No Limits Hold Em

Way back in poker’s dark ages (the years prior to 2003, before Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker’s main event after gaining entry via a $40 online satellite) no-limit hold’em was a game played during tournaments in brick-and-mortar casinos by experienced cardsmiths who honed their game over years of play. But once TV caught up with the democratization of poker courtesy of very inexpensive satellite tournaments available everywhere online, everyone who fancied him or herself a poker player – new and old alike – wanted to compete like the pros they saw on the small screen, and no-limit hold’em replaced fixed-limit hold’em as the game of choice.

Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold'em: Optimal And Exploitative Strategies (Poker Series) by Will Tipton Nov 20, 2012. 4.0 out of 5 stars 47. Paperback $34.95 $ 34. Get it as soon as Wed, Dec 23. Want to know the key to no-limit hold’em? Well, I won’t make you wait. Get your opponents to put their money in bad. For me, this is the key principle in no-limit hold’em.

No-limit hold 'em Texas hold'em is easily the most popular poker game played in card rooms in the United States. Hold'em comes in four betting structures: limit, no-limit, pot-limit and spread-limit. No-limit hold'em.

This led to a veritable feast of knowledge and information about the game in all its varied iterations – tournaments, cash games, sit ‘n’ go tourneys, six-handed games, and even micro-limit games. You name it; someone wrote a book about it. Books led to online poker teaching sites, and a plethora of poker “boot camps” held in casinos – usually in conjunction with a major tournament series – all across the world.

The result was that everyone was playing no-limit hold’em, and with all of the learning opportunities that were available for the taking and the ability to play thousands of hands and hundreds of tournaments in a shorter time period online that one could ever imagine playing in a brick-and-mortar casino, skill levels increased rapidly and dramatically.

But while everyone was becoming pretty adept at no-limit hold’em, most folks weren’t paying much attention to other forms of poker. While the average skill level in no-limit hold’em was rising every year, most of us still played all of the other games just about the way we did years ago, which really points to an opportunity to make a score in those games. Trouble is, when you walk into a brick-and-mortar casino, not many other games are spread. A rotation of mixed games can be found occasionally, albeit at stakes higher than many people can afford or are comfortable playing.

And while you can find Omaha and 7-stud/8 games online, many of the players who populate them are strong players, since the overwhelming majority of new players venturing online come there for one thing and one thing only—to play no-limit hold’em.

But in brick-and-mortar casinos, at least in the United States, you can still find a cornucopia of fixed-limit hold’em games, and along with it, a lot of opportunity for savvy players. Moreover, the very nature of the game provides some advantages that you won’t find in no-limit games.

For one, there seems to be a real skill difference between the habitués of traditional casino poker games and those who have played and prospered online. Online poker players tend to be more aggressive, more experienced, more knowledgeable, and more skillful. Online is where many of the new and improved poker strategies were developed, honed, promulgated, and learned – and someone who has no experience playing online is likely to have missed out on much of poker’s information explosion. And while fixed-limit hold’em is a very different game than no-limit hold’em, a good no-limit player should be able to adapt to a fixed-limit game in short order.

Another advantage offered by fixed-limit games can be found in its diminished variance. When all of your money is potentially at risk on every hand, one misstep, one lucky draw by an opponent, or one unforeseen and unexpected hand, can really spoil your day and your bankroll too.

But in a fixed-limit game, where the amount of exposure on any one wagering round is limited to a bet and some predefined number of raises, one bad play can still hurt, but it can also be overcome without facing the sort of oblivion that happens when your entire stash is snatched right out from under you.

Every player goes through protracted streaks of good luck and bad, but in no-limit it hurts a lot worse. You needn’t look any further than Isildur1, the enigmatic Swede who, during the period from November through December 2009, won and lost some of the biggest pots ever seen in poker. At one point he was up over $5 million, only to lose $4 million in one disastrous night and go broke a few days later.

