Choosing Your Limits

Poker is a game where you win by betting chips. This fact is pretty obvious. What may not be obvious is that there are different ways players can bet their chips in a game, depending on the style of poker you are playing. The three types of betting most used are no-limit, pot limit, and limit poker. Based on this guide and your experiences with each game, you should be able to determine which is best for you.

No-Limit Betting
Ever seen the ESPN main event? This is an example of a no-limit betting event. The basic rule to this type of game is that there is no amount that you cannot bet in a game. Most players feel that this style of poker is the best of them all. It may seem easy, though, for players to lose a lot of money in this type of game. To combat this, many casino tables have a maximum bet that each player can make. You usually will not be able to bet more money than you have brought to the table. So don’t worry about losing the house and the car in a poker game.

As you may have seen on a television program, the above may not seem true. Characters consistently lose valuable belongings in a casino game that they put in to match a bet. This will not happen in a casino game. If you cannot match a bet of another player, you simply put all the money you can match and the other player will take the excess out.

Limit (Table Limit)
The recent surge of no-limit poker has not changed the fact that the most played game in the world is still limit poker. In this game there is a predetermined maximum amount each player can bet or raise in hands. This results in a much cleaner game where the best hand will usually win the pot. Players who play limit poker should know the limits of the tables they are playing. For example at a $3/$6 table, the first two rounds of betting can be a maximum raise of $3. This means if you wish to raise you can raise three dollars. If someone else reraises you, they can do it to another $3, making the total raise six dollars. After the first two rounds of betting, raises are doubled to $6. A maximum of three bets per round can be made in most casinos. This means in most cases, there is a set amount that you can win in any given pot that goes all the way through. Unfortunately, this also makes the game quite predictable and boring.

Pot Limit
In a pot limit betting game, the amount you can bet is the pot. What this means is you can bet a maximum of the amount of chips already put into the pot. Pot-limit is thus a mix of the earlier two styles of betting, with low, predictable betting early and late betting that can get as high as no-limit for some players. To explain this more properly, we will use an example.

• The pot after blinds is $15. Player 1 wishes to raise the maximum amount so he puts in another $15. The pot now stands at $20.
• Player 2 wants to call and raise Player 1’s bet. He puts in the $15 to call and raises the pot to $45. He then raises the full amount to $45. The pot is now at $90.
• The next player wishes to call and raise again. He calls the $60 combined raise from the first two players and pushes the pot to $150. He then raises the pot to $150. The pot now is at $300.
• Player 1 just decides to call all the raises. This pushes the pot to $495.
• Player 2 also just decides to call the second raise. The pot is now at $645.
• No one else raises and the pot has been contributed to equally by all.

While pot-limit may seem like it will encourage low betting, you can see the opposite is often quite true. In just one round of betting the limit went from fifteen dollars to over six hundred! Also unlike limit poker, there is no limit to rounds of betting. Make sure this is the type of game you will be able to play before deciding to go with pot limit. It can be very stressful to new players!

Which limit game should you play?
The type of game right for you depends on your personal information. If you are a newer player, no-limit games probably are not for you as you will not know the right amounts to bet based on the hand you have. It is recommended you start at limit poker games or low-stakes pot-limit first. Also keep in mind that while table limit games will allow you to play a lot more hands and not lose too much money, you will not be able to bluff or exhibit many signs of actual poker skill. In that regards, it may not be the best way to practice for the big no-limit game. To sum up, limit poker is often a place where newer players begin and is a very predictable and easy poker betting style to get into. The other two types of poker are much harder to get the hand of and can have huge swings on your cash flow depending on how the cards go in a night.