Reviving The Secret Limping Strategy We Made Eight Years Ago

Almost eight years ago, Jonathan and I were in a car for a long time together. It was a 17 hour drive in one day from Vegas to Portland after the 2017 WSOP. As we traversed the vast, unpopulated deserts and highlands of central and northwestern Nevada, we bordered on madness. With the pedal to the floor on my ’06 Prius (about 58 MPH) we went down some pretty strange mental paths. We created a character named “Road Dog” who talks on a CB radio to nobody in particular in a gravelly voice and ends every sentence with “Road Dog Out.” We played a lot of a fictitious game called “Shaks a Fact” in which we, in the voice of high stakes whale Dan Shak, would state a historical “fact” (or fiction). It was the job of the other person to figure out if “Shaks a fact” or “Shaks a crap.” I learned that it’s pretty hard to maintain the Dan Shak voice. Sometimes I would have it for a sentence or two and then just be completely unable to find it. 

Probably the least sane thing we did was spend hours attempting to create an open limping strategy. 2017 was right around the height of an open limp being interpreted as a surefire sign of a bad player, so why not fuck with the dials a little and see if we could make it work? In between Road Dog exchanges and historical fictions, we chiseled out what we thought was at least a relatively balanced open limping strategy. Here is the note I have from 2017 copied verbatim:

(Note: These are not the only hands we would play, hands not mentioned here are played as normal raises or folds.)

Open Limping Range when relatively deep (Beta)

Limp to 3-bet

AA, KK, and QQ that are two color (67% of AA-QQ), raising with the monochromatic AA-QQ.

AKs (pick 2 of the suits each day, raise the others)

A3s pick 2 suits a day

A2s pick 2 suits a day

 

Limp to call

A4s pick 2 suits a day

A5s pick 2 suits a day

67s-QJs pick 2 suits a day

either 22-1010 even pairs or 33-JJ odd pairs depending on the day (just choose evens or odds each day)

Spoiler: it never made it past “beta” mode. We each committed to try it for a period of time that I can’t currently remember. I didn’t have much success with it. Jonathan says he had a little. Looking at it now, I kinda want to try it again. At the time I was playing almost exclusively tournaments, which limited the situations in which I could use it. Either an opponent left to act or I would often not be deep enough for it to make sense.

I now play almost exclusively deep stacked cash and the open limping strategy is a siren call. I think it needs at least a little modification. It was a beta, after all. Our goal was to have reasonable board coverage and not be completely imbalanced. It seems like we did OK, but I would add a few hands in some spots and change the actions with some others.

Before I propose changes to the strategy, here are some notes on the initial strategy:

• The strategy was meant to be applied from all non-blind positions.
• We intentionally did not include any limp/folds, but if there was more aggressive action than one raise in front we could obviously fold some of the weaker limp/call and limp/raise combos.
• We tried to make the open limps encompass about 17-20% of the total hands we would VPIP at the time. I think I want to make that higher.
• We were thinking mostly about tournaments and their inherently shorter stacks. I am now going to be thinking more about deeper cash games.

Proposed changes to the strategy:

• The A-wheel hands stand out to me here. There needs to be more randomization than A2 and A3 suited being limp/3! And A4 and A5 suited being limp/call. I would change it to randomly picking two of the four A-wheels for each action and then randomly picking two suits for limping.
• I don’t like that we are never finding any limp/raises with pairs under QQ. If this strategy is to be applied in games where I am typically 300+ BB deep, there is enough wiggle room for some 3betting with those pairs. I don’t want to include 50% of them, like we did with many of the other hand types. Of the 5 pairs JJ and lower that were limps on a given day, I would randomly pick two a day as limp/raises.
• I would add in a few more non-premium hands with blockers. The only “blocker” type hands in the initial strategy are the A-wheel hands, and that isn’t enough. KQ and KJ suited seem like natural additions to be played similarly to the A-wheel suiteds: half of the suits to be played as limps, half of those to be 3bets and half to be calls.
• Similarly, I would include (randomly) some of the lower suited connectors in the “sometimes limp/raise” category.

Problems with the strategy that I can see right now: 

• It requires a lot of work every day that you use it. There are multiple things that need to be randomized and decided on, and then they need to be remembered. I could see referencing my notes a lot as I play, which is not ideal for many reasons.
• This strategy is manufactured with the hope of open limping and then getting raised. That’s not going to happen every time, and I will find myself in 4+ way limp pots a lot. That’s not necessarily a huge issue but it clearly forsakes equity denial and does not help narrow down opponents’ ranges as much as raising.
• I recognize that the limp/raises are unbalanced towards hands that don’t exactly want action. I thought about it, and I’m not too concerned about it. When you’re opening normally you mostly don’t want to get raised anyway. 

These are just my initial thoughts upon revisiting the strategy. If you have any ideas to improve it, I would love to hear them. You are welcome to try this strategy out, but I gotta warn you it is definitely not solver approved.

After we had driven almost all the way back to Portland, we got pulled over by three separate cops for having a tail light out. I didn’t have a replacement and it was too late and too remote to find somewhere to get one. Maybe that was a bad sign. This was born in the desert and it should probably stay there, but it’s fun to try new things sometimes.