He rose and fell like a rocket, and while some of it was undoubtedly attributable to his hyper aggressive playing style, a lot of it was caused by nothing more than the variance anyone can expect to encounter in a no-limit game. And while it’s true that he wouldn’t have won as much if he was playing fixed-limit poker, it’s equally true that he wouldn’t be broke now either.

Mitigating against the extreme variance in no-limit games is the very reason many casinos offer a hybrid game of sorts: no-limit with a cap on the amount of a player’s buy-in. Because there’s a limit on how much a player can buy-in for, it’s less likely that anyone will bust his bankroll on any single hand. The game is different too. It plays somewhat more like a spread-limit game than deep-stacked no-limit poker.

Of course you have to adjust when coming from no-limit to fixed-limit games, but those adjustments aren’t extensive. Starting hands change dramatically, and hands that can build top pair with top kicker are much more playable in fixed-limit hold’em than they are in no-limit. You’ll see hands like KJ played regularly in a fixed-limit game, and a player holding KJ who sees a flop of K-T-4 or J-8-3 is likely to play it through to the river, unless the wagering goes through the roof, or a flush card pops up on the turn and it’s bet and raised before it’s time for top pair, top kicker to act.

While the concept of implied odds are important in fixed-limit hold’em, they are not as important as they are in a no-limit game, which is a game that’s all about implied odds. The lack of a cap on the amount that can be wagered really makes it profitable in the long run to take some thin draws if you believe you can capture an opponent’s entire stack if it pans out.

Aol Texas Holdem No Limit

There are myriad other differences between the two games, but that’s the subject of a different article. The point of this one is to tell you that opportunities abound in fixed-limit cash games in brick-and-mortar casinos and online casinos too. If you feel you’ve run up against no-limit hold’em’s brick wall and the opposition is improving just as rapidly as you are, and it’s all you can do to hold your head above water while hoping to take down a couple of really big pots but fearing a major hit to your bankroll when the variance is running the other way, take solace in the fact that the pickings look pretty good in the fixed-limit patch.

And it’s enjoyable too. After all, you get to play a few more hands, your entire stack is seldom in jeopardy, and your opponents have not been as dedicated, by and large, to upgrading their skills over the past few years as the no-limit crowd has. Give it a try. You might be glad you did.

By Lou Krieger

The author of many best-selling poker books, including “Hold’em Excellence” and “Poker for Dummies”. A true ambassador of the game and one of poker’s greatest ever teachers.

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If I were teaching a new player to play no-limit hold’em, and my goal were to get this player up to a professional level of play, how would I do it? What would my lessons look like?

Let’s say I had only three months to do it. With most people, I will admit, it would be a tall order. The learning curve is steep these days, and I don’t think everyone could make it from zero to pro in that short a time.

I’d have to make compromises. I couldn’t try to cover every possible situation. I’d have to find the important bits and skip the rest.

I’d also have to tailor the lessons a bit to a specific type of game. The most important skills in some game types are not as important in others. With this in mind, here are what I think my top five lessons would be for a new player trying to beat the $2-$5 no-limit hold’em games in Las Vegas.

Lesson No. 1. Don’t limp into pots ever. And don’t call preflop three-bets unless you are trapping with an ultra-premium hand.

Limping into pots, calling the preflop raise, and then check/folding the flop when you miss is an enormous leak. It’s also one that nearly every player who hasn’t been specifically coached out of it exhibits.

In my opinion, most players would see an immediate improvement in their winrates if they simply refused to limp in with any hand, especially if they chose to instead fold most of these hands.

For most players, refusing ever to limp means playing much tighter, particularly from out of position. Until you’re already an established pro player, tighter is better.

Lesson No. 2. Don’t pay off big turn and river bets.

This lesson might be different in some types of games, but in the Las Vegas $2-$5 games, it’s easily a candidate for the single most important piece of advice. Do not pay anyone off. When someone makes a big turn or river bet or raise, your one pair hand (or whatever other hand you’re thinking about calling with) is a bluff-catcher. That means, in the great majority of cases, your opponent won’t be trying to make a value bet with a worse hand. Either you’re beat or your opponent is bluffing. And players in these $2-$5 games do not bluff often enough to make calling worthwhile.

