NL with a Cap...thoughts?

[Small Fry]

Wow..didn't relaize there was going to be such a heated discussion about "cap".

The game we'll play has blinds of .25/.50 and a cap of $30 for the first 3 hours of play and then the cap goes up to $40. Planned start time is 7 pm so the cap should go up at 10 pm. The cap is the most that can be bet by any one player during the course of a hand. So if a player bets $3 preflop, $5 on the flop, $10 on the turn. If it's before 10 pm the max left to bet on the river is $12.

Playing with a cap was the idea of one player. I tried to set the cap fairly high - (60 and then 80 big blinds. Full Tilt uses a ridiculously low 15 big blinds). I also told this player he needs to monitor the bets (he wanted the cap he can keep track.) I'll probably cut out the max from my stack so I also know what I have left to bet when I'm in a hand.

Somebody mentioned players sitting on their stacks. I've heard the opposite happens but we'll see. Having a max buyin also protects the big stacks, (Say 100 bb is max buy in....If you double up then the most players can rebuy for is half your stack. But as the night does on others will also get large stacks and going up against them you risk a lot. With the cap you can have a large stack and not fear getting into it with another large stack.

I'm still of the opinion that there is no need for a max buy in amount. Having players with say , 2-3x the cap, then they always have the max for you to win. So let them buy in for $100, $200 whatever.

Game is this Friday. I'll update after about how it goes.

[Rottersod]

There's no need for a max buyin since the cap is what the player plays. The buyin is irrelevant in a capped game.

As I wrote earlier I'd recommend that you all cut off the cap to a separate stack and play from that for every hand, at least until you all get used to the game.

Let us know how it goes. I'm going to predict that it will be a wild game and I'll also predict that there won't be many hands where there will be any room left for a river bet.

[Small Fry]

Game report: overall it went well. We played 6 handed. Most of the players are rather tight so there was still room to play on the river but a lot of hands didn't get there. We did get our share of all ins (I think I lost the first one thanks to flopping a flush when another player flopped a higher one. Ironically this may have also been the first family pot (unraised). I was in the bb with 7h,2h. Small blind, with A,5 hit two pair on the Ah, 6h, 5h, flop and lead out with $10, I know him well enough to know that he didn't hit the flush, so with the $30 cap I push all in, raising him $19.50 to $29.50 total. Next 2 fold but the 3rd guy thinks for awhile and calls. I'm hoping for a bare Kh, but he had Jh, 8h. I got him back later when the cap had gone up to $40... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] )

As for tracking the bets. A couple of us did cut out the cap from our stack. But as I was the dealer for the night when I would rake in the bets I would just cut out a seperate stack in the pot to keep track. For example: Preflop there's a raise of $2. As I rake in all the chips for the pot I would make a small stack of 2.50 (blinds we're .25/.50 so total bet was 2.50). If $3 was the flop bet when I pulled in those bets to the pot I would add $3 to the 2.50 stack. And so on. Worked well. There were a few times the less experienced players had to ask how much they had left that they could bet. They could say all in but what exactly did that mean? It depended on how much they started the hand with and how much had been bet so far.

Overall I think it generated some action. If you were lucky enough to win some pots your stack had some protection. It's a little work keeping track of the cap but I'd recommend playing this style ,especially if your group isn't used to risking a lot on a single hand (or you just want to keep from going broke when your AA gets cracked). I'll definitely do it again.

Pat