As little as five years ago, limit holdem (for cash games) dominated the live poker scene, and was the majority of online cash games as well. No limit holdem was played, and was available in cardrooms, but was primarily found in tournaments. The explosion of poker on television, which primarily features no limit holdem tournaments, introduced a whole new wave of players eager to try that game, and invariably, a lot of that action filtered to the cash games. Predictably, a lot of the old sharks from the limit days drifted to those tables, too, in the never ending search for fish.
Today, no limit holdem dominates the limit game in casinos by a wide margin, and is now the majority of online cash games. As limit games seemingly get tougher and tougher, more and more limit diehards decide to make the switch, again, in search of the fish. It's not quite as easy as it once was, as no limit holdem strategy has matured, but this guide will help some diehards make the switch a little easier. Even most LHE players have at least a little experience with NLHE through tournaments or previous experiments, so we'll just touch on some of the highlights of the strategy differences.
Steal the Blinds More
Since your typical preflop raise will be 3, 3.5, or 4 times the big blind, you will be able to take down the blinds more often without a fight. If you raise first in in LHE, the big blind is getting at least 3.5:1 to call, making blind defense smarter. If you raise to 4BB preflop, the big blind is only getting 5.5:3, or 1.83:1 odds, on the defense.
Stealing the blinds takes practice in no limit holdem, since you must play optimally when you are called or reraised. Fortunately, you will have position after the flop, but getting a grasp of your opponent's defense range is important. Typical blind steal statistics of successful NLHE players are about 30% for full rung games, and slightly more for shorthanded games. This means that when the action gets to you in late position, and nobody has entered the pot previously, you raise. In reality, this translates into about once every 4-6 orbits in a full ring game.
If you raise to 4BB every time you try to steal, you are risking 4 to win 1.5. Even if you always give up on the hand when the blind defends (calls or reraises), you still only need to be successful on 8 out of every 11 steal attempts just to break even, and that doesn't factor in the times when you actually have a hand and/or catch an extremely favorable flop, plus the times you get called and take down the pot with continuation bet (more on that later).
So what does it take to get 8/11 (72.7%) success on blind steals? Well, that depends on how loose the blinds will call. If you raise from the button, and they will only defend with "any pair or any two broadway," you will be successful 67.4% of the time right there. (Any pair, any two broadway is 17.9% of all hands, so (1-0.179) ^ 2 = 0.674 = 67.4%.
If you are in the cutoff, you need slightly better chances that they will fold, since there are three players still to act behind you. Here, if they are tight enough such that they only defend with 88 or better, AJ or better, and KQ (8% of hands), you will get a fold (1-0.08) ^ 3 = 77.9% of the time.
Observing the blind defense statistics of your opponents is crucial here. If they are in fact defending their blinds looser than this, you probably would do well to change seats or move to a completely different table, since blind stealing can make up as much as a quarter of your profits at the NLHE cash tables.
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