Limit vs Pot limit Hold'em - which has the biggest swings?

[CurryLover]

I play small/medium sized pot limit games in B&M casinos. I'm a decent, but not great, winning player and my swings are not that big (I tend to have 4 winning sessions for every losing one). Until a few months ago, I'd never played limit poker before. And since I've started to dabble in limit poker it's been totally doing my head in.

I started playing limit hold'em online in the last 3 months or so at PP. I'm playing in the 5/10 and sometimes the 3/6 games. What I've noticed is that my swings are absolutely huge compared to the pot limit games I play in. This has really surprised me since I had thought (it seems incorrectly) that swings would be smaller at limit.

After building $200 into a couple of thousand (I thought limit was easy to start with!), my BR seems to just go up and down by hundreds of $ every day. But it never increases (at least I'm breaking even and beating the rake!). I've read SSH (as well as all the others) and my play is based as closely as possible on that advice.

I'm not asking for any advice on turning myself into a winning player (although it would be appreciated of course) since I'm working on the premise that I will become one when I get more used to limit and get more practice in. What I really want is for experienced limit players to give their opinions on the following:
1. Are the swings in limit usually bigger than in big bet games?
2. To what extent are the huge swings I am experiencing a result of using the recommendations of SSH, to what extent are they a result of the nature of limit play, and to what extent are they a result of my lack of experience playing limit?
3. Is there a way to reduce the swings? Is this desirable/necessary considering I now have a BR just about large enough for the 5/10 games?

I know that most of you guys in the US start with limit before the transition to PL/NL so you must have a better feel for it than English players like myself. Any advice on the reverse transition would be appreciated.

[Iceman]

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1. Are the swings in limit usually bigger than in big bet games?

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It depends. A pot-limit Omaha high game with a lot of preflop raising and reraising can have huge swings, while a tight low-ante limit stud high/low game can have tiny swings. If we're strictly talking 10-handed holdem games, a limit game will usually have higher swings than a pot-limit game of roughly the same size unless the pot-limit game has very aggressive players.

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2. To what extent are the huge swings I am experiencing a result of using the recommendations of SSH, to what extent are they a result of the nature of limit play, and to what extent are they a result of my lack of experience playing limit?

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The swings in limit change somewhat based on game conditions and on your style of play, but they don't change that much. Even for a tight expert player they won't be much lower, and even for a loose/wild player they won't be much higher. As you improve in limit holdem, your swings will probably fall by a bit, since you'll be able to read hands better and have a better idea of where you stand and make more accurate decisions accordingly, and to avoid traps. (Or your swings may rise as you get better if you become more aggressive.) But it is very important to have an adequate bankroll for limit play, and you need to be able to ride out short-term downswings - online 5-10 is a much larger game than it seems.

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3. Is there a way to reduce the swings? Is this desirable/necessary considering I now have a BR just about large enough for the 5/10 games?

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To reduce the swings, work on your hand reading, and look for tables that have passive play, especially preflop. If you have an adequate bankroll, then don't worry about swings - focus on the tables where you can make the most money even if you're at greater short-term risk.

[CurryLover]

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... a limit game will usually have higher swings than a pot-limit game of roughly the same size unless the pot-limit game has very aggressive players.

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Thanks for your very helpful advice. It appears, from my limited experience, that the quote above is totally correct, even though I was expecting it to be the other way round. I seem to lose/win more money per hour in 5-10 limit than I do in my live pot limit games, even though the pot-limit games are 'bigger' games.

It seems counter-intuitive though, doesn't it? I often have much more money in play in live pot limit games than I do in online 5-10 limit games, and with PL every hand there is a chance that all of that money may be go to the middle. Yet limit still has bigger swings. It seems odd that's all. I'll get my head round it eventually.

Out of interest, are the relative swings less in higher stakes limit games (say 20-40)?

[ruan99]

It's possible that you're not respecting the bet sizes in limit hold 'em since you are used to pot limit. In pot limit you could potentialy put your whole stack in the middle and you have to think about that decision where as in limit it only costs you one more bet to see the next card. Just something to think about. Also, if you want to try to decrease the swings in limit I suggest to play tighter. You won't eliminate them altogether but they should decrease.

