Playing Outside Your Limits

Most strategy books and pro tip articles share a common theme for newer players: don’t play outside your limits. You might ask yourself why… If you are confident in your play, why not try and win more money? Here’s an explanation of why.

Playing outside your limits mostly adheres to No Limit cash games. In tournament play, chip stacks start out equally, so you’re going to find that the buy-in fee is a representation of what you are comfortable with staking or not. No Limit cash games are different in that the perception is that the blinds are small and your stack you will never have to use. That is the key problem in playing outside your limits.

Let’s take $1-$2 No Limit Hold Em as an example. At most poker rooms, the maximum buy-in for a $1-$2 game is $200.00. Now, while some players may feel $200.00 is a good deal of money, they often just think about how small the blinds are: $1-$2. Their thought process is that they will only ever half to put at risk $2 and if they hit the nuts, they can then bet out their $200.00 comfortably. This is absolutely the wrong approach when you are playing at a No Limit table. The purpose of the No Limit game is to get as much of the other players’ money in the pot and maximize your wins. You’ll find that rarely in a game of $1-$2 No Limit will you be able to see a pot for $2. Why? Because the bigger hands pre-flop are going to want to sweeten the pot before the flop. They are going to want to maximize their wins or potential wins. You may not be comfortable playing a Jack/Queen suited for $8, whereas on a smaller table you might. What will end up happening to you is that you’ll throw away a lot of blinds to raises pre-flop and find your stack diminishing over time.

Now let’s say you don’t agree with the theory above and consider yourself a very tight and patient player who wouldn’t consider even putting in $2 with a Jack/Queen suited. You argue that you would wait for your kings or aces and then play super-aggressive. Let’s take the example of pocket Kings. A standard pre-flop raise is made of around $10. Two players call to you and you decide to raise another $25, to which both players call. Now the flop lands Ace, Jack, Ten. You’ve committed $35 to the pot and have been waiting about 15 rounds of the table ($45 in blinds..) for this hand. Your now at almost half your stack. You decide to continue your aggression and bet out $50 to the pot. One player folds and the other pushes you all-in. A newer player will feel compelled to protect this hand, even though it is quite obvious the other player is holding an Ace. You will want to protect that money and you will end up calling and losing the pot and in turn your $200.00. Of course, your luck may have gone the opposite direction and the flop could have been King, Jack, Ten, but the point is that playing outside your limits can force you to make moves you may not in a game more at your cash level and the blinds can control a lot of your decision making.

The most important thing to remember is to never play a cash game where you are going to just call blinds, as you will end up giving away a lot of cash in blinds over an hour or two hour session.

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