Where does the money come from in NL?

[Heisenb3rg]

Some excellent posts in here..

Ive been playing deep stack in vegas exclusvily the past few days and one thing im really understanding about NL as opposed to limit.

This has been said a billion times by authors but im really starting to understand it.
"NL is a game of people"
"limit is a game of board textures and mathematics"

This is an overly simplistic (and incorrect) viewpoint, since both games require all 3 of these aspects, but it does apply strongly to the level of the game we are capable of thinking about. Optimal play in NL is soooooo much more difficult to get an idea for than limit.

I speculate this is true because:
In NL because it is possible to make enormous mistakes in different situations, maximal strategies can also vary DRASTICALLY from one opponent to the next.

In limit, because of the betting structure your opponents are often limited from big mistakes, and thus your strategies do not have to vary too much from opponent to opponent to exploit their small mistakes.

Once the pot has grown to a certain size, you are primarily focused on winning the pot. The strategies to do so only slightly depend on the player. This is why limit has a lot more "standard" plays, and it is not too difficult to recognize the correct action the majority of the time, regardless of who your playing against.

In no limit, you are primiarly focused on winning bets. Thus, the right action differs strongly from player to player.

This isn't a proof but a theory. (could be wrong)

[sethypooh21]

Good post Heis. However, it must be said that deepstack NL is probably more different from online 100bb NL than 100bb nl is from lhe.

[sweetjazz]

Heisenberg, I think you are on the mark here, especially with regard to the fact that the size of the mistakes in NL leads to a wider range in maximal strategies.

Some other factors that I would suggest go into the mix:
* Not only are the mistakes players make in NL bigger, but they tend to be more varied. Most limit players make the same type of mistakes (too loose preflop, call down too light). There's no a priori reason why this has to be so, but the combination of human psychology and the nature of the game tends to lead to certain mistakes being common amongst most/all poor players. (An exception is aggression after the flop -- there are players who are both passive and too aggressive.) In NL, the types of mistakes are varied. Some players call too many early bets but fold to big bets later too easily; others call all the way too easily; others don't bluff nearly enough; others bluff much too frequently; some play way too many hands before the flop; some play too few hands before the flop; etc.

* Also the structure of the games is such that more plays in limit hold em are routine than in no limit. If you flop top pair with AK, you're going to showdown and the only quesiton is how many bets to put in before you slowdown. Bad players sometimes put in one raise too little or one (or more lol) raises too many, but it's generally a sitaution where it's hard to make a lot of mistakes. In no limit, there are few hands that are very straightforward to play and there are more frequently opportunities to deviate from what hole cards you have. Although it's not necessarily very common, you could easily play a sequence of hands in which you fold TPTK and then steal the next pot with 8 high. In limit, the structure of the game basically makes such plays almost always wrong.

In my taxonomy of ways to win money in NL, if you make a comparable list for limit you find that (1) still exists but (in middle limit games and below) most of the steals are from continuation bets in position on the flop and (to a lesser degree) turn and check/raises out of position (and turn follow throughs) with draws. There are, of course, exceptions, but I would imagine that if a limit player went through all the hands he won where he would not have expected to win if the hand went to showdown, at least 80% fit into this categorization.

Meanwhile, (2) and (3) no longer get distinguished. Because the pot does not grow exponentially like it does in no limit, one cannot separate big pots from small pots so easily. Rather, because the pots grow linearly, there is a continuum of pot sizes. Of course in both games one is still very interested in having the pot size come out the way one would like, but the danger of having the pot grow exponentially as in no limit is a much thornier issue to deal with than having the pot grow linearly like in limit.

[emKay]

Wow, this is some great stuff for everyone that is making the transition to NL.

[Heisenb3rg]

Great post SJ, said everything I meant to say , said it better, then said more :P

Just a side note:

Two things of my game that is suffering from my limit habits and are very important to play NL effectivly:

1) Activly paying attention out of a hand is SOOO much more important live NL compared to limit for reasons SJ said. The live limit games Im rolled for I can win in autopilot because my oppponents make so many mistakes, I dont really even need to read their idiosyncrincies... Just put them in general style category (loose/agro, tight/agro, tight/straightforwad, weak/tight) play solid poker and let them hang themselves.

(clearly not the case in the higher stakes games where exploiting slight deviations from solid play is where the money comes from).
My obsession on results/previous hands is hurting me picking up playing patterns in NL.

2) I often read someone as "weak" or call out their hand in live limit, but because of the beting structure and multi-way nature of every pot. I know they will rarely fold. I sort of supressed the urge to make trixy plays based off reads because despite me being fairly confident about what they have I still cant use that read.

Example:
If I am very confident im beat in a big pot on the river, I still normally can't fold. While my confidence is like 90%, the pot is laying me more than enough odds to doubt my hand reading.
If I play it "safe" I normally dont lose much more than a tiny fraction of a bet.

If I make a read about opponents weakness, they still may not fold to my raise because the pot is so bloated.

Now in NL there are so many situations where you have the power to make big plays based on those reads...

In fact id go as far as say they are necessary in the toughest games.

Just yesterday, I was so tempted to come over the top on a T22 flop with AJ for my stack to a raise, because I was so confident that my opponent had a low pocket pair or air.. But I pussied out because im so used to things like this never working.. "id get called down in a heartbeat in limit". I folded, he showed me air.. and took down a nice pot.

