limping is weak. Unless you have a reputation as a sharp and tricky player, open-limping will likely cause the other players at the table to instinctively lose respect for you.
That means your later preflop raises will get much more respect, meaning if you’re coming in for a raise with aces, you might not get a lot of calling action.
The Case for Raising (Pros & Cons)
As we mentioned above, open-raising is now considered a standard play in most games, as players have had the dangers of limping repeatedly drilled into their heads.
There are strong arguments in favor of open-raising, it’s true — but there are some risks involved as well.
Why Raising is Often the Preferred Strategy
There are many reasons why players will raise when entering the pot, but some of the primary ones include:
Building a Pot
When you have a big hand, you want to win a big pot — and it’s hard to do that without raising along the way.
Premium hands like aces or kings do well in raised pots against one or two opponents, so you want to put in a raise early to try to get max value from these hands.
Thins the Herd
Raising will eliminate a lot of the riffraff that would otherwise have tagged along, preventing situations like the 6♥️2♣️ we discussed above.
This will help you win more pots with your stronger hands, as you won’t be sharing the equity with a bunch of trash holdings.
Sets the Tone
Tossing in a raise puts you in control of the hand and forces other players to react to you. In most cases, they’ll check to you on subsequent streets, allowing you to decide how big of a pot you want to play – or if you can get a free look at the turn when they check to you.
And if they don’t check — if they come out firing instead — that gives you valuable information as well. Either way, your raise has helped to define their range and given you data you can use to make smart decisions.
If you raise enough, you could become the dominant force at the table. Players will start folding hands they would’ve otherwise played, simply because they’re anticipating your aggression.
Risks of Always Raising
Raising certainly has its advantages, but there are still risks to making it your default strategy.
Can Get Predictable
Remember how we said people will start anticipating your raises? That means they’ll start trapping you with premium hands or playing back at you with weaker ones, making your decisions more difficult.
Ultimately, any predictable play is one that is less than optimal.
Creates Huge Pots
The point of raising is to build a bigger pot. That’s great if you have a hand that warrants such action, but if you’re not careful, you can find yourself playing huge pots with small hands.
That’s a great way to go broke.
This is especially true if you have aggressive players behind you who like to 3 or 4-bet. Raising makes it easy to get committed to a pot that you have no business being in.
Limits Postflop Edge
Many players have a basic understanding of relative hand strength and preflop strategy. It’s only after the flop that the true mind games begin.
If you feel you have a big edge on your opponents in terms of postflop play, then it might be more profitable to let them see the flop and exploit them from there.
Many experts prefer playing a series of small pots against weaker players, as it maximizes their edge relative to an all-in gamble preflop.
Game Type & Stakes: When Limping or Raising Makes Sense
The type of game you’re playing in will also affect whether you should raise or limp. Below, we’ll look at how to optimize your strategy for cash games and tournaments, as well as low-stakes and nosebleed games.
Cash Games
While most pros will tell you that you should always open-raise in a cash game, the fact of the matter is that these games can vary so much in terms of their personality that you can’t possibly engineer a one-size-fits-all strategy.
Open-raising is generally a sound strategy, and it’s one that’s likely never “wrong.” However, there are tables (especially in live, low-stakes play) where you can open limp with little fear of getting raised, allowing you to play speculative hands with huge implied odds for the minimum.
In these games, raising often does little but increase the price of poker, so if you’re raising with hands like 9♥️8♥️, you may lose more with these bets than you can make back in postflop equity.
If the rest of the table is loose-passive preflop and calling stations afterwards, then limping is a viable strategy.
Tournaments
There’s one big difference between cash games and tournaments: in cash games, you can reload if you lose all your chips.
This means it’s extremely important to be protective of your stack in a tourney, especially in the later stages.
If you’re heads-up in the small blind against a big blind that has you covered, it might make sense to limp in hopes of seeing a cheap flop. However, in these situations, you should be prepared to call a raise (even one that puts you all in), so it makes sense to do so with stronger hands.
Another time you might want to consider limping is if you’re short-stacked with a hand that you’re willing to gamble with in a multiway pot (think JTs and the like). Limping may entice other players to limp behind, building a bigger pot for you if you get lucky.
Again, though, you’d be limping with the intention of calling any raise.
Low Stakes vs High Stakes
Limping is extremely common in low-stakes games with recreational players. Many of these players are in the game for the thrill of seeing the flop and maybe winning a big hand, and they hate nothing more than folding a hand that would’ve been a winner.
Players in these games tend to be terrible postflop, so if you’re confident in your skills, it can be worth it to limp right along with them. If you hit your hand, you could just win a massive pot.
In these kinds of games, balancing your range is usually an exercise in futility, so you can just limp with hands that play well multiway and raise with stronger hands that prefer to be heads-up.
In higher-stakes games, open-limping is much less common; instead, it’s more likely you’ll see two or three raises before the flop.
When limping does occur, it’s often done with the intention of 3-betting if the limp is raised.
However, there are some high-level players (like Daniel Negreanu) who are willing to open-limp occasionally. These players tend to have excellent postflop skills, so they’re willing to give up a little preflop equity in hopes of finding a juicy situation later on in the hand.
GTO vs Exploitative Play: What the Math Says
Game theory-optimal (GTO) play is all the rage in the poker world these days, as pros are all trying to figure out how to play in a way that’s impossible to exploit.
How does limping factor into GTO? Let’s take a look.
GTO Approach
Most GTO approaches ignore limping in all but the most specialized situations. The reason is that these solvers attempt to maximize your equity, and limping eliminates the possibility of fold equity.
