Tommy Angelo
09-04-2005, 02:15 PM
Blind structures, like all evolved things, have an inherent capacity for extinction. I am here to report that never again on earth will there be a long-standing, regularly-spread, well-attended, high-stakes no-limit hold ‘em game that uses the San Francisco Bay Area blind structure, carried over from the days of no-limit lowball, of three blinds, with one of them on the button, with the minimum opening bet being the sum of the blinds. Extinction happens.
The Cameo Club, Artichoke Joe’s, Pacific News, The Palace, and Lucky Chances. These are the places that no-limit hold’em has thrived non-stop since Hold ‘em was legalized in California in the late 80’s. The main game, as of late, has been at Lucky Chances.
One month ago, the players and the house at Lucky Chances agreed to change the blind structure of the $1000 minimum buy-in NLHE game. The old structure was three blinds, $10-10-20, minimum opening bet was $40, and any position (except the button, which in itself was a relatively recent structural revision) could put up a $40 “kill” before the cards are dealt, making the minimum opening bet $80, and the killer is last to act before the flop.
The new structure aligned the Bay Area with the rest of the poker universe, almost. The structure is two blinds, $20 and $40, and the minimum opening bet is $40. (But you can still kill it for $80, and act last preflop when you do, but the minimum opening bet is now the same as the kill ($80), not double the kill, as it was before. And new players cannot enter the game by posting a big blind of $40. You have to kill it for $80, or start on the big blind. I predict these two variants will be gone soon, and a singular double-blind lineage will prevail on the earth, for now.)
I’ve been playing in the LC game a couple times per week for the last few weeks. I have no opinion about the structure change, but I do have some observations.
1) The table is simpler because there is one less chip color. It used to be a game of $10 chips, $20 chips, $100 chips, and $1000 chips. Now there is no need for $10 chips.
2) Players open for $80 lots of times now with hands they used to open for $40 with. I believe this is because in the old structure, there was no such thing as a “free flop” for the big blind. The big blind was $20, but the minimum opening bet was $40, so it always cost the BB at least $20 to see the flop. Lots of the really tight players (and there are lots of us) would routinely fold for that extra $20 in the big blind. Now, with the new “normal” structure, the players who like to see lots of flops have to make it $80 to go if they want to put the traditional preflop pressure on the big blind. And they do.
3) The game is bigger. The blinds are $60 per round instead of $40. Each pot starts at $60 instead of $40. Everything starts out one-third bigger and balloons from there. The minimum buy-in is still $1000 on most days (sometimes it is $5,000 minimum buyin, with the same blind structure), but players are buying in and rebuying for more than they used to, on average. The way I conceptualize the “bigness” of a game, be it limit or no-limit, is the number of dollars in motion per unit time. To compare two games, I just compare the dollars in motion per time. By my estimation, the game size of the NLHE game at LC’s doubled one month ago when the structure was changed.
Here’s a hand I played last week where somebody said something funny. There was a guy I’d never played with before and he was giving lots of action. So far I’d played him in two pots and I landed well both times. He made it known both times that he thought my betting decisions were peculiar.
Then this hand came up. My stack was 4K and he had me covered. Folded to him on the button and he opened for $200. The small blind folded and I called in the big blind with 66. Headsup. The flop was J-J-2 rainbow. I checked and he checked. The turn was an ace. I checked and he started to check and then he said “time” and then he acted like he was thinking and then he said “two hundred.” I called. The river was a king. I checked.
At that moment I had not even begun to decide what I was going to do if he bet. I was going to rely entirely on my powers of stillness.
His face got consternated and he shrugged and he said, “Your ace is good, I check.” I turned over pocket sixes and he said, “That’s good too.”
Then he said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what do you do for a living?”
Now, if he had intended this as a sincere question, I would have ignored him politely. But he didn’t. He was being mean, on purpose. He was mocking me and my poker playing. His intent was to injure me. I lost my cool and I got rough. I ignored him ruthlessly.
It all ended happily when one of my favorite and funniest foes spoke up and replied, “He plays limit.”
Tommy
The Cameo Club, Artichoke Joe’s, Pacific News, The Palace, and Lucky Chances. These are the places that no-limit hold’em has thrived non-stop since Hold ‘em was legalized in California in the late 80’s. The main game, as of late, has been at Lucky Chances.
One month ago, the players and the house at Lucky Chances agreed to change the blind structure of the $1000 minimum buy-in NLHE game. The old structure was three blinds, $10-10-20, minimum opening bet was $40, and any position (except the button, which in itself was a relatively recent structural revision) could put up a $40 “kill” before the cards are dealt, making the minimum opening bet $80, and the killer is last to act before the flop.
The new structure aligned the Bay Area with the rest of the poker universe, almost. The structure is two blinds, $20 and $40, and the minimum opening bet is $40. (But you can still kill it for $80, and act last preflop when you do, but the minimum opening bet is now the same as the kill ($80), not double the kill, as it was before. And new players cannot enter the game by posting a big blind of $40. You have to kill it for $80, or start on the big blind. I predict these two variants will be gone soon, and a singular double-blind lineage will prevail on the earth, for now.)
I’ve been playing in the LC game a couple times per week for the last few weeks. I have no opinion about the structure change, but I do have some observations.
1) The table is simpler because there is one less chip color. It used to be a game of $10 chips, $20 chips, $100 chips, and $1000 chips. Now there is no need for $10 chips.
2) Players open for $80 lots of times now with hands they used to open for $40 with. I believe this is because in the old structure, there was no such thing as a “free flop” for the big blind. The big blind was $20, but the minimum opening bet was $40, so it always cost the BB at least $20 to see the flop. Lots of the really tight players (and there are lots of us) would routinely fold for that extra $20 in the big blind. Now, with the new “normal” structure, the players who like to see lots of flops have to make it $80 to go if they want to put the traditional preflop pressure on the big blind. And they do.
3) The game is bigger. The blinds are $60 per round instead of $40. Each pot starts at $60 instead of $40. Everything starts out one-third bigger and balloons from there. The minimum buy-in is still $1000 on most days (sometimes it is $5,000 minimum buyin, with the same blind structure), but players are buying in and rebuying for more than they used to, on average. The way I conceptualize the “bigness” of a game, be it limit or no-limit, is the number of dollars in motion per unit time. To compare two games, I just compare the dollars in motion per time. By my estimation, the game size of the NLHE game at LC’s doubled one month ago when the structure was changed.
Here’s a hand I played last week where somebody said something funny. There was a guy I’d never played with before and he was giving lots of action. So far I’d played him in two pots and I landed well both times. He made it known both times that he thought my betting decisions were peculiar.
Then this hand came up. My stack was 4K and he had me covered. Folded to him on the button and he opened for $200. The small blind folded and I called in the big blind with 66. Headsup. The flop was J-J-2 rainbow. I checked and he checked. The turn was an ace. I checked and he started to check and then he said “time” and then he acted like he was thinking and then he said “two hundred.” I called. The river was a king. I checked.
At that moment I had not even begun to decide what I was going to do if he bet. I was going to rely entirely on my powers of stillness.
His face got consternated and he shrugged and he said, “Your ace is good, I check.” I turned over pocket sixes and he said, “That’s good too.”
Then he said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what do you do for a living?”
Now, if he had intended this as a sincere question, I would have ignored him politely. But he didn’t. He was being mean, on purpose. He was mocking me and my poker playing. His intent was to injure me. I lost my cool and I got rough. I ignored him ruthlessly.
It all ended happily when one of my favorite and funniest foes spoke up and replied, “He plays limit.”
Tommy