Archive for the ‘Limit Holdem’ Category

Limit Hold’em: Plusses and Minuses

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

Following is an analysis of the pros and cons of one of the variations of poker that may be helpful to you. Once upon a time, Limit Hold’em was the most played online poker game. There remain on the net many low and medium limit games in the poker rooms, and a few with a $100/$200 limit. It continues to be the easiest game to find and is a sure bet to continue on that path as only a few players are able to rise to the $20/$40 level.

There is a plethora of literature available devoted entirely to the game of Limit Hold’em poker. This is a major advantage as even the novice player can avail himself of these books while experiencing actual play and if he is a good student will gain much knowledge of the game. This abounding literature allows decisions to be made more easily and most of those decisions can be explained with basic mathematics and become a tool for instantaneous in-game mental calculations.

The mathematical phenomenon of dispersion becomes less of a factor in limit games. Thus enabling even the rookiest of rookies with the worst cards at the table to occasionally be saved by dumb luck. For a dramatic reference to the particulars of dispersion, read Terry Pratchett’s Rincewind novels.

As a rule, any and all poker games are subject to the mathematical phenomenon of statistical dispersion, i.e. major losses are part of even the most expert player’s game, and it is this fact that stops folks from indulging in any game of poker. Limit poker is not as mentally intense as no-limit and tournament games, which involve high dispersion. You don’t need a lot of funding to play Limit Hold’em and like the large quantity of literature on the subject , there are computer programs specifically designed for limit poker – Poker Tracker and Poker Office will help low limit players especially. These programs can be used both during the game and after whenever an analysis of any part of the game is called for or to make statistical calculations.

The above advantages lead to one of the few disadvantages of limit poker. There is an ever enlarging pool of experienced, knowledgeable opponents. So while the game is highly accessible, it is becoming less profitable. Non-virtual poker venues make their money chiefly from the rather small rake reducing the pot during every round. These rooms depend on their profits not from the number of players they attract. What keeps them running is at the end of a series of games, the percentage from the total hands played may make their income rise to amazing sums. The limit games that include expert players may be not only less profitable but may actually result in a loss.

Finally, limit holdem is not widespread offline, offers little exposure to the nonvirtual outside world, and lacks the aspects which make casino and club games so rich in important and memorable experience. Certainly, those who love the game find most memorable that which is the essence of poker – the combinations of cards; but just like talking face to face to a company of people is more memorable than chanting to a hundred “friends” in ICQ, so playing poker at an actual table of wood (rather than of 1024768 pixels) you can actually knock on (makes a nice bluff) makes for a more intense and exciting experience.

The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker online and receives Victory Rakeback and Poker Heaven Rakeback.

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Deciding Your Poker Game of Choice

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Omaha is an interesting game and, as many attest, is quite profitable, but there is comparatively little material you could find to learn safely from, and Hold’em is in fact a good place to start for anyone. At the present time Hold’em ranks as the most popular game in casinos and online and has received much attention in media and literature (online and in book form).

Having decided that, there are still several more personal questions to ask yourself before deciding which Hold’em variant to try. It is of utmost importance for any poker player to know whether they are risk oriented or not, or, to be more exact, to what extant they like to risk.

It is a very peculiar thrill, and those who cannot stand, having calculated your best chances, to make that step into the air, like Indiana Jones towards the end of The Last Crusade (he did not so much summon the faith the walk on air, but merely calculated that his father’s diary implies an invisible bridge), had better keep away from the poker table (watching others play might be the compromise to settle for). Nor is poker the right activity for people who cannot control themselves and play kamikaze-style. For those who feel they do not sufficiently understand themselves, there are tests which determine inclination towards risk. The more risky you are the more sense it makes to play no-limit cash and tournament poker.

Determine whether you are best at “math” or “psychology”: if you are a human calculator, best try limit games; if you can read the opponents hands by reading his body language, your best shot is at no-limit and in multi table tournaments(MTT).

If you are willing to devote the time, complex no-limit and MTT games offer the best means to develop as a player. If you are just taking a look around, at first stick to sit-and-go tournaments and limit games.

For those whose aims are to grow as players, limit offers the least potential. High-level limit games are much rarer than no-limit or tournament games. Tournaments make the most sense for aspiring champions.

Limit poker is becoming rarer in casinos and clubs and is more accessible online. Tournament poker is the only form of the game officially considered a sport, so that it may be important to pay attention to tournaments in public establishments.

