Is NO LIMIT the new King of Hold'em?

[Shaun]

[ QUOTE ]
In Essays 1, Mason Malmuth has written about the problems with NL holdem in terms of wiping out weak player bankrolls. NL cash games will not be here forever. The games are just too punishing on weaker players.

[/ QUOTE ]

But when he wrote about that, there were no capped buy-in no limit games. No limit is here to stay.

[TimTimSalabim]

[ QUOTE ]
In Essays 1, Mason Malmuth has written about the problems with NL holdem in terms of wiping out weak player bankrolls. NL cash games will not be here forever. The games are just too punishing on weaker players.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, right now I think the bad NL players are surviving off of the ultra-bad players [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img].

[willie]

i've only been playin for a year and a half and i started with nl tournies, and i play nl cash live.

i do find limit quite boring even though it can be lucrative, i just find no limit much more intriguing and punishing upon bad players. it requires real deep thought at times and you can win or lose a lot, not merely a big bet or 2....

i know it sounds cocky and is definitely stupid but i think that a lot of new players feel the way that i do....

[JoeC]

This is very, very true. I see absolute rocks hanging around the Party NL tables for long periods of time... I guess they're making decent money off the maniacs and stations. There are few "good" players in the NL100 game, and in lower stakes than that, there's next to none.

[me454555]

I think I'm the only one who finds this in reverse. I"ve played a little bit of NL and definatly much more limit. In my experience, NL feels like much more a grind. I always have to be so careful on each and every hand. You can't push marginal hands the same way and I find 1 bad move costs you your entire stack.

Limit on the other hand is about pushing small edges over and over again. You need to take chances and play much more aggressive on the flop. In limit you can acutally draw to hands b/c your opponent can't bet you out of the pot. I find limit to be much more of a finess game than NL.

NL hold 'em may be the current game but limit will always have a place b/c some people just don't want to risk their entire bankroll all the time. After you get wiped out once or twice, how many fish will stick around? It's luck factor that keeps bad players playing. Its a lot easier to appear better than you are in limit than in NL.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Derek:

I still see it that way. In addition, in the rooms that I play in there are still many more limit games than no limit. Also, the no limit that is being spread is almost always the max buy-in game which is not quite true no limit.

On the other hand, thanks to the TV shows, these no limit games are getting a lot of new players and I do expect them to last for some significant period of time.

Best wishes,
Mason

[The Goober]

I don't think that in the long run NL is ever going to be as profitable for good players as limit is. I look at the consistent donors at my local B+M, and most of them are there to relax and have fun, and I think that limit is always going to make that easier for them. A lot of these limit players are basically paying me (and other good players) for their entertainment, and a good number of them basically recognize this (although they probably don't realize its the good players who take their money - they probably think that no one really wins in the long run). I just don't see no limit players cheerfully donating to the game this way - even bad NL players, in my experience, see themselves as fierce warriors.

I also think that bad no limit players are more likely to eventually get better, whereas I know guys who have been playing limit games for like 30 years and still have basically no idea what to do. The reason I say that is it seems like in NL the mental reward/punishment is more closely linked to the quality of your play. I.e. you go all-in preflop and I call you with AJo and watch you turn over AA or AK, I'm gonna get a sharp "don't do that again" mesage from my brain (even if I get really lucky and suck out, I probably remember that I made a bad call). Then I get more time to think about it as I buy in again.

In a limit game (especially a loose one) your brain has to be trained to recognize your mistakes beause they are much more subtle and often un-intuitive. Most mistakes cost less individually, but you can make much more of them. Its sorta like smoking - its easy to ignore the damage to your help because you do it a little bit very frequently.

Not that this will happen anytime soon - all the poker on TV is going to keep people trying their hand "making moves" and "getting out the kiddy pool" or whatever... i'm just talking about in the long run as the bad NL players get sick of giving all their money away.

That's my theory, anyway.

[Sponger15SB]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, the no limit that is being spread is almost always the max buy-in game which is not quite true no limit.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is impossible to have true no limit. Do you see why?

[YEM20]

Afish,

If you think the NL games in AC are drying up, you are crazy. I went to Bally's last night. I RARELY play NL, but my girlfriend smokes, so Bally's it was. They spread a 2-4, a 3-6 and a 1-3 NL.

I sat in the NL. I played for 8 hrs. This was the best game I have ever seen. The 4 seat brought it in for $20.....are you ready for this........100% of the time! Any position, every hand, for 8 hrs! He called almost every re-raise, and his only bet postflop was....ALL IN.

We determined after he finally got up that he lost in the neighborhood of 3 large, in a 1-3 game. Most of which went to another bad player.

I raise 2 questions:

1. He lost that $3 grand $300 at a time. Is that really NL?
2. Will bad players survive the oober bad players, thus keeping this "NL" game profitable?

I hate to say it, but I may be making the switch soon. Last night was just sick. (I saw a $3100 pot, no joke)

[andyfox]

"the no limit that is being spread is almost always the max buy-in game which is not quite true no limit."

It almost becomes a spread limit game with a big spread. But even if the game were "true" no limit, I think the concern you had, that the bad players would get wiped out, is less of a concern than it was when you first wrote it. There are so many more people playing that there's no chance that the pool of fish will dry up. I believe I read where one million people are now playing poker on-line. Anecdotally, within the last six months, my dentist, my dermatologist, a half a dozen parents at my son's school, a half a dozen more at work, and sundry others, knowing I'm a player, have asked me for poker advice because they've started to play. (Little do they know how bad the advice is, usually unwittingly, but in the case of my dentist, on purpose; I'm finally going to get even with that damn plaque bastard). And I notice quite a few of the long-time regular limit players at Commerce now play no-limit (real no-limit) at least some of the time, if not regularly.