A reader asked me what happened to my pictures of life in Japan. I had originally taken all of my pictures down to save on bandwidth costs, but since people enjoyed them I will put some of them back up. I'll also try to take some of all the festivals this summer since those are some of the best shots. More on that soon.
"Some people, pros even, won't play No-Limit. They can't handle the swings." - Rounders
Never have a struggled so much with the game of poker as I have been lately. Learning how to play no-limit has been a very interesting experience.
I've always been pretty good at games. Not necessarily the best, but it usually doesn't take me long to be able to easily beat average play. A friend of mine recently introduced me to the game
"Go" and by the third game he said, "I'm not giving you a handicap anymore or you might actually beat me." He's quite an accomplished player too.
Thus my biggest mistake at no-limit was quite simple. I'm sure I am not the first person to have made it before.
I assumed that because I am a winning limit player that I already knew how to play no limit.
Anyone that has played no limit has seen this one before. New player to no limit gets AK in middle position. So they raise to 4BB. The button calls and everyone else folds. The flop comes K73 rainbow. Our new guy just got top-pair top-kicker but he wants to get some money so he checks to the button. The button bets 1/3rd of the pot and our new guy thinks, "What a small bet! This is great he doesn't know what a great hand I have!" and decides to push all-in. The button calls instantly.
I guarantee that if you asked a no-limit player what the button has 95% of them will answer something like: "A set of course".
The button calls with his 77. A blank on the turn and a K on the river just to dig the knife in a bit deeper.
Mistakes like that cost me a lot of money. Pushing TPTK too hard. Not realizing the disaster of calling a bet on the river when someone bets the pot after they rivered their flush. Not respecting people's reraises. Not noting the preflop action as the hand progresses and betting into made hands. In limit you can recover from most mistakes because you only lose a bet or two. In no limit it costs you half your stack or more.
So the education was tough, I managed to get down 20 buy-ins at the $25 level while learning and clearing some bonuses. However there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I dropped down to the $10 game and immediately and consistently started beating it. Hopefully that means the excessive bleeding has ended!
I've also started a private wiki to help document all of the great information that is out there on the internet. Next time I'll share some of problems that people have when they move to no limit and point out a few misconceptions people have.
