Why don't you play No Limit?

[Rosencrantz1]

The first vol of Harrington on Hold'Em will greatly help your NL game (for tourneys, not for cash games necessarily).

I spent about a month with HoH, focusing primarily on SnGs ($5+.50) and the book most certainly helped my play. But I do find tourneys frustrating because I can be playing solid poker for an hour, building my stack and then go all in with AK, get called by A3 and the guy hits 2p on the river, busting me out on the bubble and making me feel like I've wasted an hour or so of play.

So, I've been focusing on limit again (even though, every once in a while, I'll play a cheap or freeroll MTT just for kicks).

But to (re)answer your question, HoH.

[skoal2k4]

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i want to learn NL as the SNG and Free Rolls are NL, but i don't know how to go about learning- what to start reading?


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This when it comes out

[Dave G.]

Get Bob Ciaffone & Stewart Ruebens book "Pot-Limit and No-Limit Poker". It's a bit dated, but it's still pretty awesome. It teaches some important ways of thinking about each pot you enter.

And I agree, the first HoH book was awesome. I can't wait to get the second one.

[DavidC]

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Most of the people that play even small stakes No Limit make much more than limit players.

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Care to back this statement up?

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I ran really awesome for like 20k hands at NLHE and was making something like $20/hr playing 8-tables of NLHE $25.

However, two factors helped me greatly here:

1) This was JUST after the shift between 50x stacks and 100x stacks.

2) I was playing mostly during prime time: 6p eastern to 7a eastern.

3) Small sample size. (I wasn't really that great, but it was still $1200 or something like that.).

Anyways, I started losing some cash pretty quickly, and lost about $500 over my next 10k hands, and decided to go back to limit for a bit.

I've tried to bury the memory of those 10k hands, but I think I basically started getting a little more cautious with stuff like TPTK and a little less able to fold when I was clearly beaten, and a little more likely to be aggressive when I was probably beaten, during those last 10k hands.

I think you can make a lot of money playing 8x $50, or 4x $100 tables.

Generally you should have a roll of between 10x buy and 30x buy (25x buy is good), meaning that you want to have something like $750 to play the $25 game.

It's a fun game, and I believe that Micro NLHE is more profitable than Micro LHE. However, it's really stressful.

I also think you make less rakeback playing NLHE.

--Dave.

[DavidC]

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If any of you are thinking of giving No Limit a shot, this might provide some encouragement.

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Just thought I'd point out a post I made:

The Ultimate Thread for Going from LHE to NLHE

[McGahee]

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I wouldnt' be too thrilled about losing a buyin to a runner runner straight or something like that.

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I was playing a 10+1 1-table tourney yesterday. Got AA, reraised a raiser 4X his raise. He calls, and calls another all-in flop bet on a J9x flop with 88. Turn is an 8, and I go back to my $2/4 game. It's just gay.
Also, I agree with pretty much everything John Feeney said in his book. When every decision you make depends on the size of your chip stack, that's not really poker IMO.

[DavidC]

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dont like the larger swings and it makes me think more than i want to [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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The swings aren't larger, but like you I wouldnt' be too thrilled about losing a buyin to a runner runner straight or something like that.

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My experience was that the swings were twice that of LHE. (sd 60/100 at NLHE $25 = 30/100 at LHE, which is more than what's mentioned in the micro faq)

[@bsolute_luck]

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When every decision you make depends on the size of your chip stack, that's not really poker IMO.

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see that's the opposite of what i think/hope NL is like. it adds 2 more dementions to the game: dictating the odds to your opponent as opposed to limit where it is what it is, and you base part of your decisions based on chip size. i think that is perfect for poker. plus bluffing is a lot different.

[Jaran]

Because it takes me too long to figure out pot odds. (I am not good at math)

-Jaran

[benneh]

anyone saying they're "too scared to play NL" really should read one of those little stories on doyle's book (not super system). pretty much talks about how silly it is to be scared of no limit just cause its "NO LIMIT." if its so scary, just go down in stakes.

anywho, id o play NL. tons of SnGs and MTTs. i play NL25 every now and then when i feel like taking a breka from 4-tabling limit. i do pretty good. i find it a lot more fun than limit, since theres more ways to win besides gong to showdown.