NL or PL holdem???

[B Mando]

Which has more skill??? I have heard both arguements and my general idea about each game is that in PL "You have to play after the flop" and some argue that is the reason why some think it is more skilled...but in NL if you make one mistake you are dead and can lose everything...I owuld like to hear others thoughts on this.

[TomCollins]

PL allows more decisions. In cash games, I would say they are fairly close to equal. But in tournaments, bad players can reduce most of the skill of good players by pushing preflop, since much of tournaments is played as a small stack and you cannot reload.

[crimhead]

[ QUOTE ]
but in NL if you make one mistake you are dead and can lose everything...I owuld like to hear others thoughts on this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Same is true in pot-limit. You can easilly lose your whole stack to an error, particularly later in a hand.

Note that you haven't actually lost everything unless you were as dumb as that character from "Rounders" who put his entire roll on a NL table. You have lost a buy-in, plus anything you were ahead. No more, no less.

If your mistakes are few and minor COMPARED TO YOUR GOOD PLAYS AND YOUR OPPONENTS' MISTAKES, you should do alright. If you make too many mistakes in ANY form of poker you will not win.

The reason that PL is considered a more skilled game is becuase hand reading and psycology are more importand. This is due to the larger bets on the later rounds, where most of the money may have been pushed already in NL. Check raising is also more importand in PL, for obvious reasons.

[afreeman]

Here is a simple way to look at it: in both forms, you have 2-3 possible decisions at any point in a hand (bet/check or raise/call/fold). However, in NL and PL, you also have to pick an amount if you bet/raise. All other things being equal (not that they are), the fact that a NL/PL player has more decisions to make means that player skill will have a greater impact on the outcome.