What is the biggest benefit of having a limping range, especially in tournaments?
Gotta be honest here I don’t think there is any benefit unless you’re completing in the small blind (especially to induce in short stack), occasionally I think you can profitably overlimp with marginals in position but especially in a player pool like Replay, you want to raise your strong holdings to strengthen your range so you can take down flops with c-bets and get it in good when you flop well, as well as generally playing fewer multi-way hands against loose-passive players with stupidly wide ranges (vast majority of this site’s player pool).
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Agreed! However, especially later in tournaments when SPR is low and ranges are implicitly better defined, I find it advantageous to have an (infrequent) limping range.
The reason is that I allow my opponents to play a wider range of hands, without revealing the strength of my own hand/range. In the example hand, (I would argue) I won a substantially larger pot against DARLINGGIRL’s K9 than I would have with a standard open and cbet line. I allowed her to reach the flop with a wider range, and because I limped my perceived range was also wider/weaker on a K high board. This allowed me to extract more value.
I don’t see how having a limping range with shallow stacks can be advantageous unless you’re in the small blind because you’re going to be throwing in a good portion of your stack on something you don’t want to call a shove with; against stronger players in late-stage MTTs you’re going to face a lot of these spots.
Regarding the example hand, I think that your perceived weaker range goes out of the window when you check raise on a fairly static rainbow board so I don’t think much of the value you got was derived from that. Generally your opponent massively overplayed the strength of her hand (far too big a sizing on flop, should fold turn when you lead 3/4), although you played it brilliantly.
I just think that overall it’s a losing strategy in the long run unless you can exploit an edge against weaker players, which clearly you did here with the board running out in your favour.
Idk, I guess it’s an exploit. People just don’t attack limps aggressively enough, and I like sometimes keeping villain’s range wide so that there are more hands available that I am ahead of/dominating. Not sure it relies on villain being broadly “weak” in a more general sense—DARLINGGIRL is one of the toughest players on Replay IMO! But especially when you’re opening 80-90% of your hands with a raise, I do think many opponents will tend to underestimate your range when you finally limp.
That’s fair and whatever works for you is best, for me I play raise fold basically to deny equity to limpers by avoiding family pots, especially as the strong player pool on the site (Donks esp.) is super tight so if you do get action from a raise you can put them on a stronger range than average and adjust accordingly.
As for Villain, I’m analysing off one hand (can see she’s ranked number 3 on the whole site), and for one I can think of many which I have played a hell of a lot worse than that! But her flop sizing and turn call were both far too loose and I believe were a much bigger contributing factor to the pot size than your initial limp.
I agree with all your points! I still maintain that the limp was a big part of WHY I got DARLING to spazz here, but it’s a lot of gameflow dynamics too… guess you had to be there 
I hope to play more Donks tournaments this month, and I will make sure to limp your BB if I get the chance! 
One benefit I can think of is that when players are limping often at your table it allows you to limp more with marginal hands that can mature into the nuts. Suited A-2 , 7-8, 3-3, all can be played from any position if nobody is raising you often.
Also like btriedel said it makes it easy to fold to limpers raise and 3 bet range which is now very linear and usually very premium.
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ive never seen so much garbage get rewarded as i do on replay garbage is gold chase any two cards to the river they should change the name to replay river
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well said
I think it would be very rare to be deep enough in a tournament for that to be profitable in the long run. Mixing those hands in as limps occasionally would probably be fine, but I don’t think they’re the hands a limping strategy should be based around.
I can see two strategic reasons to limp:
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There are multiple limps ahead of you, the chances of getting all of them to fold are close to zero and you are holding a hand that can never fold but relies on some fold equity to be a highly profitable raise. Think AK, AQ, AJ, KQ. The benefits of limping these hands is that you can fold for cheap when you miss, but are likely to stack your opponent when you both hit (as in the example hand posted by @Younguru).
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There are players left to act who you think will raise a lot against limps and you have a hand you are wanting to limp raise.
A2s, 78s, 33 are decent hands to balance those ranges at a frequency, but I think mostly they play better as a raise, especially the mid suited connectors. You can represent strong hand on A/K high boards and will often have a strong but disguised hand on low boards. You’re also likely to fold out at least some hands that were ahead of your holding.
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Good point and I think that’s right.
The smallest pps are probably the most obvious candidates to begin building a limping range around—they play extremely fit-or-fold postflop and they don’t have the removal advantages that incentivize a hand like AK or KQ to open/reraise preflop.
Against passive opponents who don’t 3bet enough but also aren’t super into folding the middle of their range, I think suited connectors can do fine as a limp at some frequency. Our implied odds should make up for (enough of ) the lost preflop value, if we play well postflop.
The one I really don’t love limping are the suited wheel aces. These are such excellent open/3bet candidates for a variety of reasons. It seems pretty wasteful to limp them very often.
They do it here -but BELIEVE me they do it at cash games 2-we call them donks and in the long run donks do not win----i NEVER see any win tournaments or have millions of chips here.
Do you think J5 calls a raise preflop very often? Look at those implied odds!
With players making such egregious postflop errors, limping is profitable for sure.
I’m not sure that’s a good example. Sure, they guaranteed they were going to bust by being way too aggressive on the flop, but there’s really no avoiding losing at least most of your stack there.
You’ve got to look at the other side of the equation too - you would have let J5o win a big pot against you if the flop had come J85 instead. They could have also shown up with 55, so there’s some reverse implied odds here too.
I could see that at certain stages in tournaments it might be better to take the gamble of playing bigger pots with disguised hands vs winning more small pots, I think you’d have to be very careful about exactly when you employed that strategy though. It’s probably never a losing strategy if people are bad enough post flop, but I think it’s hardly ever going to be the most profitable strategy. Players limp a lot here, so you’re never really going to be putting your opponents in a spots they haven’t been in many times before.
On the other hand, putting yourself in situations you wouldn’t otherwise find yourself and figuring out how to play those spots can’t be bad.
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It’s the latter for me—I open too many hands already, I don’t know that I want to start including J8 very often. But as an occasional limp from MP against this field, it seems fine to me. There are other hands in this category, of course…
I can do this all night…
Completing from the small blind doesn’t count 
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ugh FIIIINE
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