Know Your Limit

Over the past week or so I have been posting on the poker forums and the Hendon Mob poker forum especially. Poker forums and forums in general are a relatively new experience to me and I must confess to having fun posting and replying to posts. I started a discussion this week on Limit Texas Hold’em which just happens to be one of my specialist games which caused a bit of a stir from a few people on there but you can’t agree with everybody can you and everybody is not going to agree with you either.

It has always niggled me to a certain extent what views certain players have towards that form of poker. Many view it as a game for beginners and that it is No Limit poker that is the real test. You cannot just be critical of a player just because he is playing limit poker, I mean just what limit are they playing, $1-$2, $20-$40, $100-$200 or what? Besides, there are literally millions of players playing No Limit Hold’em who simply do not have a clue about the game. Any game that requires players to see flops more often is a difficult game to master and a minefield for novice players because it is from the flop onwards where all if the different permutations spring up.

No Limit hold’em in its purest form in the way that someone like Daniel Negreanu or Phil Hellmuth play it is still the ultimate form of poker but the point is that the lower skill levels of the new crop of players mean that the game of No Limit Hold’em is gradually getting less skilful and is being over taken by the Pot Limit version where players cannot get all in as easily and have to play flops. But Limit Hold’em is a form of poker where players see a much larger percentage of flops and this is the unskilled players undoing. This is coming from a player who now earns a large part of his living playing No Limit Hold’em cash games so this is not biased comment.