britspin
09-02-2005, 05:56 AM
I've written the post below as a argument for Micro NL players to play limit. Since I'm a donkey, I thought I'd get the feedback of you guys before posting over in NL.
All suggestions, comments and criticisms welcome!
Why Switch?
I suppose it is fairly rare for players to move from playing exclusively No Limit to almost exclusively Limit.
A lot of players, like me, who started poker after seeing (in my case) late night poker, or WPT, or WSOP or just through the adverts that are everywhere, are going to start in micro-NL, just because.. well, because it’s sexy. I want to encourage some people to try limit too.
It's what I've done, and I think it’s making me a better player. I believe, after only a couple of months of Limit, that not only was I totally ignorant about limit before, but that playing limit has made me a better overall poker player, and when I decide to play NL again my extra knowledge will make me a far better NL player.
So I thought I’d write a post trying to explain why Micro NL players should make an effort to play a lot of limit.
I moved over after accidentally signing up for a $10 limit MTT. "oh, no" I thought. Hours of dull small blind limit poker, followed by a suck-out. How dull, how boring.
An hour later, I was thinking harder about my poker decisions than I had to in a long time. If I was 12xBB, BB would call any raise, I had A9s and the flop was all low... what to do?
By the time I'd gone out of the tournament (just out of the money) I was hooked.
NL players will tell you repeatedly that Limit sucks because "You can't get anyone off a hand", "No-one folds" or "People hang around with nothing". I said the same myself.
Except of course, all this means is that in Limit, a lot of people are making bad decisions very frequently- and thus giving you money.
My experience with NL was very profitable, extremely challenging and positive. Yet it basically consisted of waiting for strong hands, betting them high to force people to make big mistakes by calling, and then betting even higher if I hit.
I was, and am, a donkey. A good donkey, I like to think, but a donkey. I looked for opponents to make occasional huge errors. My game was almost always preflop and flop-push or fold, because I rarely had odds for a draw, and if I was ahead I wanted to close the game fast and I knew people would call often enough to pay me off.
By contrast, In Limit you are not looking to double up on a single hand, you're not looking for the one perfect hand. Instead, you have to play consistently, get involved regularly, evaluate your opponents carefully, pay attention to each betting round, understand your draws, your outs and your scare cards and act correctly as a result.
In other words, you have to play good poker. Of course, most players aren't going to do this, so most players will be leaving money on the table.
You'll also hear that limit is dull, grindy, boring. You'll hear a contrast between the artistry of making a 4xBB raise on the river with a busted flush with the calling stations who make bluffing impossible in limit.
Yet there's as much artistry in making the marginal call from LP with a 1 gap connector that turns into raising a 2nd pair, with flush and gutshot draws on flop- and then playing it correctly against a multiway field to the end of the hand.
Of course, in limit you're going to get sucked out on more. You're going to loose a series of big hands to a table of calling stations who hit their two outers on the river. So you need to learn tilt control, you need to learn to suck it up and stay focussed, disciplined and composed.
By playing Limit, you will learn to play flops aggressively and smartly. You'll know how to get the most out of a good turn card and minimise the cost of a poor one- and you'll definitely learn to count your outs and your odds properly.
In Limit, I also find moving up much easier. Moving from a $50 NL to a $200 NL table was too big a step for me, as I knew that a few catastrophic mistakes would be incredibly painful, so I’d be playing scared. In limit, if you’re bankrolled, you can take a shot and see if you’re comfortable at that level. If you are, then you start maximising your income much more quickly by playing at the right level. Of course, others might be much more fearless about moving up NL limits, but certainly for me, the chance of catastrophe was a real issue.
Finally, Playing the same game all the time gets dull. I’m sure that after a lot of Limit my learning curve will flatten out and I’ll start to play on Auto pilot. Perhaps then I’ll move back to NL, or to NL STT, or to OHL, or something else. Stretching your mind, trying to understand new concepts is just generally good, especially if you can feel your play getting stuck in a rut.
