When most players play Sit & Go’s they adopt a standard strategy of tight play in the early stages and increased aggression later on. As a general approach that’s all well and good, but it leaves little room for non-standard or imaginative plays and in games where there are weaker players you should be trying to maximise your edge against them by entering more pots. Limping is one way of doing this, especially in loose-passive games where many players like to see the flop each hand in the early stages.
Limping in (i.e. just flat-calling the big blind) enables you to play many pots cheaply and look for situations where you can flop a big hand and potentially stack weak players who are likely to put all their money in with a top-pair type hand. For this reason, limping small to mid pairs and suited connectors as well as some suited Aces in early position can form part of your strategy, and you can also limp-reraise with some big hands like A-K or big pairs to balance it, since other players will stack off very lightly.
When not to limp
Limping cannot be used effectively at all tables, however, since in tight or aggressive games you will not get sufficient players calling and you will often get raised and then have to fold or call and play out of position when you are not getting the correct odds to do so. For this reason, if you want to play more hands in tight-aggressive games from the early positions you are better off simply raising them, as most other tight players will give you credit for big hands.
Similarly, limping in Sit & Go’s becomes less viable as the blinds go up, as your implied odds are cut so drastically. Limping starts to become problematic when the average stacks are below 50 big blinds, and at this point you should tighten up or stick to raising hands that you want to play so that you can take the pots down after the flop with continuation bets. For most Sit & Go’s this means open-limping is only a viable strategy in the first couple of levels, but in this time you should try to speculate where possible, given the right circumstances, since it is rarely going to cost you a large percentage of your stack. Doubling up can massively boost your leverage as the game progresses, so it’s worth taking a few inexpensive shots.
Playing position
Two other key factors to consider when contemplating a limp are position and the number of players who have limped in before you. Generally speaking open-limping in mid to late position (i.e. when there are five or fewer players behind you) is not a great idea since you want to try and pick the blinds up or at least charge other players to play against you in position.
When others players have already limped in your options shift, as limping behind them becomes much more viable. You can now limp with a similar range to the hands you would open-limp in early position in a loose-passive game: small to mid pairs, suited connectors and Aces, and some Broadway hands. In a cash game it would often be better to raise and isolate with many of these hands against one or two limpers, but in Sit & Go’s limping a lot of these hands is preferable since you only start with a very limited stack size. You want to either hit flops and build chips or keep as many back as possible for the later stages where fold equity is crucial. So whereas a hand like 7-7 or A-9 suited might get raised in a cash game, in a Sit & Go limping can be preferable for pot control, because they are often hands that you only really want to play on the flop. On the other hand, you will still want to raise with your stronger pairs and Aces in most situations (i.e. T-T+, A-J+) since these are hands that can flop better and you want to build pots with.
Hidden benefits
Another benefit of limping in position behind other players is that it will give you the opportunity to extract more money postflop, get away from some hands or see what your odds are to draw in position. For this reason some weaker hands like K-Jo or gap-suited connectors are more playable, whereas in early position you need to fold these hands. Similarly in late position there are fewer players to isolate you, so even in tough higher stakes games you can still limp quite liberally, especially if it is the weaker players who have already entered the pot ahead of you.
Punishing limpers
So far we have mainly talked about the benefits of limping with speculative hands. However, if you are going to do this in early position you will also need to balance it out by limp-reraising hands like big pairs (J-J+) and big Aces (A-Q+). This is a tactic that works best in lower stakes Sit & Go’s where players will make massive mistakes by stacking off with weak Aces and pairs incorrectly, and so complements the limping of speculative hands in early position.
However, at higher stakes players are better and not likely to stack off light, so limp-reraising is not advisable. You will usually either lose action or get it all-in against a better hand, apart from the occasional cooler situation where the money would have gone in however you played it.
Limp-reraising big hands should also be avoided once the blinds have gone up a bit, since you cannot profitably limp speculative hands to balance them out – focus instead on having a more balanced raising range.
Despite this you will still have to contend with players who do limp incorrectly in Sit & Go’s (especially at lower stakes), and while playing against them in the early stages is relatively straightforward, as the blinds go up it can become more tricky. Generally speaking you can still limp some hands like small pairs behind other limpers when the effective stacks are as low as 20 big blinds and you are in late position, but below this you should resort to an all-in or fold policy.
Some limps must go unpunished
Assuming you do that, you still need to exercise some caution because of the ICM considerations in Sit & Go’s. Try to assess the ranges your opponents limp with and how much of this range they are calling with. Shoving hands like 3-3 or A-8o over high-blind limpers can often be a mistake, since many bad players will limp-call with mediocre pairs or Broadway cards against which your equity is not that great in ICM terms. Therefore you should stick to stronger re-shoving ranges like A-T+, 7-7+ in most circumstances. However, if you see players who frequently limp-fold, or there is a lot of dead money in the pot from limpers and antes, then you can open those ranges a bit more since they will provide you with good overlay.
Above all, remember that limping is one of the more complicated aspects of Sit & Go play, especially because of the limited stack sizes, and try to think about the situation and variables as much as possible before making any decisions. If you can do this however, you will have a good edge in an area of Sit & Go play that other players neglect, and this can boost your ROI significantly.