GTO play would call for raising any hand you’d think about limping with; this would necessarily include a variety of weaker hands, which can help disguise your range when you raise with aces or kings.
If you don’t feel comfortable raising with your hand, then folding would be preferable to limping, according to GTO principles.
Also, it’s important that GTO play often breaks down in multiway pots due to the complexity involved. Raising certainly simplifies hands, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s more profitable than limping.
Exploitative Play
Exploitative play is the counterpart to GTO. Rather than trying to find an unbeatable strategy, exploitative play requires doing whatever it takes to win the most money possible in the shortest amount of time, even if it involves playing predictably.
Using the low stakes example above, it might be smart to limp at tables where you have little fold equity and players can’t get away from their hands. This exploits their weakness, and while this strategy would be easy to counter, these players aren’t thinking that hard.
Player Psychology & Table Image
Many of today’s poker geeks try to reduce the game to numbers and probabilities, forgetting that, at its heart, poker will always be a game of people.
That’s important to keep in mind when deciding whether to limp or raise, as your decision will affect how the rest of the table perceives you — and how they play against you as well.
How Limping Affects Your Image
Let’s face it — limping isn’t cool.
No one respects the guy who meekly calls the big blind, and no one worries about how to avoid him, either.
However, like with anything else in poker, this can work to your advantage or your detriment, depending on how you use it.
If you find that people are overly respecting your raises because you limp, then you can get some good value with bluffing ranges.
There are also ways to turn your image on its head. For example, if you 3-bet enough players who raise your limps, you’ll find that people get out of your way a lot more often.
Ultimately, you need to keep track of how the table sees you and then balance your ranges accordingly.
How Raising Affects Your Image
Compared to limping, raising is sexy. Most of the best players are hyper-aggressive, putting in raises and reraises with a huge range of hands. Money seems to mean nothing to them.
And if there’s one thing raising is certainly good for, it’s attracting attention. People will take notice if you’re firing chips into nearly every pot.
As with limping, that can either work for or against you. People will start factoring you into every decision they make, and every hand will run through you. The threat of a massive raise will loom over everything they do.
But most players hate to feel like they’re being bullied. You’ll soon become the biggest target of the table, and people will set traps and play back at you as much as possible.
That means that, if you want to play in a hyper-aggressive manner, you’ll need to be comfortable navigating raised pots and playing postflop. You’ll also likely want to find deep-stacked tables, or else you’ll soon face a barrage of 3-bet all-ins that you can’t call.
Real-World Examples & Pro Perspectives on Limping vs. Raising
There are two pros who are notorious for limping in spots where other high-level players would undoubtedly raise: Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth.
And while they might be alike in the sense that they both frequently limp, their overall styles couldn’t be more different. Let’s take a look at how they tend to approach limping in big spots.
Case Study: Daniel Negreanu
Daniel Negreanu has attracted attention for open-limping in some big games, including the 2023 Super High-Roller Bowl. This $300k buy-in event featured elite pros like Isaac Haxton, Justin Bonomo, Jason Koon, and more.
Every single one of those players is a “GTO genius,” as Negreanu puts it, and none of them would have open-limped like Daniel did…so why did Daniel do it?
Luckily for us, Negreanu is very generous with the poker community in terms of sharing his thought processes. In a YouTube video called “Limpin’ is Pimpin’,” Negreanu explained why he chose to occasionally limp against this killer lineup.
Negreanu points out that most people don’t play a balanced strategy when limping; they only limp with suited connectors and other hands that play well multiway. If you balance things out a bit more by including stronger and weaker hands, you become much harder to pick on.
He also says that most players nowadays are so accustomed to raising every hand, they don’t know how to play against limpers optimally (provided the limper has a balanced range). It’s also much harder to play against you postflop, as virtually any board could potentially hit you.
Basically, by zigging when everyone else zags, Negreanu manages to remain one of the most unpredictable — and toughest — players in the world.
Case Study: Phil Hellmuth
Phil Hellmuth has always been an interesting player in the poker world.
His results are insane, and yet he doesn’t get the respect you might think a player with his accomplishments would deserve.
Like Negreanu, Hellmuth is known for limping quite often, especially in later stages of tournaments. However, he seems to have very different reasons for doing so.
Hellmuth is much nittier than Negreanu (or virtually any other pro), and his limping range typically consists of multiway hands like suited connectors and premium hands like AKs.
He doesn’t usually open limp with premium hands to set traps, though. It’s not uncommon to see him limp with a hand like AQs and then fold to a raise — and to be fair, he’s not always wrong when he does so.
In Hellmuth’s case, though, his image dictates a lot of his decisions. Players love to be in hands with him, and they’ll go out of their way to do so.
He’s also a tournament specialist who understands that each chip is precious. Why waste them all on a coin flip when you can wait for a better spot — and the players targeting him give him no shortage of those.
This strategy doesn’t play to his advantage in high-limit cash games, though, where he’s been much less successful. He gives away a ton of information and equity with his unbalanced ranges, and he tends to bleed money with meek call/fold lines.
Basically, if you’re not Phil Hellmuth, you probably shouldn’t play like him.
Final Verdict: Is Raising Better than Limping?
Generally speaking, raising is still a better strategy than limping.
It gives you fold equity, helps establish a powerful image, and extracts more value when you win.
However, poker is all about building balanced ranges that are difficult to exploit, and you can’t do that if you completely ignore one of the tools in your toolbox. There are definitely situations where limping is warranted, and smart players will recognize them and act accordingly.
If you want to be the player at the table everyone fears, then you need to be the one who acts in ways no one can predict. And in today’s ultra-aggressive games, limping occasionally is about the most unpredictable thing you could ever do.