So you don’t pay off. I know it can be frustrating to feel like you’re getting muscled out of a huge pot, but the fact is, most players in these games do very little muscling. They try to make hands, and then they bet the hands they make. A big bet usually means a big hand. You don’t need to call to find out for certain.

Lesson No. 3. Your opponents will limp into pots, call raises, and check/fold flops. Take advantage of this weakness by raising lots of hands with position, betting the flop, and often also betting the turn.

It’s a simple play, but it’s one that generates a very consistent profit in these games. Players play too loosely preflop, are too willing to call preflop raises after limping in, and are too willing to check/fold the flop or turn if they miss. With many players, you can ignore your cards and raise the limps, bet nearly all flops, and bet most turn cards as well.

Say two typical players limp in a $2-$5 game. You raise to $25 on the button. Both limpers call.

The flop comes 10 8 2. They check, and you bet $50. One player calls.

The turn is the 5. Your opponent checks, you bet $120, and he folds.

In this scenario, and in many like it, it doesn’t matter what you have. Your opponents are beating themselves by playing call/call/fold so often. All you have to do is put the bets out there and let your opponents run repeatedly into the brick wall.

No Limit Hold Em Book

Yes, there is some nuance to this, and some boards are better bets than others. But against many opponents at the $2-$5 level, most flops, turns, and even rivers are good bets. Keep betting until your opponents prove to you that they won’t beat themselves by folding too much.

Lesson No. 4. With value hands, don’t try to blow opponents out of pots. Instead, play most value hands with the goal of keeping a player in through the river.

Value hands — hands like top pair, two pair, or any other hand you think is a favorite to be best — lose their value when all your opponents fold. If you win without a showdown, you might as well have been holding 7-2. (See Lesson No. 3.) With your value hands, you generally want opponents to get to the river.

Most players like to see showdowns if they feel like they can see them without losing too much money. No one likes to fold and think, “What if I was good?” If your opponents get to the river, often it’s an easy sell to get them to call a final value bet (as long as you don’t make it too big).

Hold'em Game

Calling these value bets is one of the biggest mistakes that $2-$5 players make. (See Lesson No. 2.) Allow your opponents to make this mistake.

Most players try to end hands early when they feel like they have the best hand. “Don’t want to get drawn out on,” they think. But this is backward thinking. End hands early with strong bets when you have nothing but a weak draw. Allow hands to reach showdown when you actually have something to show down! (Makes sense when I put it that way, doesn’t it?)

If I have top pair, I’d much rather get called for $30, $50, and $80 on flop, turn, and river than get called for $30 and then blow my opponent out of the hand with a $100 bet on the turn. The chance to win $160 with the hand instead of $30 outweighs the risk that I’ll get outdrawn.

Lesson No. 5. Think every hand about what strategies your opponents are using and how they’re thinking, and (almost) ignore the two cards in your hand.

I’ll put it bluntly. Most $2-$5 players beat themselves. They tend to play strategies that are extremely transparent, overly simplistic, and inflexible. You can beat some of these players simply by betting every time it’s your action (See Lesson No. 3.) You can beat other of these players simply by waiting for hands that beat top pair/no kicker and then making value bets. (See Lesson No. 4.)

Your job as a poker player is to identify the strategy each opponent is using and deploy a counter strategy. In many cases, the two cards in your hand become irrelevant. My experience is that the players that are always thinking about their hands never figure it out. It’s the players who are thinking on the next level that do. ♠

No Limit Hold'em Poker

Ed’s newest book, Playing The Player: Moving Beyond ABC Poker To Dominate Your Opponents, is on sale at notedpokerauthority.com. Find Ed on Facebook at facebook.com/edmillerauthor and on Twitter @EdMillerPoker.

No Limit Hold Em Game