[Heisenb3rg]

[ QUOTE ]
Good post Heis. However, it must be said that deepstack NL is probably more different from online 100bb NL than 100bb nl is from lhe.

[/ QUOTE ]

6-max online 100BB NL is definitly a lot more about board texture and mathetmatics than deepstack live 10-max... definitly.

The agressive nature of 6-max and your relativly smaller stack, means you often can't afford to not go broke on TPTK in a re-raised preflop pot.

Figuring out when to lay down trips or a flush on a paired board based on the player is generally not a big concern...
In deepstack NL it can cost you to invest another 200BB into the pot.. completly dwarfing the 200+ small pot decisions youve made in the entire night.

One peice of information about your opponent , revealed in a hand that you failed to pay attention to can mean the difference between busto and robusto.

Also, for online, acehud has a pretty huge impact on your play. Statistics are pretty useful for aproximatly your opponents play when you are ignorant to their idiosynchronsies.

[Surf]

Great posts in this thread! Good to see the limit-->nl forum going strong.

[ QUOTE ]

The way I approach NL is that there are three ways to win pots:

(1) Taking them down somewhere along the way (often winning with complete air or with a marginal one pair hand is almost the same because you couldn't call a big raise in either case -- though obviously your one pair hand has some added value in that it may win a showdown in a small pot or it may improve to a strong hand)

(2) Winning a small pot with a marginally strong hand (perhaps TPTK, perhaps two pair on a board that 3flushes and 3straights on the turn).

(3) Winning a big pot those times when I make a really strong hand.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is a pretty good summation of the ways to win pots, and the accompanying analysis is good too.

To address the concept of "where does the $ come from in NL" it is important to take a broader view than just these three, imo.


regarding (1), it is also important to consider the pots you concede to your opponent, and what strategies you will employ to make his attempts at (1) less profitable.

NL is significantly different from limit in that you can let someone get away with something a couple times, and you only have to catch them once too make up for the difference.
The classic example is: you post a $2 blind, and the button raises to $8. You can fold 4 times, and come over the top once and have him fold, and you break even. (4*-2 + 8*1 = 0) Your opponent has a 75% success rate but hasn't made a dollar.

Because of this NL rewards patience and planning. Using some carefully crafted strategies like trapping, semibluffing, value-calling stronger-than-expected hands, etc, can thwart an aggressive opponent even if only used occasionally, since his bets are so large relative to the pot.

example:
1/2 nl
co raises to 8, we call btn with TT. HU to flop for ~$18
Flop: xxx
co bets 14, we call
turn: x (pot 46)
co bets 36, we call.
river: x,
check-check
(We'll ignore river value bets for this example,) and we win vs A-hi that 2barreled.

Had we 3bet pre he would likely have folded or reraised, neither of which is an attractive option. instead by calling we induced $50 of bluffs in a $18 pot - that's tremendous profit!
Villain tried to exploit our tight tendencies, hoping we were peeling a marginal hand to try and show it down cheap. He might win the pot on the flop a couple times, but this one mistake is nearly 3x the size of the pot he would have won on the flop.

In limit inducing a bluff is only worth a tiny fraction of a pot, and thus is often not worth considering. Making bluffs costly for your opponent is a critical and profitable skill, especially when playing against the more aggro players at your table who may be trying to exploit your tight tendencies.


regarding (3), this may be obvious, however:
It is critical to win bigger pots than your opponent does when you have a nut hand, and it is important to lose less than your opponent when you have a 2nd best hand.

With 100bb stacks some situations are unavoidable (flopped 2nd nut flush vs nut flush, flopped set vs set, etc), but if you stack your opponent with a flush vs his straight, and then later when the roles are reversed you only lose 50bb(whether he failed to extract or you kept the pot small), you have profited tremendously.

This disparity in pot size with large hands is where a huge amount of profit comes from in NL. In limit, when you win with a flush and later your opponent wins with a flush, the pot is usually about the same, give or take one bet. In NL it can be half a stack worth of difference.

I wanted to emphasize this because the limit mentality is very much a "pound when you've got it" type thing, whereas in NL protecting whats in your stack with a 2nd best hand is just as important as winning a big pot when you've got the nuts.

Surf

[diebitter]

One addenda to what Surf said about losing less than opponents when you have the 2nd best hand - at lower levels in particular (nl50 and below), you get many players that are just useless at extraction, and show you the nuts after something like a 9BB river bet into a 25BB pot (which you will call), at the end of a mostly underbet flop and turn. The point is, some opponents don't even need planning against, they long-term destroy themselves by not getting decent value.

[Surf]

[ QUOTE ]
One addenda to what Surf said about losing less than opponents when you have the 2nd best hand - at lower levels in particular (nl50 and below), you get many players that are just useless at extraction, and show you the nuts after something like a 9BB river bet into a 25BB pot (which you will call), at the end of a mostly underbet flop and turn. The point is, some opponents don't even need planning against, they long-term destroy themselves by not getting decent value.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a good point. If your opponent is going to value bet 1/4 pot don't worry as much about trying to get away from 2pr, haha.

These guys are great because they are usually the type to call psbs on all 3 streets with tp, too.

Surf

[BobbyShaftoe]

I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] this thread.