If you consider poker as a profitable profession, you will systematically target games with a high percentage of weak players. Because of accessible literature, the amount of weak players is particularly low in limit Hold’em. Focus on no-limit and tournament poker, training yourself accordingly, whatever you feel your inclinations are initially. Limits higher than $1/$2 may already prove too large a piece of cake. In SnGs, the beginner may want to stay bellow $20+$2, in no-limit bellow NL$100. Below these levels, basic knowledge of poker principles are likely to suffice. Higher levels will demand intense efforts to study the game, and even the studious player is not guaranteed consistent wining.

These considerations are a good preliminary to your first games, but the answers to the questions will become clearer as you accumulate experience.

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Posted in Holdem, Limit Holdem, No Limit Holdem, Omaha Holdem | No Comments »

When to Stand up and Walk Away

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

We often regret having prolonged the game (to the private glee, we feel, of a few players who led us on). It would have been better, we always realize too late, to have left too early. If we had left earlier, we would have then been tormented by the question of whether we should have stayed, but having lost too much right now is definitely worse, with the last hour having been a grueling experience. What’s worse, we can’t really say why we have stayed too long and so we are likely to repeat the same mistake when next time we inevitably show up at the table.

It is crucial to be able to stay or leave based on a logical analysis of the situation, not an emotional impulse. If logically you have matters to attend to – liking picking up your wife and kids or attending work – you must be able to leave immediately. Sometimes a desperate hope for by now certainly imminent better luck is so strong that you miss dates and business appointments. But, the longer you stay overdue, the worse you play, because you know you are supposed to be elsewhere and that possibly your are ruining your life and career.

If poker is supposed to be entertainment but you are not enjoying it – this is a good reason to leave early, before the game becomes a tangle nightmare of bad moves and worse moods. You often see player who take up poker as recreation, but when a game gets too much for them, they cannot leave, and yet they cannot play. They stay out of some sort of perverse compulsion to prolong their torment, not willing to walk out losers. They stay and become greater losers with every losing new hand, instead of accepting good-naturedly accepting the situation – which is merely pastime anyway – and leaving the table, remaining in a good mood, and perhaps trying another game later at another table.

To locate the source of the problem, it is crucial to realize that the problem does not really have anything to do with the game itself. If in spite of yourself you persist in a pointless and counterproductive activity you do not enjoy, it must be because you are avoiding something. If poker is not the reason you stay at the table time and time again, yet you don’t know why you are staying, it must be that you are avoiding something unconnected with the game.

In this case, whatever it is that you are avoiding, it is likely that it manifests itself in other activities as well. Shifting your focus may help to realize the source of the original problem. Rather than stupidly pondering why you have again stayed that fatal extra hour half-playing a doomed game, try to observe yourself in your other activities. You may discover that things which seemed completely unrelated to your poker plight have surprising connections to your inability to leave the game in time.

It may be anything really, from dissatisfaction with your work or career to a general inability to deal with loss. Once you discover the connection, it will be easier to decide how to stop playing poker.

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Posted in Brick and Mortar, Limit Holdem, Online Poker | No Comments »

Improving Your Poker

Monday, December 21st, 2009

The first step towards becoming a player who does not merely build his poker ego on baseless arrogance and luck or a player who never deviates from a few set rules in order to stay safe against better players, the first step to becoming a good player is to realize that there is always room to improve. Poker is a game of introspection as much as a game of skill, luck, or of “reading” opponents. You must first decide whether or not you want to take the winding way of the tireless perfectionist (who never achieves his goal) in the first place. Then you want to learn to be frank with yourself and define precisely your current strengths and weaknesses.

Besides bad amateurs and those playing by a fixed set of simple rules, there are those players who discover they actually have a talent, but who do not then try to improve much in any direction. These are rather lazy and uninspired players who prefer to hope that they will eventually knock their opponents out cold every time with one or two great moves.

A good player never neglects his weaknesses. Usually nobody is good at every aspect of any complex activity, but to rely on one or two superior skills is dangerous and is more likely to be your ruin in the long run. Once opponents have singled out what you do best, and that it is about the only thing you do, they will maneuver around your good hand. And if they are good players, they will consistently execute the maneuver even if it means giving up a they own good hand, so to speak, to land you one on the nose form the direction you hope it will never come. Because their skills are better rounded than yours, they can afford it, feeling confident enough with both their right and their left.

