Posted by Johnnymac 7:26 AM
Why No Limit?

I played some no limit with some guys last night and won a respectable amount for the four hours I was there. As I have lamented before, it's quite hard to find a decent-sized limit game anymore these days - everyone wants to either play for very small stakes or play pot limit or no limit ("big bet") with nothing in between. I understand the allure to many new players of playing no limit because it's the game that's on television and a good night playing no limit can be very lucrative to one's bankroll. That's great, but I came to the conclusion last night that most of the guys who are wanting to play big bet games don't know how to play them properly - at least many of the guys I played with last night, that is.

When I say that these guys don't know how to play no limit, I am not saying that they don't know how to play holdem or how to play poker. Nor am I really saying that they are bad players - most of these guys can quote Sklansky and Cloutier's books, too, and their hand selection and their awareness of position for the most part shows that they've mastered the theory of holdem itself. They can play the game. But what I am saying is that generally, the players in these games don't bet properly and are scared off by bets that really shouldn't be scary at all.

What I have found is that most of the guys in these games are comfortable making and calling bets around $25 or $30. Given the $1-2 blind structure that we played last night, a modest $5 preflop raise will usually get a couple of callers and build the pot to around $20 before the flop. Thus anyone who calls a $25 bet into the flop and continues betting or calling that same amount on later streets is severely underbetting the pot and giving his opponent favorable odds and a profitable chance to catch up.

My answer to this is simple when I play with these guys - if I have a hand I always bet and raise in increments of the pot, and if I am in favorable position or otherwise isolated against a single opponent, I will play this way for most draws, too. I recognize that sometimes I'm taking the worst of it when I do this, but against this group of opponents at least, I know that any bet or raise outside of their comfort zone makes it increasingly likely that I will win the pot without a showdown*. This is Doyle Brunson 101 - always put your thumb on your opponent and make him play defense - yet for all of the Cloutiers and Lee Joneses and Kriegers that these guys like to quote, I think they somehow skipped Super System. Their loss, in more ways than one.

I don't play many hands, but when I do I am committed and I am willing to fight. And in no limit, this is the only correct way to play. Otherwise it becomes a drawing game.

This gets me back to the title of my post - why do so many people want to play no limit these days if they are not willing to play correctly? I don't know. Perhaps it's the allure of playing the same game as on television or maybe it's the excitement of going all-in with a monster hand. I think that many of these guys would likely be better served playing in a bigger limit game, maybe $10-20 or even $20-40.



* Bob Ciaffone says that knowing when and how to "fire the other barrel" is one of the most important skills one can have when playing no limit poker. That is, if a heavyhanded show of strength doesn't work the first time it's very likely to work on the very next card. In other words, if your pot sized bet somehow gets a crying call quite often an even bigger bet on the next card (pot x3) is usually enough to force your opponent to give up submit.

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