What separates limit Texas Hold’em poker from pot limit and no limit is how much the player can bet on each subsequent round of play. Players get protected an awful lot in limit poker play because the amount of the bet is fixed. This means that they cannot make an error in how much they bet or call with. The errors in limit play stem from if they should be betting, calling or raising AT ALL.

But in big bet poker like pot limit and no limit, the player gets to decide how much to bet and this puts a lot more skill into the game in that particular avenue. This opens up whole new dimensions because suddenly a player can make the correct decision in raising for instance but totally screw up by raising the wrong amount. This can be fatal in NL because your entire stack is at stake.

In essence, pot limit poker play tends to be more skilled than NL because players are FORCED to see flops and turn cards and the technically inferior player cannot blast out the superior player by lashing out with an all in bet. This is why some absolute novices have got to the final table of some major NL poker tournaments, not through skill but by simply having the guts to commit their chips.

If it has been folded around to you in NL and you have a hand that you want to raise with then it is standard practice to raise it to at least three times the big blind. So if the game is 10-20 then you raise to 60 etc. The raise should rarely be more than four times the big blind because this starts to escalate the pot too much and you are risking more money to win the blinds. This is the scenario when you are FIRST to act after everyone has folded to you.

It is different when you have limpers. Let us say that three players have limped in this 10-20 Holdem poker game then your raise to 60 is not going to have the same effect as it will promote a multi-way pot and this is not far off from being a limit raise now as you would have raised to 40 in that form of poker.

The rule of thumb that many professionals go by in this situation is to increase the raise by ONE BIG BET FOR EVERY LIMPER! So in this example with three limpers you would have raised to 60 if you were the first one in but you now raise to 120 instead which equates to the original standard raise of three times the big blind plus one extra big blind per limper. These kinds of raises help to swat off the flies and either take the pot now which is highly desirable or to get it heads up with position on your opponent. More on this interesting topic in part two!

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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