No boxer ever boxed with just one hand. Hone your best qualities, but do keep sharpening as many of the other required abilities as you can. The next step towards progressive improvement after you recognize your weaknesses is to learn to do that which, as Bartleby the scrivener would say, “you would rather not to.”

To learn this takes two basic things: to realize that a game isn’t worth it unless you intend to win and to acquire a disciplined habit of doing things you dislike. The first may be a subtle point. Some people mechanically try to acquire a habit without know why they are doing it and they eventually give up or don’t get far. You must see that to blindly follow a routine or to rely on a single great skill in the blind hope that you will not have to deal with the rest of the game is not engaging the game for real.

The thing to do is to imagine as well as you can what it would be like to be a fully competent player, imagine the rush of inspiration which leads to success and hard-won triumph, and decide for yourself whether the possibility pleases you or not. If you can’t imagine the triumph and glowing detail of the struggle than be frank with yourself and admit that you have no real idea how to succeed in the field. But if imagining this makes you passionate, start working hard and you will definitely see results, and the effort to work at things you don’t like (perhaps you are an introvert technician who might benefit from better communication skills and face-reading abilities, etc) is guaranteed to be rewarding.

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Limit Hold’em: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Friday, December 11th, 2009

To help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of particular poker games, I offer the following brief analysis.  Those who have ever played poker online are aware that limit poker was once the most avidly played game on the net.  The internet still offers quite a few low and medium limit games, and a few in the $100 to $200 range.  The limit game is still easily found online and will continue to be in the future, particularly since only a few players are of the $20 to $40 level of expertise.

There is a plethora of literature available devoted entirely to the game of Limit Hold’em poker.  This is a major advantage as even the novice player can avail himself of these books while experiencing actual play and if he is a good student will gain much knowledge of the game.  This abounding literature allows decisions to be made more easily and most of those decisions can be explained with basic mathematics and become a tool for instantaneous in-game mental calculations.

To add to this, dispersion is not the factor in limit games as it is in others.  Dispersion is a coldly calculating entity that determines who is lucky and who is not.  With limit poker, even the lousy player with lousy cards can be the lucky winner sometimes.  To understand more about how dispersion affects the game of poker and the game of life, read any of Terry Pratchett’s Rincewind novels.

As a rule, any and all poker games are subject to the mathematical phenomenon of statistical dispersion, i.e. major losses are part of even the most expert player’s game, and it is this fact that stops folks from indulging in any game of poker.  Limit poker is not as mentally intense as no-limit and tournament games, which involve high dispersion.  You don’t need a lot of funding to play Limit Hold’em and like the large quantity of literature on the subject , there are computer programs specifically designed for limit poker – Poker Tracker and Poker Office will help low limit players especially.  These programs can be used both during the game and after whenever an analysis of any part of the game is called for or to make statistical calculations.

Now for the bad and the ugly.  Because of the quantity of information available on the game, there is a large and ever-growing number of knowledgeable, skilled players.  So the game while it is easy to find, is not very profitable.  Poker rooms make their money from the small amount taken out of the pot for each hand.  So, poker rooms earn money not from the number of players, but from the percentage of the total number of hands played at the end of a long series of poker hands.  This sum more often than not turns out to be quite a tidy one.  Limit games which include good players can wind up with minimal profitability or even a loss.

While the availability of limit poker is not a problem online, off line is another story.  There is little exposure in the non-virtual world because limit poker does not include the features that make a poker game attractive to casinos and card clubs.  It is the camaraderie around the table, the laughter and chatter, that makes the game rewarding and memorable to most people.  This cannot be found online but requires a group around a table.  The limit player gets his thrills from the true essence of poker – the combination of cards.

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The Good and Bad of Limit Hold’em

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Following is an analysis of the pros and cons of one of the variations of poker that may be helpful to you.  Once upon a time, Limit Hold’em was the most played online poker game.  There remain on the net many low and medium limit games in the poker rooms, and a few with a $100/$200 limit.  It continues to be the easiest game to find and is a sure bet to continue on that path as only a few players are able to rise to the $20/$40 level.

There are beaucoup books written exclusively on limit games.  The multitude and availability of the literature devoted to the game gives it a major advantage.  The game is thoroughly studied and an apt student can learn much from these books along with experience at the table.  The decision making process is not terribly complicated in limit hold’em and basic mathematical aptitude can lead to instant mental calculations while involved in a game.