I remember reading a post in Micro-Limit saying limit players should play more NL conversely, NL players should play more limit. Try it. You might like it.
All suggestions, comments and criticisms welcome!
Why Switch?
I suppose it is fairly rare for players to move from playing exclusively No Limit to almost exclusively Limit.
A lot of players, like me, who started poker after seeing (in my case) late night poker, or WPT, or WSOP or just through the adverts that are everywhere, are going to start in micro-NL, just because.. well, because it’s sexy. I want to encourage some people to try limit too.
It's what I've done, and I think it’s making me a better player. I believe, after only a couple of months of Limit, that not only was I totally ignorant about limit before, but that playing limit has made me a better overall poker player, and when I decide to play NL again my extra knowledge will make me a far better NL player.
So I thought I’d write a post trying to explain why Micro NL players should make an effort to play a lot of limit.
I moved over after accidentally signing up for a $10 limit MTT. "oh, no" I thought. Hours of dull small blind limit poker, followed by a suck-out. How dull, how boring.
An hour later, I was thinking harder about my poker decisions than I had to in a long time. If I was 12xBB, BB would call any raise, I had A9s and the flop was all low... what to do?
By the time I'd gone out of the tournament (just out of the money) I was hooked.
NL players will tell you repeatedly that Limit sucks because "You can't get anyone off a hand", "No-one folds" or "People hang around with nothing". I said the same myself.
Except of course, all this means is that in Limit, a lot of people are making bad decisions very frequently- and thus giving you money.
My experience with NL was very profitable, extremely challenging and positive. Yet it basically consisted of waiting for strong hands, betting them high to force people to make big mistakes by calling, and then betting even higher if I hit.
I was, and am, a donkey. A good donkey, I like to think, but a donkey. I looked for opponents to make occasional huge errors. My game was almost always preflop and flop-push or fold, because I rarely had odds for a draw, and if I was ahead I wanted to close the game fast and I knew people would call often enough to pay me off.
By contrast, In Limit you are not looking to double up on a single hand, you're not looking for the one perfect hand. Instead, you have to play consistently, get involved regularly, evaluate your opponents carefully, pay attention to each betting round, understand your draws, your outs and your scare cards and act correctly as a result.
In other words, you have to play good poker. Of course, most players aren't going to do this, so most players will be leaving money on the table.
You'll also hear that limit is dull, grindy, boring. You'll hear a contrast between the artistry of making a 4xBB raise on the river with a busted flush with the calling stations who make bluffing impossible in limit.
Yet there's as much artistry in making the marginal call from LP with a 1 gap connector that turns into raising a 2nd pair, with flush and gutshot draws on flop- and then playing it correctly against a multiway field to the end of the hand.
Of course, in limit you're going to get sucked out on more. You're going to loose a series of big hands to a table of calling stations who hit their two outers on the river. So you need to learn tilt control, you need to learn to suck it up and stay focussed, disciplined and composed.
By playing Limit, you will learn to play flops aggressively and smartly. You'll know how to get the most out of a good turn card and minimise the cost of a poor one- and you'll definitely learn to count your outs and your odds properly.
In Limit, I also find moving up much easier. Moving from a $50 NL to a $200 NL table was too big a step for me, as I knew that a few catastrophic mistakes would be incredibly painful, so I’d be playing scared. In limit, if you’re bankrolled, you can take a shot and see if you’re comfortable at that level. If you are, then you start maximising your income much more quickly by playing at the right level. Of course, others might be much more fearless about moving up NL limits, but certainly for me, the chance of catastrophe was a real issue.
Finally, Playing the same game all the time gets dull. I’m sure that after a lot of Limit my learning curve will flatten out and I’ll start to play on Auto pilot. Perhaps then I’ll move back to NL, or to NL STT, or to OHL, or something else. Stretching your mind, trying to understand new concepts is just generally good, especially if you can feel your play getting stuck in a rut.
I remember reading a post in Micro-Limit saying limit players should play more NL conversely, NL players should play more limit. Try it. You might like it.