You Should Play NL (Seriously)

[Marquis]

You don't need to read 25NL opponents to do well if you play a simple strategy.

Essentially: AK and all pps (Add AQ in LP), limping with JJ and under. Raising big hands to 3BB + 1BB/limper. If you limp and dont spike a set, fold. If you raised, bet between 1/2 and the pot on the flop depending on how drawy it is, fold if played back at. The turn and river are tricky in NL and that's where reads will help, but you guys are good enough [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img].

Or play looser preflop with a short stack and reduce the game to two streets.

Granted it's boring, but you can clean up at 25NL in terms of BB/100, like 10+.

[Guruman]

I've found that five card draw has helped the opponent reading part of my limit game tremendously. In five draw, you don't get to see any cards but your own, so you're forced to pick hands that you can semi-bluff with when you don't hit, and you have to learn how to lay down an average hand pre-flop if you position and opponents arent quite right.

Lots of bluffing, lots of value betting, and lots of hand-reading. Plus, you can get in 100+ hands/hr on one table, and it can be incredibly lucrative if you find a soft table. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[RcrdBoy]

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but they're just a lot more annoying in NL, ya know?

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Yeah. It makes me want to choke the people that say "I should play NL. There are never any suck out there. You just can't get anyone to fold in limit."

[mojobluesman]

I believe NL is MUCH EASIER to win at than Limit as long as you are playing at a comparable skill level.

I am EV negative at limit yet I absolutely crush NL Sit and Go games and regular NL games. Not just beat them, crush them. My ROI in Sit and Gos is above 50%. I was crushing them from the moment I sat down to play yet I am losing at Limit after over a year of studying the game.

The thing that makes the game so much easier is that you can protect your top pair and similar hands from draws very easily by betting enough to force players out early in the hand. In many hands in limit, you'd love to protect your hand, but can't because you can't bet enough to do so or because you aren't in a position to do so. That's rarely the case in NL. The trick is to bet just enough to make sure the draws won't call, but not enough to be stupid.

When you get a monster pre-flop, you can raise more than a single bet and get more into the pot when you know you have tons the best of it. Not everyone takes full advantage of their monsters. You can even adjust your bet/raise size pre flop to accomplish the task of limiting the field or bringing in more players depending on the type of hand you have.

Another advantage is that you can play hands like AXs and small pairs more often because the implied odds are often huge, where in limit they are often marginal at best.

The big trick is learning to slow play.

At limit, there's only so much extra you can get out of an opponent by slowplaying a set or better. That is often more than offset by the times you will lose a large pot to a suck out and want to shoot yourself. That's why we don't slow play in limt very often. However, in NL, you can sometimes trap a player for his whole stack with a slow play and you can back off when a dangerous card comes and he sucks out on you.

IMO, there's more to NL because you have to know how much to bet to accomplish the task without overbetting, but it is much easier to beat once you learn how to bet to accomplish what you want strategically and how to maximize what you can take from an opponent when you have the nuts.

[AngelicPenguin]

What's considered a good winrate at $25NL. What's unsustainable?

[GrunchCan]

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What's considered a good winrate at $25NL. What's unsustainable?

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I don't know. But I suspect 10 PTBB/100 is the expected 'typical' good winrate. Ask in SSNL.

[Cosimo]

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My biggest problem with no-limit cash games is the lack of quality reading material out there. SSHE is treated like the Bible in ML and SS here, but there is no equiliviant text for SSNL.

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grunching at this point... ie maybe I should catch up, but...

anyway, what about HoH 1 and 2? I'm working through my first reading of #1 and already I've had a couple epiphanies. It's like these people were speaking in code and I didn't even know it. Now I know.

I'm starting to realize exactly how much I don't know -- which means that my competency has climbed up into the 25-percentile range.

[SeanSkill]

OP is right on I did 2k hands of NL 25 last month and lost $6.00 I also did 1k hands of 6 max and lost $11.00. I admit that I really dont know what I am doing in these games but they really got me thinking about poker basics. I think that each form forces you to think about different aspects of the game which will help you develop as a player. I would add some omaha in there as well which really helps you identify the nuts. I think that the best thing that may have come from these little forays into other games was overcoming the fear of playing them.

[baronzeus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What's considered a good winrate at $25NL. What's unsustainable?

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I don't know. But I suspect 10 PTBB/100 is the expected 'typical' good winrate. Ask in SSNL.

[/ QUOTE ]


[brag] Mine was 16 PTBB/100 for about 5K hands. [/brag]


Edit: just checked, didn't play 8K

[KingOtter]

I learned I had $2 left over on Paradise from the last time I cashed out, and I played some of the 2NL over there. I did parlay it up to $6, and lost it... I forget how.

It was an interesting time at NL, though.

I'm finding now that my odds calculations and outs-figuring has become rather automatic I'm spending much more time on reading opponents, and I like it. It's more like when I first started playing poker, before I had read any books. All I had was opponent reading, and it got me started on this journey.

NL scares me with the whole lose-your-buy-in-at-any-moment mentality, and so far I pretty much suck at MTT's, but I will go to it, just as soon as my 20-30k at 1/2 is over.

KO