The mathematical phenomenon of dispersion becomes less of a factor in limit games.  Thus enabling even the rookiest of rookies with the worst cards at the table to occasionally be saved by dumb luck.  For a dramatic reference to the particulars of dispersion, read Terry Pratchett’s Rincewind novels.

There is virtually no poker game untouched by statistical dispersion.  Huge losses happen to the most expert of players, a major deterrent to a lot of would-be players.  Higher dispersion rates can be found in no-limit and tournament games making limit poker less intensive psychologically.  Limit Hold’em can be indulged in with little money in one’s bank and there are several unique computer programs designed for limit poker.  Two of which are Poker Tracker and Poker Office.  These programs are very helpful especially for low limit players.  They can be of use during play as well as after whenever you need to analyze or calculate statistics of the game at any point.

The above advantages lead to one of the few disadvantages of limit poker.  There is an ever enlarging pool of experienced, knowledgeable opponents.  So while the game is highly accessible, it is becoming less profitable.  Non-virtual poker venues make their money chiefly from the rather small rake reducing the pot during every round.  These rooms depend on their profits not from the number of players they attract.  What keeps them running is at the end of a series of games, the percentage from the total hands played may make their income rise to amazing sums.  The limit games that include expert players may be not only less profitable but may actually result in a loss.

You will not find many games of limit Hold’ em off line.  Limit Hold’em doesn’t seem to contain the features to make it a casino and club game staple.  The aficionados of limit Hold’em love it for what it has – the essence of poker which is the card combinations.  It apparently is just not as memorable and socially rewarding as being able to converse with fellow card-playing chums around a table made of real wood.

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Posted in Gambling, Holdem, Limit Holdem | No Comments »

Limit Hold’em: Plusses and Minuses

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

A brief analysis of the pluses and minuses of certain poker games may help. Limit Holdem was once the single most popular game on the net. There are still many low and medium limit games being played and some $100/$200 games. So that the game remains one of the most accessible and prospective, and is likely to remain so for some time to come, especially since not many players rise to the levels of $20/$40.

What may be considered a significant plus of the game is the amount of literature devoted to it: many of the contemporary books on poker are devoted to limit games. It is a well studied game and it is possible that a thorough student may learn much from the experience of others. As a result decisions are simpler to make in limit hold’em and most of them are easily supportable by basic mathematic tools for quick mental in-game calculations.

Moreover, dispersion is less of a threat in limit games. That coldly calculating deity determines the chances of every player involved at a given moment and even the worst and unluckiest rookie may luck out (if you don’t want to go into actual statistics, just read any of Terry Pratchett’s hapless-Rincewind novels for a dramatization of this point of games and life).

Generally speaking, all poker is necessarily subject to statistical dispersion: big losses inevitably happen even to the best of players (even when they play ideally with what they have in their hands) and are what turns many off the game in the first place. No-limit and tournaments have higher dispersion than limit games, which means that limit poker is not as psychologically intense. Relatively low bank rolls suffice for limit holdem and there are many specially designed computer programs for limit poker: Poker Tracker and Poker Office offer help which is not to be sneezed at, particularly so for low limit players. These programs are useful both during the game and after, when you want to make an analysis of any part of it or calculate general statistics.

About the only minus of limit holdem is the constantly growing number of well-trained, well-informed opponents. But that is the direct result of the pluses just listed and makes the game, though accessible, not as easily profitable as one might hope it to be. The chief source of income for poker rooms is the seemingly small rake deducted from the pot during each hand. Rooms therefore rely heavily not on the number of players in their rooms. But at the conclusion of a series of long games, the percentage of all hands played may reach surprisingly high sums and limit games against good players may result in near-zero or even negative gain.

Finally, limit holdem is not widespread offline, offers little exposure to the nonvirtual outside world, and lacks the aspects which make casino and club games so rich in important and memorable experience. Certainly, those who love the game find most memorable that which is the essence of poker – the combinations of cards; but just like talking face to face to a company of people is more memorable than chanting to a hundred “friends” in ICQ, so playing poker at an actual table of wood (rather than of 1024×768 pixels) you can actually knock on (makes a nice bluff) makes for a more intense and exciting experience.

Visit Rakeback Solution for the best Rakeback rates and Rakeback Promotions.

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Posted in Holdem, Limit Holdem, Poker | No Comments »