Hmmm, no-limit seems to be all the rage these days, and it has been for what seems to be quite a while. However, and while I admit I haven't really played/studied/practiced no-limit holdem all that much, I can't seem to beat this damn game. Now I have a very limited sample size, and I can't for certainty say that I am a winner or loser in this game, but if last night's results are any indication I am a huge fish at no-limit. I played the 5/5 no limit holdem at Oceans last night for two hours and 20 minutes and lost 1967 American, not Canadian, dollars.
The 5/5 has a max buy-in of $1000 and I bought, lost, bought another 1k, lost, bought another 1k (for those of you counting that is 3 dimes I was into this game for at this point), built it up and then lost another big pot. Let's see I lost with JJ against AK, AA against K9, AA against KK, and some other monstrosities that were pretty sick. The AA versus KK was a total cold deck. All fold to me in the SB, and I ask the BB if chops. He says no he plays, he has about 1100 hundred behind and I have him covered.
Ok, I look at my hand and I have AA. I raise it to 20, he re-raises to 60 and I call. Flop comes K42 rainbow. I check, he checks. Turn is a T. I check, he bets 60 or 80, I check raise to 200, he reraises to 600 basically committing him and me to the hand if I decide to call. I, of course, put him all-in and he beats me into the pot with KK. Of course, I think I played this hand awfully in retrospect, and will just chalk this up as a 1100 dollar poker lesson, but geeze c'mon, that's a total cold deck there small blind versus big blind AA and KK?
I think if he doesn't flop a set and we both have overpairs I end up stacking him on the turn anyways. But whatever. So, then I finally get called for the 20/40 game and I am back much more in my comfort zone and I win 1640 in 4 hours. So in all I was down on the night by little over 300 dollars, so it's not like it was a big deal or anything.
I guess maybe it's more of a shot to my ego than anything else. I may have to give up limit for a while and maybe start concentrating on the no-limit game so I can at least become competent at mid-stakes no-limit live games. Whatever . . . .
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You use to do just fine in out MNP no-limit sessions. What happened?
In reality, you faced a cold deck, especially having AA cracked twice in one 2-hour session. Although, I'm sure there were things you could have improved. Like:
1) You were probably playing hands which do better in limit vs no-limit, or not playing enough hands which do better in no-limit vs limit.
2) You were probably trying to be too tricky, when the straighforward method would have been better. Depends on the game, but if 1/2 the people don't really know what they're doing, then they won't realize when you are peddling the best hand.
3) You were probably building big pots with your big pairs, but they were turning out to be multiway despite your raises. I find that in the 1-2 game, the first raise is almost worthless since it doesn't do its intended purpose: Reduce the field and increase the probability of winning the hand. Therefore, I'll be uber-passive coming into pots, and then drop a large re-raise if someone after me raises. Do this once, and then you can start limping in with small pairs and suited connectors and see some cheap flops, even UTG, since they will fear the re-raise.
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