How is Limit more pure than NL? In Rounders, Matt Damon said NL was the only pure game left. That must be true, they said it on TV! Seriously though, I'm just wondering why you said that Mike.

Because SnG and NLHE can be beaten using "system" at low limits. Well sorta... NL you can just get bad players to pay you off and avoid the good players at your table, in limit you cant really do that.

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“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann

Hey Bo,

Mason Malmuth believes that limit is harder than NL. And yes many disagree .

I think NL can make low level players lazy and can encourage bad poker. Implied odds is something every player abuses once in a while in NL. --- you can misplay a hand so horribly on every street in low stakes NL, but get lucky on the river because some doofus will call a 3xpot bet with tp3k... But in Limit you gotta really think about it and be more practical.

Also, swings in limit are emotionally/financially larger. Many limit players laugh at the mid level NL players who complain about swings and variance.

I know that there're a lot of things in NL that limit doesn't have, and I'm not saying that limit is harder/more pure than NL... I'm just being devils advocate here .

I haven't played or studied much limit, but the things I have learned recently have kinda taught me really interesting things about poker that I really wouldn't've/couldn't've thought about had I only focused on NL.

NL's an art, limit's a science .

Cheers,

Mike

PS. I probably shouldn't've even said that maybe limit is more pure than NL... But maybe it is maybe it isn't. One thing's for sure... s/gs aren't. LOL!

Right, that's why I posted the question. What types of things would be strenghts in a SnG that would be a hole in a ring? That's the type of thing I'm looking for.

Over valueing blind stealing, playing too ABC sometimes, lack of implied odds, adjusted gap concept

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“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann

lol..... rounders is a movie????

i play tons of s/gs and for me i think the big difference between s/gs and ring is winning pots/the size of pots.

in s/gs every pot i enter i intend to win. only playing premium hands and giving them 0 odds and taking the pot on the flop.

in ring you need to maximize and get paid when you have a hand and also minimize your losses. you dont have to win every pot. you play certain hands differently where it might lower your chances of winning but it will make the pot much bigger.

Thats very true indeed, part of it goes along with what I said about implied odds. And part of it is different. Besides at 10/20-25/50 winning a pot on the flop is much more important that value betting the river with a mediocre hand. In a ring game you can let your opponents chase for a little more than they should, in a SnG its important to just take down the preflop raises when they miss.

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“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann

a sit and go doesn't reqire the patience a limit game does.

In a sit and go eventually, usually within a half hour to an hour, you have to loosen up your play and take chances. Oddly enough a half hour to an hour is about how long a typical player can keep his patience before loosening up and gambling more in a limit game.

knowing what to do is easy actually being able to do it over a period of time is a different story.

Your problem in limit games could be that you lose your patience after a certain period of time.

Let's be honest here, playing solid poker is a boring activity. Many people can do it for a designated period of time but then let human nature take over and start gambling more. Probably the reason for the popularity of Sit and Go's and tournaments. they are structured almost perfectly for this phenomonon, play tight early and the GAMBLE, GAMBLE, GAMBLE!!!

Kind of intersting when you stop to think about.

I agree Steve, I feel that players can get easily frustrated at a limit game. One might feel that if he takes a big loss at NL, he can quickly get back up again. In limit, the player may be losign consistently, and it will take him a long time to get back up again. This player will take more risks and chase frequently, causing him to lose even more money. I think that is the reason for the giant swings in limit.

Also, limit is a game of small increments, a few loose calls, or improper folds can crush your results, in NL, as long as you only make small mistakes, you can recover.

Also, you can go through several SnGs where you don't get any really hard decision hands.

But I disagree that NL can be beaten by a system but limit can't. If anything, you can more easily make money with robot poker in loose limit games. I would really be surpirsed if a bot couldn't beat party .5/1.00 games.

Just need a list of starting hands by position, players in the pot, and the bets to call, it is all odds after the flop. It is pretty rare to have a really costly tough decsision in low limit games.

Sklansky thinks limit is harder because that is what he plays, I would trust the opinion of someone like Daniel Negreanu or Berry Greenstein more. Also, the games Sklanksy used to play were very tough, 2-3 to a flop games where strategy and reads were much more important (at least from what I have read from his posts).