Introducing No Limit

[Chump Change]

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Hell, blue/green are hard on ANY poker table. Chips need to be starkly different.

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So I was hosting this big tournament (pretty BIG) and I made the 3 biggest consecutive denominations all very slight variations of orange. Do you think this was a bad idea?

[Chump Change]

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This may sound odd but at our home game we never play no limit. It's always $3 max raise ("spread limit") hold 'em, omaha, omaha hi-low, stud ("follow the queen") - or some variation of guts ("bama guts" "bloody 7s" - don't ask me about "booray").

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This game already sounds like a blast, why do you want to introduce NL. If you want bigger pots you can just make the spread bigger. (I think 'wider' is actually the correct adjective.

Whatever you do don't make it PL. It is a major drag getting people to understand and then calculate what pot limit actually means. And if you're the guy that can do the arithmetic on the fly then you'll ALWAYS be the one doing and can never rest and relax.

[Doc T River]

If you are running a home game, might I suggest The Rules Of Poker by Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky. It has the basic rules for many games including what is a pot bet and what is a pot raise in a pot limit game.

[OrrLives]

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Hell, blue/green are hard on ANY poker table. Chips need to be starkly different.

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So I was hosting this big tournament (pretty BIG) and I made the 3 biggest consecutive denominations all very slight variations of orange. Do you think this was a bad idea?

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OMG HE IS MAKING A REFERENCE TO THE 2007 WSOP ZOMG.

[Zetack]

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Is it bad that I'm a huge degenerate and thought "wtf, table stakes is lame, uncapped buyins rule, OP and his fellow players have it made" when I saw this post?

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Table stakes are not lame, although it sounds like the OP is playing a modified table stakes game where everything in your pocket is considered to be on the table.

Consider, if you're not playing table stakes, say you get involved in a big pot and make the absolute nuts on the turn. Its a huge pot already but you're down to a hundred bucks in your pocket. So you borrow four hundred and make it five hundred to go and get a call. After the river you still have the mortal nuts but your opponent bets into you for 8 grand. If you can't borrow eight grand, then you have to fold your mortal nuts. That's supposed to be fun?

[jeffnc]

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So I was hosting this big tournament (pretty BIG) and I made the 3 biggest consecutive denominations all very slight variations of orange. Do you think this was a bad idea?

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OMG HE IS MAKING A REFERENCE TO THE 2007 WSOP ZOMG.

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And it was actually kinda funny too, until you replied...

[MikeTheGeek]

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Table stakes are not lame, although it sounds like the OP is playing a modified table stakes game where everything in your pocket is considered to be on the table.

Consider, if you're not playing table stakes, say you get involved in a big pot and make the absolute nuts on the turn. Its a huge pot already but you're down to a hundred bucks in your pocket. So you borrow four hundred and make it five hundred to go and get a call. After the river you still have the mortal nuts but your opponent bets into you for 8 grand. If you can't borrow eight grand, then you have to fold your mortal nuts. That's supposed to be fun?

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This was the exact situation I was trying to avoid. Fortunately the group finally understood was I was getting at, even if it means emptying your wallet on the table, at least it's in plain sight. As it turned out, most of us bought in for $40 worth of chips and couple of the guys slid a few twenties under their chips (making it clear to all). It worked out well. It seems that table stakes only apply to the PL/NL games though - in guts and booray if you go in on a $100 pot you do have to pay if you lose; no all-in. All-in wouldn't really work in those pot-matching games anyway. We allow all-in for any of the poker games. With limit I would expect you could go to the pocket but it hasn't come up yet - usually someone just turns to the guy next to him and says "I raise - gimme 6 bucks" as he pulls another $20 out. We often have the guy who works at a real bank put a $50 bill and say "ok, I'm 6 in on my $50. Ok now I'm $12 in, I reraise" - it really works fine for limit. We all know each other pretty well so it is generally smooth. So it's still a goofy game but everyone seems to get it and it should continue this way, it is fun as hell.

PL was not hard to play but there is probably little point with Hold 'Em - it was suggested for Omaha H/L to keep players from going all in preflop with just an A2 (AA22/AA2K).

Our game is really awesome. It may warrant another post but I wonder if anyone has ever played Booray (Bourre) before: http://www.pagat.com/rams/boure.html eh, it's not poker. More like spades for money. But you do draw cards like in 5-card draw (if you have the guts).

[blueodum]

What you could do is set a cap per hand for PL or NL - that is a player can lose a maximum of $100 or $200 or whatever on one hand.