Limit or No-Limit

[AKQJ10]

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I hate to say it but if you plan on playing cash games Phil Gordon is a bad book to read, that book is [oriented] toward tournament play.

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There may be some bias, but in general as I recall Gordon does a pretty good job of marking the tournament-only concepts clearly. There are some of those tournament-only sections, but there's enough general NLHE content that does apply to cash games to make it worthwhile.

I would also highly recommend starting with GSIH and moving on to Miller/Sklansky, but it's good to get a fresh opinion from time to time.

[penblack]

this is so true.... limit games you should have about 35-38 wtsd while nlhe you would have in average about 15-24 wtsd. It is also not as profitable stealing blinds with Q7s in co-button position whenh playing nlhe.

Now having said that, I think you should play some limit he to get used to counting your outs and stuff.



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The concepts that you need to master in limit are much needed skills for no limit.

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I'm afraid I can't agree with this 100%.

It's true that both limit and no-limit are poker, and that they share conceptual similarities. Things like pot odds, counting outs, etc.

But beyond that, very little is similar. I came from a long limit background and then switched to no-limit some time ago. In my opinion, limit and no-limit are so different strategically, they might as well not be both called Hold'em. Skills you learn in limit simply don't apply in no-limit. Even the preflop hand charts that are commonly used for limit simply don't work well in no-limit.

After playing limit for a couple years and then playing no-limit for a couple years, I'd have to say that if you want to play no-limit, just do it. You aren't really gaining anything by playing limit first. It's not like limit is high school and no-limit is college. One's chocolate and the other is vanilla.

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