No limit vs limit - art vs science

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 02 December 2009 / Leave a Comment

The very best poker players have managed to breach the divide between the two games, and become masters in games that are extremely far apart.....

It is often strange how well poker fits into great analogies with the real world, and perhaps nowhere is this more true than in comparing no limit games with limit ones. These two forms of game occupy opposites so far from each other that they are very similar to the gulf between art and science, as well as both requiring skills that fit these genres very well in order to succeed.

Limit games are the science end of poker. The money is won by the player with the best grasp of hand strengths, opening positions for hands, and a thorough grasp of pot odds and when bluffing may be possible. Most of the money lost by weak limit players is through them playing too many hands, folding and calling too much when they are getting the wrong/right price on their hand, and generally ignoring the fundamental and well established strategy that limit games have. Limit is a very formulaic game, that much like science has certain rules which you simply cannot break if you want to be profitable (such as how many hands you play).

No limit games however, are much more like an art form. Successful players can get away with a dizzying array of styles, ranging from very tight to extremely loose, simply because the game has much less to do with the mathematical value of your cards when stacks can be won or lost on just one street of one hand. Good no limit players are masters of psychology and hand reading, able to radically change playing style depending on the exact mood of their opponent and the flow of the game.

In limit you cannot consistently swim upstream with weak hands, but in no limit you can be a winning player getting involved with a whole range of weak hands, as long as you play them well. Unorthodox approaches hardly ever work in limit games (much like they rarely work in science), but tend to form the bed rock of good no limit player's games (as they typically do for the best artists), and as a result of this, the games occupy very different worlds to each other, despite being played over the same games, such as hold'em.

This is perhaps the reason that the very biggest games played in the world are nearly always mixed games. The very best poker players have managed to breach the divide between the two games, and become masters in games that are extremely far apart, and through forcing people to play both games, they are able exploit those who may well be better than them in one of the limit structures. Make sure you know the key differences between these games before you start trying to move from one to the other - it will save you a great deal of money in the long run.

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