Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 2: Stages of the Tournament by Jonathan Little

Author:Jonathan Little
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781904468813
Publisher: D&B Publishing
Published: 2012-04-01T23:00:00+00:00

Pot-Limit Hol­dem

Pot-limit hol­dem is the closet re­l­at­ive to no-limit hol­dem, and these two types of hol­dem tour­na­ments are played al­most the same way. The main dif­fer­ence is that there are never antes in pot-limit hol­dem tour­na­ments. You should play sig­ni­fic­antly tighter through­out the tour­na­ment be­cause there is never a need to gamble. Also, you can only make a pot-sized bet on every street, which means you can’t go all-in be­fore the flop un­less you have 3.5 BBs or less. There are a few tricks you can use in pot-limit hol­dem that do not work in no-limit.

Since you can’t go all-in be­fore the flop un­less you have 3.5 BBs or less, you should be will­ing to blind down a bit lower than sug­ges­ted in the “Play­ing Poker” sec­tion of Volume 1. For ex­ample, if you have J♠-8♣ on the but­ton with 10 BBs in no-limit hol­dem, you should go all-in if every­one folds be­fore you. If you raise to 3.5 BBs in pot-limit hol­dem and someone calls, you will be in a tough spot after the flop when you miss, which will hap­pen around 65 per­cent of the time. Just fold these hands in­stead. Be a bit more will­ing to blind down and wait un­til you have a hand with show­down value or can push when someone raises in front of you.

You also can con­sider limp­ing the but­ton, es­pe­cially when every­one has between 25 and 50 BBs. If you raise to 3 BBs, your op­pon­ents can re-raise enough to make you fold most hands. If you limp in­stead, they can only raise to 4 BBs be­fore the flop, so you can al­ways see a fairly cheap flop in po­s­i­tion.

You can raise less be­fore the flop in pot-limit hol­dem be­cause there are no antes. My stand­ard raise in pot-limit hol­dem is around 2.25 BBs through­out the tour­na­ment. When antes are in­volved, play­ers know they have to make plays from time to time in or­der to keep afloat. In pot-limit hol­dem, even if you steal the blinds only once in 12 hands or so, it is tough to lose too many chips. This is one of the reas­ons why tight play is prof­it­able in these events.

Most people play pot-limit hol­dem ex­actly like no-limit hol­dem, mean­ing they are con­stantly rais­ing and re-rais­ing. When you en­counter this type of player, simply wait for a hand and bust him. In no-limit hol­dem, you can be pretty happy with a hand like middle pair against an overly ag­gress­ive player. In pot-limit hol­dem, I sug­gest wait­ing for a slightly bet­ter hand, like top pair. Again this is be­cause blind­ing down a little doesn’t drastic­ally erode your stack.

To sum­mar­ize, play pot-limit hol­dem tour­na­ments much tighter than no-limit. While the games look and feel the same, they are not.

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