Why Play Limit

[Goodnews]

very true. just get a spare 20 or so dollars, sit down at a shorthanded 1/2 or 3/6 NL game and wait to double up. I forgot where I read it, but a short stack all-in usually induces a caller.

Don't follow my logic? Take a walk with me...

Exhibit A:
You have a stack of $500 at a 3/6 NL table and all your opponents do too. Your raises and bets are taken with heed and you won't go up against rags thats for sure. Your chances of winning an additional 20 dollars is mediocre at best and hence making money is tougher than it could be.

Exhibit B:
You have a stack of $30 which is dwarfed by your neighbour's chips on both your sides. There are usually two perceptions which the others will acknowledge you with. 1) Some idiot who wants to double up fast and plays anything, or 2) Some idiot who wants to double up fast by playing only great hands.

Finally if you go all in preflop, you get to see two free cards. Why? Well a standard respectable bet is roughly around the area of 3 to 5 BB. Remember you are at a 3/6 table and a 30 dollar PFR from situation A would not get a caller from someone who thinks K3o is good enough for your junk. And if someone with a premium hand calls you, well they were going to call you down regardless of what you had. Anyways, back of subject, an all in with 30 dollars, you get to see turn and river while a PFR of 30 may not even see the flop.

PS I started with no-limit, since I am one of the young bucks who came a little earlier than the wave from WPT and WSOP, and trying to educate myself in limit since I recognize its superior money making potential.

[elysium]

hi jw

well, actually some nl games are more like limit games, and some limit games are a lot like nl. it really depends on how much money you are willing to put at risk. if you had a million dollars to blow, almost any nl game would be more like a limit game, but if you only had a couplke hundred, then any 30-60 is effectively a nl.

you see jw, in this world there are only 2 kinds of players; limit and no limit. which type of player you really are depends on how much money you can comfortably afford to gamble, as opposed to that of your opponents. if you have million in chips in front of you, but the next highest stack is only 20 bucks, you're playing limit; your opponent is playing no limit, even if it were a 10-20 game instead.

everything is very relative.

[TStoneMBD]

ok i guess im wrong by the majority. i suppose i am using the term variance incorrectly. in nolimit, the swings are greater, and therefore more stressful. a winning poker player will win more bb's/hour than in limit, but can lose his whole stack in one hand while that cannot happen in limit. its been said that you need 1500bb's in order to play no limit, which would be $15000 for 5/10, but you only need $12000 for 20/40. if the variance is lower, why would this be? i never got into the whole variance calculations because i play live, and doesnt interest me very much.

[edtost]

5/10 nl is a very big game, 20/40 is not. for instance, a 1/2 nl game probably plays about as big as a 10/20 limit. 20/40 would be more comparable to a 2/5 than a 5/10.

[Bob Moss]

[ QUOTE ]
the variance in no limit is greater than in limit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Looking over my Pokertracker stats for 3/6 and 1/2 NL 6-max, both on Party, my SD/100 is about 3 times my winrate for NL, and 8 times my winrate for 3/6.

Bob

[Educator]

Most of what i've read in this discussion is not very accurate. I played limit quite successfully in card clubs as a prop for 12 years. I now play only no-limit on line. Limit does allow you to get involved in more pots longer since the pot odds often dictate correct calls when you are the underdog. Limit on line is much faster moving then in the clubs and the 6 handed games I am in often get 100 hands or more /hr. I am playing no limit because I work and can't afford the variance of limit games. It is very clear that the variance in correctly played no limit is much lower. Only an idiot would put his entire bankroll at play. So what if playing 1-2 you lose a $100 stack every so often. The player who calls $20 for a gut shot in no-limit is giving you $20 ten times for every time he makes you cry, and he often does it with only $20 left in front of him. Bad beats are much rarer since you are almost always up against fewer players and the pot does not offer reasonable odds for anyone who is halfway thinking about the game. The trouble with no-limit for many players is that Malcolm was absolutely correct: the game requires a lot more skill than limit and the bad players lose all of their money too fast. This is the reason card clubs generally never offered no-limit before the WSOP made no- limit so popular. They did not want players going broke since a broke player doesn't pay time or the drop. They wanted a game in which bad players could get lucky and succeed and given the pot odds that even the worst players are receiving in limit games, the clubs could reasonably expect them to stay around for a while, or get lucky long enought to get hooked. When there is a wild gambalaro at my no limit table I am overjoyed. He is almost invariable broke within an hour or two, and if he hurts me it is likely to happen once or twice, not five times. Play limit if you enjoy it, but no-limit is a much less riskier bet for an equivalent return, if you know what you are doing. I am sure this is true at higher stakes than what I can afford to play now, but I don't have the personal experience to back it up.

One more comment. I do agree it is harder to play multiple tables at no-limit since it is more important to know the players, but in my experience attention to the other players is worth so much that it compensates for not playing several games at once. You've got to know that you should lay down QQ when a strong player goes all in, but when the player who loves going all in every third hand offers you his money and you have QQ all you can do is call and say thank you (unless of course you are really unlucky--s**t happens).

[Clarkmeister]

More game selection and higher average $/hr expectation.

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]
5/10 nl is a very big game, 20/40 is not. for instance, a 1/2 nl game probably plays about as big as a 10/20 limit. 20/40 would be more comparable to a 2/5 than a 5/10.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a really questionable statement, especially if the NL game doesn't play extremely deep.

scrub

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
5/10 nl is a very big game, 20/40 is not. for instance, a 1/2 nl game probably plays about as big as a 10/20 limit. 20/40 would be more comparable to a 2/5 than a 5/10.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a really questionable statement, especially if the NL game doesn't play extremely deep.

scrub

[/ QUOTE ]

i agree and would like to add that in 20 games i see the average pots may even be bigger than the 5-10 game if its deep and playing rather tight...if its loose and you get multiway pots then for sure its a huge game...but just 2 people in a pot raised to $50 preflop leaves $100 in there...usually a whole lot of mony isn't going in there and playing 20 you can usually count on (in fairly loose games) 3-6 people in each pot for usually 2 bets...and thats not even postflop yet...

although, one thing to note is that pots grow exponentially in no limit whereas the rate of growth in limit decreases as the streets progress....kinda like looking at a graph of e^x for no limit and e^(-x) for limit (for rate of growth of the pot...i.e. that would be the first derivative of the pot size graph)

-Barron

[fnord_too]

Great first post. Welcome to the forums.