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By: Claes Andersson
Although the rules are more or less identical, fixed limit poker and so-called big bet structures, i.e. pot and NL, are very different games. In this article I will examine some of these differences: some notes on the properties of these structures, some important concepts that apply to them and what types of mistakes do players commonly make when they cross between structures. The limits will be referred to as FL, PL and NL (fixed-, pot- and no limit). This comparison of course makes no claim on being exhaustive – the subject is too wide for any such claims to be made.
Properties of FL Games
Pot odds are important in poker and because of this the relative size between the bet and the pot is of great importance. One can note a couple of things here. First of all, the action before the flop costs more in relation to the size of the pot that can be expected later in the game: the pot grows faster than the bet in FL. Because of this, limping with hands that need a lot of help is not nearly as viable as in NL or PL where you can make up a shortage of direct odds with a wealth of implied odds (that is, money you can get into the pot from weaker hands if you do get the help you’re looking for). For example, small pocket pairs can be very powerful against two pairs in NL because they might call big bets and raises later in the game. To some extent this is true also in FL, but the potential is much smaller here.
While the fixed bet is large compared to the potential size of the pot in the beginning, the opposite is commonly true in the end with regard to bluffing and calling. Often, the pot is more than ten time larger than the bet and thus, if you only pick up the pot say once every ten times you bet/call/raise then a bet, raise or call is a profitable play.
What I am about to say now probably sounds counterintuitive but it is my experience and the experience of many professional poker players that I know: the swings are bigger in FL than they are in NL – provided of course that you are a winning player. If you are not, then your money will last longer in a FL game for a number of reasons that will be discussed shortly. In NL, the decisions are bigger, fewer and often easy to make and in fixed limit they are small, many and often very close. Also, once you’re in a hand you often have to also stay in it because the pot is so big that you have direct odds even on hands with very few outs. The moral here is: don’t enter the pot with marginal hands – the money you lose is for the most part lost pre-flop. For example, if you find yourself in a raised pot with 9T with a middle pair, it might well be correct to stay, the problem is that you shouldn’t have been there in the first place. There is something insidious about many small close decisions: it is very hard to get any useful feedback for guiding your game. This makes you vulnerable for “strategy drifts” – small gradual changes, mostly for the worse, of your play. Such small changes that happen over time can be very hard to pin down. You might end up in the red one month without having a clue about what you did differently from before: has the opponents become better, did you get bad cards or did you play differently, or a combination maybe?
Properties of PL Games
PL is maybe most commonly seen in Omaha games although it is sometimes used also for Texas Hold’em and other poker variations. PL is definitely more similar to NL than it is to FL and if you use a NL strategy in a PL game or vice versa you won’t be very far off. The most important thing in PL that sets it apart from NL is probably that there is an additional reason for not slow playing: you need to build a pot in order to make a big bet. Thus, if you miss a street, this can cost you a lot of money. On the other hand, if you think your hand might be good but you are not sure, then it might be a good idea to check instead of betting so you can call a smaller bet on the river in case the opponent is bluffing. For this reason, position is of great importance because it gives you more power over the size of the pot. You can choose to make it bigger or to keep it small.
Properties of NL Games
In a NL game you can put all your chips in the middle at any time (provided of course that it is your turn). This seems to suggest that you should experience large swings in your bank roll – however, this is not necessarily true as was previously mentioned. However, if you tend to fall in love with hands or think that getting to be the martyr is worth a couple of thousand dollars, then your bankroll will swing swiftly and firmly to zero. As a winning NL player, what you make much money from situations where you have the nuts or nearly the nuts (preferably a straight that is hard to see) and you think something along the lines: “this guy has AA or a set and he will not drop this hand for any size of bet, he will think for a long time but he will call in the end” Well, if the pot is $40 then why bet $40 in this case? Bet all that you have! I have been called for over $1000 in two-digit pots when I have made a gut shot against an obvious set. The likelihood that the opponent will drop his hand tapers off with the size of the bet roughly up to the size of the pot but if a player is willing to call a pot bet there is a very good chance he will also call his entire stack. Also, moving all in will make the opponent suspect that you might be bluffing because it seems so out of place, which likely contributes to the curiously large number of calls one gets on gigantic over bets. The opposite also happens from time to time: someone tries to bluff you when you have the nuts and move in for $800 in a $60 pot. If you did have something that you were willing to fold, then a $50 bet would have been ample, so those extra $750 he put in the middle really bought him nearly nothing. This said, you should not usually move all-in or call all-in very often anyway and this is for a number of reasons. Firstly, you do get more calls on a pot-sized bet, and more importantly the hands that will call you are generally those that you also want to get calls from. So if you suspect that your opponent has something good but not something very, very good (or that used to be very, very good), then a normal pot bet is in place. Also, if you don’t have the nuts, then a lot of the hands that beat you will just call a pot sized bet and not raise you so betting the pot costs you a lot less. Now, if this had been a FL game you would have made a maximum of four big bets on this situation, most likely less.
