MH Stakes, NL vs. Limit - some basic questions comparing the two.

[dankhank]

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If you play good limit poker, you can definitely win at 5-10 NL playing a 30BB stack with good game selection. Just look for tables where players are liberally calling large pre-flop raises. But, this won't make you much better at deepstacked NL, which is where it's at for the big winners.


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right, there is no point in him playing shortstack NL as he's not going to learn what he needs. so therefore i think the only real solution is to play for real, but at lower limits. if you start off learning at 5-10 you could drop 10k and only learn 1/3rd of what you need - but you can start there if you really want, and if you aren't prone to trying wild bluffs.

i would start at 1-2 or 2-4, mix of full and shorthanded. play tight aggresive and worry over position more than you do in limit. you know how in limit you develop a style over time, and you diverge/exploit from that style to extract maximum bets? same thing in NL but as you play you'll see that there are differences. but you're still trying to extra maximum money on your big hands and stay out of trouble. there are more opportunities for imagination in NL - tag and lag both work to a degree, but you have to play well postflop.

the nice thing about NL is that once you get the hang of it, you see how you have a lot more control over how much of your own money is risked.

different limit players will take to NL differently i'm sure. they will come with different possible leaks. but to learn how to play it you're going to have to get in there and play a lot and learn, and of course make mistakes.

play fewer tables of NL than you would limit.

[Nigel]

Thanks for the responses thus far guys.

I guess Dave and I are in the same boat of trying to find a level that isn't deadly boring or a waste of time, but not being in over our heads and losing our shirts.

All the NL I have played (under 5k hands total probably) has been at NL400 and below, and the couple thousand hands that have accidentally ended up in PT have my WR at something ridiculously high, so I'm not sure I really have been able to learn anything the times I have played the lowest limits - I end up just not being fazed by the bet sizes and I mostly just bully people off pots with, what are probably, innapropriate flop continuation bets. If anything, the lower limits might be teaching me some bad habits that won't fly against decent players.

I guess it sounds like NL600 is a reasonable place to start. Is the fish factor at Party better than Stars in the NL area as well or is there less of a difference? Which game would you guys recommend? Also, what am I shooting for in terms of a win rate before I move up to 5/10?

Thanks again,

Nigel

[turnipmonster]

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so I'm not sure I really have been able to learn anything the times I have played the lowest limits - I end up just not being fazed by the bet sizes and I mostly just bully people off pots with, what are probably, innapropriate flop continuation bets.

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the big thing to remember in NL is that your value bets have to be a couple notches higher than they would be in limit. always ask yourself what hand the guy is going to be calling your bet with.

in limit your opponent is often calling you down with ace high or a small pair, you will rarely find opponents that will consistently do this in NL. hand reading is important in all games obviously, but it really is just about everything in NL. you want to practice making accurate reads on your opponents, even in hands you're not involved in.

I think you should play high enough that you're not bored, and play 1 or 2 tables and try and figure out what the other players have every single hand. play the 5/10 but treat it more as research than a money making opportunity, at least at first.

as you observed it is really easy to pick up pots in NL, but it's also easy to get carried away with this and blow off chips [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] when you do run into a hand.


--turnipmonster

[Nigel]

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the big thing to remember in NL is that your value bets have to be a couple notches higher than they would be in limit. always ask yourself what hand the guy is going to be calling your bet with.


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Thanks for the tips turnip. The value betting thing is so different. I find myself checking rivers at NL that are easy bets at limit. I'm going to post some hands today or tomorrow from a short session I played where I think I could have bet a couple of rivers, but passed.

I'm going to try and keep all my sessions short at first so that the number of interesting hands per session is small and I can post them. (Well, interesting hands for me, probably standard for you guys).

Anyways, thanks for the advice. Much appreciated.

Cheers,

Nigel

[GrunchCan]

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typical good day would be finishing +2 and a bad day would obviously be -2 buyins.

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How many hands per day, more or less?

[RikaKazak]

2 buy in swings???? something must be weird with me. I play 2K hands a day and I would say more like 5-6 buy in swings.

[Allinlife]

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typical good day would be finishing +2 and a bad day would obviously be -2 buyins.

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How many hands per day, more or less?

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anywhere between 250 to 1000 ..average 400ish?

[Nigel]

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2 buy in swings???? something must be weird with me. I play 2K hands a day and I would say more like 5-6 buy in swings.

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So at NL $2K you routinely find yourself down over $10K in a day? That sounds brutal.

Nigel

[Yeti]

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2 buy in swings???? something must be weird with me. I play 2K hands a day and I would say more like 5-6 buy in swings.

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So at NL $2K you routinely find yourself down over $10K in a day? That sounds brutal.

Nigel

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Not routinely down 10k (though it happens), but I swung from 5k, to -4k, to 5k yesterday in about 3 hours.

edit - just now i lost 2 buyins HU in about 3 hands.