Dealing with Limpers

Here is a good example of how dangerous it is to take one piece of advice and apply it without considering how it fits into a consistent game plan.

The last piece of advice I heard about limpers was "never over limp, never limp", so last night I started raising regardless of the limpers in front of me.

Wrong.

Stack diminishing quickly before my eyes... hold up! this isn't right! One villain has VPIP of 25, the other guy has a VPIP of 43... I can't just ignore their limps and pretend I'm Open Raising. I'm getting pwned.

This reminded me of another piece of advice (from Danzasmack I think): If someone limps, pretend it's an Open Raise and only open with your 3-bet range. At the time I didn't understand why. It felt like I was getting cheated out of pots by doing that so I ignored the advice.

Put the two pieces of advice together, mix in my previous thoughts about "range aggressive play" and it starts to make sense: you should be playing hands that you think give you an advantage over your opponents range. you're raising to reduce the chance of any more people getting involved in the pot and also to build the pot whilst you're ahead.

Limpers have hand-ranges too, some are pretty tight and you have to take that into consideration.