Bob Dylan rocks

If no limit holdem is the electric guitar of poker, limit is the acoustic version.

I have never really played much limit hold em. As a TV generation poker player, I started off playing no limit. But the best rock stars can play the acoustic guitar as well and so I have decided to turn my attention to limit. This blog will chart my progress.

I have only ever played limit as part of mixed HORSE games and I have a lot to learn. I hope playing limit will improve my all round game by forcing me to think about pot odds and EV. Hopefully I will learn to play correctly.

Unfortunately, according to Michael from www.countingmyouts.com its a bad time to play limit, particularly 2/4 limit if you plan to play during the afternoon New York time (which I will be - except I will be in London at it will be the evening here). 1BB/100 hands is currently a good return.

I don't have the bank roll for 2/4. Pocketfives.com has a good article on bankroll management which says that you need 550 big bets if you want to be a Pro whose life depends on maintaining the roll, or 400 big bets if you want to be protected. It does, however, also have an "unprotected" figure - a short term approach for people willing to play a little looser in an attempt to build a bankroll.

The "unprotected" figure is 200 big bets, which apparently would give an average winning player less than a 10% chance of going bust, provided you don't withdraw any of the money.

Overall I have more than 200 big bets at 2/4. Although on Full Tilt where I will be doing this I have slightly less - about 180. There is also the small matter of the fact that I am not a winning Limit Holdem player, or winning cash game player full stop. OPR tells me that I am a winning MTT player.

I plan to play full ring games 2/4 where possible and if not 1/2. If I lose $300 at 2/4 I will switch to 1/2. If I ever get to the point where I have the equivalent of 550 big bets at 3/6, I will move up. I won't be counting on that happening though. If I stop playing, I will stop this blog.

I also plan to re-educate myself and have started reading Small Stakes Hold em by Sklansky etc and have ordered Michael Craig's FTP book and "how I crushed limit and pwned your dad monkey boy" by Matt Maroon.

I will also dig out Lee Jones' book on small stakes limit which I seem to recall Matt Maroon said was pretty good.

I also need to think about getting poker tracker. I have tried before but couldn't get it to work. At the moment I will have to stick to spreadsheets.