No-limit progression, plus last night's session

I played basically only limit hold’em for about 10 years, plus the occasional no-limit tournament. For about the past 5 years, I’ve been playing more and more single table tournaments, although not many in the past few months. Then about a year ago, I switched from limit to no-limit.

I didn’t play no-limit because I was uncomfortable with it. I didn’t know how much to bet, or what to do when someone pushed all-in. However, limit was becoming extremely boring and didn’t pay off. And if I was going to play tight, I decided that my good hands should get paid off. In limit, you might win a few extra bets with the nuts. In no-limit, a bad player will gift you his entire stack. So I switched to .10/.25 no-limit last year. I’ve been treading water since, but really learning a lot about how to play no-limit, at least at this low level. Mostly it’s about waiting for someone to do something stupid so that you can get their entire stack. I’ve greatly improved my knowledge of betting patterns, pot odds, implied odds, position, and stack size.

Last week, I started playing .25/.50. I know these limits sound miniscule, but I play 5-6 tables at a time, and you could easily lose several hundred dollars (again, miniscule by some standards, but that’s all I’d want to lose in one session) in a couple of hours. The .25/.50 table has a minimum $25 buyin, maximum $50 buyin. It’s surprising how many players buy in for less than the maximum. You want to have a big stack so that you can get paid off when you have a good hand.

I noticed immediately that there was a lot more preflop raising in .25/.50. The players weren’t really much better, maybe a little, but definitely more preflop raising. In .10/.25, several players routinely limp and there’s no raise. I liked that, because you could get in cheap and flop a great hand. At .25/.50, players are smart enough to “punish the limpers” by raising big after several players have shown weakness by just calling.

Last night, I played 4 tables of .25/.50 and 1 table of .50/1.00 simultaneously. Within an hour, I doubled on on 3 tables, lost 1/2 my stack on 1 table, and lost 1/4 of my stack on the .50/1 table. After another hour of the deck hitting me in the face, I was up about 50% on the .50/1.00 table. In 3 hours total, I had AA about 8 times and KK about 3 times. Twice with KK, there was an ace on the flop, I bet the size of the pot, and everyone folded. My AA and KK held up the first 10 times. It was amazing. It seems like every time I flopped a set, someone went all-in and I got their stack. So I was very happy with how it was going until the last hand of the night...

I had about $80 on a .25/.50 table and was dealt AhAc again. I was in middle position and there were already two limpers and I raised to 2.50. I could've raised more. There was one caller behind me who was a good player. There is now $6.75 in the pot. The flop came 3d8h9d. I bet the pot, and he raised to $15. Almost all players at this level would slowplay a set, although this player was certainly capable of raising here. It was more likely that he had an overpair or a draw or nothing. I thought about jamming, but I thought I'd see the next card before doing that. Maybe I could let go of AA if I really hated the turn. I called and now the pot is $36.75. The turn was Jh, so the board was now 3d8h9dJh. I considered it very unlikely that my opponent held TQ for a straight, and I wanted to shut out all draws so I bet the pot. My opponent went all-in for $20 more, and it was trivial for me to call, since I was getting better than 6-1. I called, the river was Qd, and my opponent tabled TJd for a flush. Ouch. I've replayed that hand over and over in my head wondering if I could have escaped.

First, I'm pissed that my opponent called my preflop raise with TJ suited, but I might do exactly the same thing with deep stacks, hoping to hit a great flop, which he did. Also, I could've raised more preflop, but I intentionally didn't raise the pot because I didn't want to scare everyone out. So I only raised $2.50 instead of $3.75 and offered my opponent better than 2:1 odds. Perhaps that was the biggest mistake of the hand. I do believe that he would've called a $3.75 raise anyway. What I was hoping to accomplish was to knock out everyone behind me and have one of the limpers call or reraise, and then I would have position.

Now with a straight draw and a flush draw plus two overs on the flop, my opponent is the favorite to win the hand. Of course, the overs are no good, but he is still a favorite without them. I bet the pot, giving him 2:1 pot odds, but he is 1:1 to win it by the river, so he of course can raise with impunity. He raises $15, giving me 3.5:1 pot odds, an easy call. However, since he called my preflop raise, I put him on a hand like an overpair or a suited big ace. I probably should've jammed right there. But the raise threw me off, so I called. Not jamming was probably a mistake, although he would've called and I would've lost anyway.

Now of course on the turn of 3d8h9dJh he also hits top pair - he has top pair, a straight draw, and a flush draw. He can catch any 7, Q, diamond, J, or T to beat me. That's 20 outs, so he's 1.4:1 against winning on the last card - note that he still doesn't have the best hand and he's not the favorite to win - but the pot odds dictate that he must stay in the hand. So the river made his hand and I lost.

Then I couldn't get to sleep and spent the next day agonizing over the hand. But analyzing it is making me feel better. Most of the time, I'm going to beat the pants off that guy with my AA. I want him to call me with JTs. I just got unlucky that time. My preflop raise was intended to get a caller, and it did. I just got outflopped. Could I have folded to his raise on the flop? I don't think so. I certainly couldn't fold at any other point. Could I have checked the turn? Maybe, but I sure didn't want to give a free card with all the draws on the board.

At least I didn't lose to a huge suckout - this is not a bad beat story. My opponent played the hand well and had a great draw that hit.

The funny thing at all lower levels of poker are the players who berate the other players – “you suck, you didn’t have odds to call that, what a donkey, etc. etc.” Well, this is the lowest level, what do you expect, professionals? Bad beats happen, and the reason that they happen is because bad players get their money in with the worst of it. The bad player is doing EXACTLY what you want them to do – play badly. But there is some luck, so of course they win sometimes. And if bad players didn’t occasionally win, there would be no game anyway. At least not a fun game.

- schneid