Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Suppose one of these limpers calls from late position
Suppose one of these limpers calls from late position and you have 10-9, K-7, A-2, J-8 or a premium hand on the button. Raise every time. Your hand doesn’t matter because most of your value will come from picking up the pot pre-flop. When there are limpers and everyone is deep-stacked, I raise to 4BBs + 1BB for each limper. So, I would raise to 5BBs here. As stacks get shorter, I raise a little less because I don’t need to raise as much to get my entire stack in on favorable flops. Some of these limpers always call and some usually fold. Either way, you should make a continuation bet on most flops. Their ranges are so wide that no specific flop is favorable for them. If one of these players limps and a few other people limp behind, you can still raise with a fairly wide range because when people limp after a loose limper, they usually have weak hands as well.
These loose limpers will often limp with small and medium pairs,
These loose limpers will often limp with small and medium pairs, and then make a huge over-push when raised. They do this because they have heard that pairs are always a coin flip when they get all-in, so they just want to get in pre-flop and force you off your hand. As long as you are confident about your read of the player, you can call off with hands like 8-8 and A-K if the stacks aren’t too deep.