OT: Friends don't let friends play limit

Cactus Jack · #1 03-08-2007, 12:40 AM

I get it all the time, and I'm getting tired of it. "Dude, stop playing limit and start playing no limit." This is mostly for those of you who are playing live, esp in Sin City, I guess.

I like playing limit. I like the tactical part of the game more than the strategy. I don't like getting stacked by the same people who may suck out on me for 2 or 3 BBs. I don't like waiting for hour after hour for one lousy hand. I don't have the psychology for no limit.

Am I the only one who hears this all the time? How do you handle it, aside from telling them to eff off? They mean well, but...

(Down the line, I think they're going to be coming to me asking for advice when the no limit fish inevitably go broke.)

JJH3984 · #2 03-08-2007, 12:51 AM

I just suck at no limit so bad. I really think you should learn to play different games well, but I just don't have the skillset for the game. I plan to work on it though because the games are much softer.

Clarkmeister · #3 03-08-2007, 01:28 AM

[ QUOTE ]

(Down the line, I think they're going to be coming to me asking for advice when the no limit fish inevitably go broke.)

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think so. I think limit holdem is a dinosaur, much the same way that 7-card stud was a slowly dying dinosaur in the late 90's.

Siegmund · #4 03-08-2007, 05:27 AM

I hear it all the time too, and I have tried to learn NL... but if I'm not having any fun being a marginal winner at the 50-cent-blind tables, there's not much incentive to improve and move up.

As far as the dinosaur thing - in all seriousness I made as much money at 7 stud as I did at holdem for 2006 even though it probably only represented 20 or 25% of my table hours. It was hard to find good LHE games for a while last year, but curiously, seems to have gotten a tad bit easier the last few months... maybe a NL craze fueled by the last WSOP has died down a bit or something.

Sailboats · #5 03-08-2007, 05:35 AM

Eh, i hear it too. When i go to Commerce it seems like the all of the young guns are playing NL. Even though they arent very good and usually play weak/tight. Now in Limit its relatively old guys(40-65) and most of them are so used to playing bad, they dont how to make the correct mathematical decision most of the time. Basically, the players at Limit are easier to take advantage of and are very loose. Thats why i will stick with Limit( i am 22 btw).

Anyway some people are suited better for NL, some are not. I ll stick with limit.

Cactus Jack · #6 03-08-2007, 11:34 AM

Since the thread isn't going anywhere, we'll see where Clarkmeister's reply goes...

I talked with Barry Tanenbaum a few weeks ago about this subject. He said eventually the no limit games will die out again, as they did ten years ago. He had a number of good reasons, and after 30 years here playing professionally, I'd guess Barry T is like EF Hutton, people should listen.

Hold 'em is easy to learn. (Stud isn't, plus stud is slower.)

Hold 'em is hard to master. (Keeps interest.)

Suckers can win.

This is the big one. Barry pointed out that every good gambling game in the house gives the sucker an appearance of a good chance of winning. They win just often enough to encourage them to come back. Limit gives them a chance of winning enough times to encourage them to play. No limit doesn't. They can't win often enough to overcome the disaster of losing their entire stack.

Eventually they will get tired of losing the whole enchilada, but they will be hooked on playing poker. They'll look around the room and see the limit games are going strong, so they'll buy in. The lowest limits won't be enough gamble, so they'll move up. They'll get more play from the same amount of money than they do from no limit.

In time, Barry says, they'll be back to playing limit poker again. "It's the perfect gambling game."

Clarkmeister · #7 03-08-2007, 12:05 PM

Barry, and a lot of others who have been around a while, are looking at a blue sky and trying to convince people that it's green given the evidence that is all around.

James. · #8 03-08-2007, 12:09 PM

i'm in the barry t camp on this one. especially since the capped buyins are being removed in many of the NL games. might be 5 years, but i think limit will resurge.

Hamlet · #9 03-08-2007, 12:12 PM

One thing that may make NLHE more viable this time around is that most of the games now have a max buy-in. This protects the bad players to some degree.

I think both games are going to be around for quite awhile.

Clarkmeister · #10 03-08-2007, 12:18 PM

[ QUOTE ]
One thing that may make NLHE more viable this time around is that most of the games now have a max buy-in. This protects the bad players to some degree.

I think both games are going to be around for quite awhile.

[/ QUOTE ]

The idea that somehow NL "failed" in the past is the biggest fallacy of these discussions. People draw conclusions from 20+ years ago when no one played the game. The idea that "it failed before, it'll fail again" is an absurd conclusion because there is zero similarity between poker today and poker 5 years ago, let alone 20+ years ago.