No Limit: The Life Long Lesson

BY: Johnny Hughes

The Poker Forum readers are serious students of poker. They are of all ages and from all over the world. I would strongly advocate that anyone so dedicated learn and play no limit and pot limit Texas Hold 'em. There are major differences between the two but for sake of discussion, I am comparing them both to the far less imaginative game of limit poker. No Limit hold 'em requires far more skill than limit hold 'em in every situation.

David Sklansky said, "...everything else being equal, when you have the best of it; the higher you play, the more you will average winning..."

In No Limit, you get to make the plays and decisions when it is important. Sklansky's discussion of implied odds, deception, semi-bluffs, check-raising, slowplaying, position, bluffing, reading hands, and, most importantly of all, reading people are far more important in No Limit. It is an intellectual and an emotional game that tests a person's character, self-control, and courage.

Poker and life are a series of decisions based only partly on probability. In No Limit, one or two big wrong decisions and you are a rail bird trying to find a listener for your bad beat story. In limit, each decision is not far from the central point or much more important than other decisions in a session or a week. In a pot with one wild person in limit, you know the known amount to call them down. In limit at the very end when you missed your straight flush draw and know for absolute certain your opponent's hole cards and everything about his body language tells you he is afraid and weak, there is nothing you can do. He is going to call the last limit bet in a large pot. Long time road gamblers from the Lone Star State all grew up on No Limit and sing out the same sad lament about limit, "You can't protect your hand."

Each decision we make in either form of poker adds up but in No Limit, everyone is aware that one error can make your chips vanish like smoke. One big drawout can too but you train yourself not to care. David Sklansky also said, "When we play, we must realize, before anything else, that we are out to make money."

No Limit is the way to do that and the way to use the best of your skills and all of your bag of tricks. Limit is about mathematics with only a little psychology and that is self control. No Limit Hold 'em is the finest psychological and intellectual game ever invented. I played tournament bridge for years and it is a great game but it will not touch No Limit Hold 'em with all it's psychological ramifications. Limit has me bored and looking for something else to do like find a real poker game.

In their books, Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth both called No Limit Hold 'em the Cadillac of poker. Brunson says, "it is a game where you have to be aggressive....you have to gamble....at No Limit, you can't play a solid, safe game. You must get in there and gamble."

Brunson speaks of graduating from limit to No Limit and says, "...I want to put my opponent to a decision for all his chips....No Limit is a game of position and people."

Phil Hellmuth says,"Judgment is everything in no limit hold 'em...all manner of plays are possible...it's not he who wins the battle; it's who wins the war."

In their book T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy say, "No limit hold 'em is the only game where you can continually win pots without a hand."

Cloutier says, "The new players learn limit poker and most of them don't have a chance at no limit." To me that is the major point of this discussion. The new players should seek No Limit knowledge and table time which is far more important than the rote decisions of limit. In limit, we make decisions under conditions of risk. In No Limit, we make decisions under conditions of risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity. What a glorious game!!

In his classic work, A. Alvarez said, "Top professionals...look down on limit poker as an unimaginative, mechanical game."

Treetop Straus called limit a "disciplined job" saying "Anybody who wants to work out the mathematics can be a limit player...you sit there and wait...No limit is a test of intestinal fortitude." He also said players are judged on heart and courage.

My personal favorite description of the difference in No Limit and limit is what Crandall Addington said, "Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no limit, the target comes alive and shoots back."

You never see limit in the movies or fiction or the memoirs of our poker heroes. In their memoirs and poker stories, Bobby Baldwin, Amarillo Slim, T.J. Cloutier, Doyle Brunson,Johnny Moss and even Titanic Thompson write about No Limit. In the Lone Star State, every single decent poker game is No Limit or Pot Limit and it has been that way as long as I can remember. We all played No Limit when there wasn't much money around. I ran small games and played large ones and I cannot remember anyone even suggesting a limit although it might have made some sense.

In the early years of the World Series of Poker, many champs all came from my beloved West Texas home land: Doyle Brunson, Johnny Moss, Sailor Roberts, Amarillo Slim, Bill Smith. Our Okie neighbor, Bobby Baldwin slipped in there. What these men had in their common backgrounds was No Limit Hold 'em. They left limit when they left diapers and knee britches.

In the late seventies and early eighties, there was great No Limit for a man on an ordinary bankroll in four carpet joints on Fremont Street. Then it dried up and went to limit which is better for the casino and the rake. Dutch Boyd wrote about being a prop player in a casino. He was rotated to varied games by the floor boss. Boyd surveyed the other prop players and found that none of them won in the lowest limit games because of the rake. That's why they call them "snatch games." When I first went to work shilling at the Golden Nuggett for Bill Boyd, the rake was so massive that nobody won but for one razz game.

During the times there was no No Limit, I played limit. Again, none of those advanced concepts that Sklansky so eloquently writes about are nearly as useful in limit and I am sure you must agree.

In Las Vegas, there are specialists and all power to them. It is all in game shopping. It is obvious that a great many people make more money playing limit than they would if they made the transition upward to No Limit. The limit games that the real pros play in have far more money on the table than nearly any No Limit game. When I was young, I was too lazy to work and to nervous to steal and so I played poker for my living. If you are a limit grinder, you have you another so many hours per day job. No Limit takes less time either way whether you win or lose. The best reason to be a poker player is to control your own time.

Playing limit and you have lost half your stack, you must be thinking this is one of those days I take a loss. Playing No Limit, you are thinking, one good pot and I am winner. It may be the Gambler's Fallacy.

In No Limit, there is everything there that is American, the joy of victory and the agony of defeat based on one big decision. In limit the amount you bet is not part of the decision. It is a set price, same bet for all. Whatever happens, this all day sucker can only bet me $40.

The amount you select to bet in No Limit is based more on intuition and instinct and years of grabbing at chips than some mathematical formula. A limit player can tell you about his decisions. Sometimes a No Limit player doesn't even know himself why he decided to attack weakness. It is primal. Limit is like math. There are right answers. In No Limit, the answer always begins , "Sometimes, maybe, and it depends...."

There are new people with heavy bankrolls strolling into poker games all over the world. They want to play the game where they get to say, "All in."

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