White Belt Poker

Well, I’ve been having some fun playing (very) low buy-in NL games – mainly at Full Tilt over the weekend.

I started playing at a 0.05c-0.10c table just to familiarise myself with the user interface for raising in NL. As expected the maximum buy-in was $10. Everything looked pretty straightforward. I wasn’t looking to get too involved in the action. Then about five hands in… I got dealt pocket aces. Well, what could I do?? I raised 4x the big bet… and got four callers. The flop came 245. The rest of the hand was a bit of a whirlwind. People were sliding in chips all over the place. One guy ended up going all-in for $2.35 (almost 25% of what he brought to the table, don’t forget) and 23x the big bet!! I think he was relieved to just trust to luck rather than having to make reads (or any kind of difficult decision that required judgement). Luckily, my aces held up. Nobody else had anything better than a pair of fives (the all-in guy), even though they were calling ludicrous bets and raises. I practically doubled-up, making over $9 – or 90x BB!!! In one hand. What an extraordinary introduction to NL.

So this has to be the way to go forward. There is so much action at NL tables wherever you go and there seem to be people who are just desperate to move all-in with rubbish. And at this sort of level, the risk is almost non-existent. I know I caught an unusual hand here but now I see what HDouble meant about the potential for doubling or tripling your buy-in at these tables. Although inevitably you’re just sitting there waiting for the nuts (which can be boring), if it’s this profitable then I don’t care. My game is built on patience and I’m in full-on bankroll-building mode anyway.