When to move up.

If you were to have experienced success (or at least gained experience) at holdem poker at one limit, you would probably consider playing in a bigger game at some point. This would be especially true if you were to have been successful, as the possibility of winning notably more money at a higher limit would be a strong motivation to step up.

Before you were to do so, however, you would have to make sure you were sufficiently bankrolled for the move. This would not be a concern if your bankroll were to be renewable, but if you were to fear going broke; you would have to stick to certain guidelines.

In general, assuming you were a winning poker player, many experts would advocate a bankroll of approximately three hundred big bets to remove the risk of going broke. The better you would play compared to your opponents and the smaller the game would be, the less strict that figure would need to be.

Overall, though, for a two to four-dollar holdem poker game, you should have a bankroll between six hundred to one thousand dollars to ‘weather the storms.’ Someone with comparable skills ought to have a bankroll of twelve thousand for a twenty to forty dollar game.

And for a fifty to hundred dollar game, they would require thirty thousand to fifty thousand dollars. And ‘bankroll’ here would mean money that would be set-aside expressly for poker. It would not include the ‘rent money’ or your savings.

Simply having the bankroll to move up would not mean that it would inevitably be in your best financial interest to do so. It would probably be best not to increase limits until you were to have become a steady winner at your current level.

One motivation you could choose to provide for yourself would be to force yourself to win at your current level the required bankroll for the next highest limit. When you would have increased your bankroll to the requisite level, you could step up.

Limit Versus No-limit

There would be some basic distinction between what would be correct in limit and no-limit holdem poker play.

Although the procedure of limit and no-limit holdem poker would be the same – in that poker players would receive two cards and use them in conjunction with the five board cards that is where the resemblances would stop.

Some poker players will be adept at both forms of poker, but it would be a mistake to assume that being a good limit holdem poker player would inevitably makes you effective at no-limit. Here, then, are a few elemental differences in the two variations:

• It would be infrequently, if ever, correct to limp in if no one was to have yet entered a pot in limit holdem poker. However, opening a pot by calling would be a practical no-limit play employed by several of the top no-limit poker players. There would be a few reasons for this.
  Firstly, it would be absolutely crucial for a good no-limit poker player to mix up his play. A random limp when first in would help keep your rival off guard, especially if you were to limp with a variety of poker hands (sometimes two aces, sometimes a seven and eight suited).
  Secondly, limit holdem poker, if you were to limp in and were raised, the strongest action you could take when it would get back to you would be to re-raise one more fun, a play that would succeed only in building a bigger pot that you would have to then play against the raiser while out of position (unless the raise were to come from one of the blinds).
• However, in no-limit holdem poker, you could limp in, get raised, and then would have the alternative of re-raising as much as you would like. This would grant your hand significantly more leverage, as well as providing you with an opportunity to really trap your rivals when you were to be holding a monster hand like aces or kings.
  Another motivation to limp would be that no-limit holdem poker would be a game of implied odds*. Consequently, there would be many occasions in which it would be correct to try to see a flop cheaply with a weaker hand that would have the prospective to develop into a big hand.
  An example would be a small pocket pair or a suited ace with a small kicker. These types of hands could secure a big pot if they were to connect with the flop, but the amount these hands could win in limit holdem poker would be somewhat limited by the betting structure.

* Implied odds: The ratio of what you would have to win (including one likely to be bet in subsequent rounds) on a specific hand to what the current bet was to cost.

• You could protect your poker hand more effectively in no-limit. Since you could make any size bet you would want in no-limit, your good hands would be less likely to be outdrawn than in limit. This would be because you would be able to make large bets that would make it difficult for your rivals to stay in the pot.
• Early in no-limit tournaments, huge implied odds situations would exist. Top no-limit poker players wouldn’t mind seeing a cheap flop with an inferior starting hand, in an attempt to catch a lucky flop and double up. The key here would be to identify when your poker hand will have improved enough to merit ‘going to war.’
  There would be a good reason why some hands would be mediocre – they would wind up making the runner-up hand quite often. However, as your hand-reading skills will develop, you too would be able to see some extra flops in the hopes of ‘getting lucky.’
  Typical hands that would have good implied odds would be small pairs (should you flop a set against an overpair, you would get paid off handsomely), or suited aces (with which you could make either aces up against a hand like ace and king or ace and queen, or preferably, a flush).
  The key here would be that a small initial contribution could yield a big reward. Although these types of hands could also win some nice pots in limit holdem poker, they would hold nowhere near the same value as in no-limit.

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