A very common mistake and one that has saved (and thus made) me lots of money over the years is the habit that many have of betting small with very strong hands, maybe one fourth of the pot or even less: “they want to get paid”, or so it goes. A lot of times in these situations I’ve had a hand that I would have called a lot more with but would never dream of raising with. Sometimes, if there are cards to come and I have had a good draw, I have simply called them and possibly drawn out and them --- something that puts oneself in a very good position: what are they to do with their former monster when they get a re-raise on the next street? Well, since they already decided that they were going to win this hand (he didn’t wait three hours for his set of kings only to fold for a scare card), folding is often out of the question so it will have to be call. If, on the other hand, my hand is very weak I won’t call as much as a penny anyway. This is the difference: once you can keep yourself from making these large mistakes you will find NL to be much easier on your bank roll than FL. True, you will lose your stack from time to time with set vs. larger set and such but in fact that doesn’t happen all that often.
FL Players in NL Games
The mistakes made by FL players have a lot to do with habits: when do you bet, call and raise? A lot of the time, the reason that a call, bet or raise is correct in FL is intimately related to the relatively minute size of the bet. However, you don’t actually compute your actions every time you perform them but instead you commit them to instinct. The good thing about instincts is that they allow you to play a lot of tables at the same time; the bad thing is that if you end up in a situation where the instincts are not profitable, they are notoriously hard to change. If you keep these FL habits in a NL game, for example you tend to call people down for pot sized bets with marginal hands then you will lose a lot of money. Typically, a FL player in a NL game will be tight pre-flop, make small bets and large calls. This is a recipe for disaster. Another rather interesting habit of FL players in NL is to check-raise. Now, check-raising in NL is close to pointless unless your opponent is a well documented maniac who takes less input from the world around him than a runaway train does, or, in rare occasions to teach opponents that always bet in position a lesson (although you can accomplish nearly the same thing by simply calling him down from time to time). See for example the article on “The Minimum Information Trail” for a discussion about why it is a bad idea in general to do tricky things with your really strong hands. A more direct reason is that you “sell” your hand and ensure that the bet that you’re raising is the only thing you will get out of your opponent unless he calls you and fills the draw that he might be betting.
NL Players in FL Games
It is not only FL players that lose money in NL games before they learn the differences – the same is true for the reverse situation and quite logically in a rather reversed way. As mentioned previously, the amount of implied odds in FL is small: one of the more important uses for implied odds in FL is as a way rationalizing stupid curiosity calls. The situations where you do in fact have good implied odds in FL are few and far between and you can probably ignore implied odds altogether and be considerably better of than from over application. First of all, what is the big deal with hitting a much concealed hand in FL when you will get calls also on much more likely and obvious hands? The two pair will call your straight down regardless of if you hit a gut shot or an open ender – in other words, the difference in terms of pay-off between unlikely and likely hands is not very big. If you are a good NL player, there is however probably nothing you like better than implied odds and you love the prospect of filling a gut shot and taking the stack from your opponent. Thus, in the hope of hitting a monster, you will find NL players in limit games limping in with garbage. The whole thing usually fizzles however once the monster finally hits and all that he gets for it is a lone caller for a total of two big bets and a small.
Another habit of no-limit players is to fall for the mechanic river bluff bet that most good limit player makes if the pot is big. In NL, if someone keeps betting until river and scare cards have shown up, you better fold because the bets keep getting bigger. In limit, however, you simply can not always fold if the river card is a bit scary: the opponent must bet because the pot is big, and you must usually call for exactly the same reason. This is game theory: no one can profit from being the first one to quit doing this rather pointless bet-call on river. If you stop making the bet, then you will lose the pots where your hand simply can not win (if you have 23o without a hit or something) and if you stop calling this bet you will give large pots away to 23o. If you both do this, then you will simply swap chips in the long run but if someone doesn’t do this he will give chips away. The no-limit player will tend to fold too often here and as a matter of fact I have a story to back this up. Some time ago in a FL game a player, who I know is mostly a PL player, bet the river when the flush card came. I had an over pair and after stating “well, I guess you made the flush” I called him since the pot was about 10-12 big bets. Angrily he tossed his cards in and explained to me that “if you think I have the flush you are making a mistake by calling me”. Well, what is interesting about this is the word “think”. By “think” do I mean that there is a better than 50% chance; that most of the time he will have the flush? As a matter of fact as long as the chance that he is bluffing is higher than some 8-9% I will profit from calling there and although I was pretty sure he had the flush I wasn’t sure enough for his bet to deter me. Did I “think” he had the flush? Yes, in the usual sense of the word I did, did I thereby commit a mistake by calling? No. He got mad because his habits told him that a bet means something specific and since it usually comes in the size of the pot or nearly that size then if you “think” that your opponent beats you, you should fold. The smaller bet size has the consequence that this logic does not remain valid in FL.
One way of conceptualizing this situation and to sum up the differences is by saying that in FL games you should be tight early and loose late while in PL and NL you should be the opposite: loose early and tight late. This is a truth with great modification, however, since you should be fairly tight pre-flop also in NL and PL, but it is much less critical.
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