[CurryLover]

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It's possible that you're not respecting the bet sizes in limit hold 'em since you are used to pot limit. In pot limit you could potentialy put your whole stack in the middle and you have to think about that decision where as in limit it only costs you one more bet to see the next card.

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I think that this is indeed one of the problems I am finding, but possibly in a different way to how you are meaning it. It's not exactly that I "don't respect the bet sizes" since this implies that I'm making bad plays (which I'm sure is often the case, but that's another issue...). Rather, because the bets are so tiny in relation to pot size it often turns out (after my meticulous calculations [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]) that I am correct to stick more money in the pot chasing that long shot draw. And of course, precisely because it's a long shot, most times I end up losing that money. Every now and then I'll win one. The result is huge swings, even though I may be making good decisions.

This doesn't really happen in PL. Unless an opponent makes a pussy bet you never have the odds to chase gut shots and overcards in PL, whereas in limit these situations do seem to come up. So in PL I can happily fold to a bet, whereas in limit I may want (maybe 'want' is the wronng word) to fold rather than chase a long shot draw but know that I would be giving up EV by doing so. So I call, knowing I'm 10 to 1 (or whatever) against hitting my draw. I guess I'm just not used to putting money in the pot knowing I'm a huge dog to win it - it feels odd even though I 'know' it is the correct play.

So, is this the reason why limit has more swings than PL - that in limit you are often correct to chase these long shots and so you are bound to have big swings?

I imagine all this is fairly obvious to experienced limit players, but I'm still trying to get into a limit mindset.

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Also, if you want to try to decrease the swings in limit I suggest to play tighter. You won't eliminate them altogether but they should decrease.

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I do play pretty tight aggressive. PL has taught me that, if nothing else. However, I guess it would reduce swings if I refused to chase gut shots and the like, even when it is an EV+ play to do so. If this is what you mean by playing tighter then fair enough. I get the impression that the experienced players who post here would not turn down an EV+ play, even if doing so might reduce their variance (I'm talking cash games, not tourneys). This is my general attitude as well, I think. But maybe I'm wrong. What are people's views on this?

[pudley4]

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because the bets are so tiny in relation to pot size it often turns out that I am correct to stick more money in the pot chasing that long shot draw. And of course, precisely because it's a long shot, most times I end up losing that money.

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Not only you, but every one of your opponents too. This dramaticallly increases variance.

It seems counter-intuitive to me also. I never play PL and was curious, so I just went to the Empire Poker Lobby and took a look at the games. As nearly as I can tell, a PL25 game is the closest equivalent to a $.50/$1.00 limit game (HE)--the blinds are the same. Average pot for limit was about $8, average pot for PL was about 12. Don't larger pots with the same number of players mean more variance??
So what am I missing here?????? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[DonkeyKong]

I would think that because Pot Limit has so much more bluffing and deception that I would think the variance would be high based on whether you were in sync or out of sync with your timing of such.

Limit poker is kind of a game of patience and grinding it out over time. When I have played NL, it's like my night always came down to 1 or 2 decisions... I think limit inherently smoothes out the results over more decisions so while you still have big swings, those are the result of good/bad runs of cards and not a small sample size of hands... do you agree with this??

[CrisBrown]

Hi CurryLover,

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So, is this the reason why limit has more swings than PL - that in limit you are often correct to chase these long shots and so you are bound to have big swings?

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Yes, that's exactly why you'll typically find lower variance in big bet poker.

Cris

[BradL]

What you are experiencing is a fundemental truth of limit vs pl/nl poker. Limit poker allows you far fewer weapons than pl/nl and therefore you are often playing a flopped top hand as a statistical dog to win against a mix of drawing hands. In pl/nl you would simply make those drawing hands pay a premium to continue with the hand and make thier hand a long term loser, however in limit poker that is often not possible and in calling the fixed bet they are often getting the correct pot odds to continue with the hand. Additionally in pl/nl poker a skilled player is able to get most of his or her chips in with very much the best of it while in limit poker that is also often not possible due to the fixed bet. These two factors will contribute to the "larger swings" that you are experiencing, however if you continue to play good limit poker you will rake in the money over the long run. Hope this has helped.