White Belt Poker

A bit of a late night last night, but my bank holiday weekend got off to a great start with me winning almost $50 at the $25 buy-in NL tables at Full Tilt.

I’ve been playing a little more NL recently and things have been going reasonably well. The main reason for starting to play at these NL tables stemmed from the difficulty I was having in finding profitable limit ring games at Full Tilt and the need to start pulling in some of the $200 bonus I have waiting for me.

My strategy is based heavily on HDouble’s low limit NL article from August last year. It’s pretty straightforward and tight – I’m commonly only seeing 20% of the flops – and it can be boring if you’re not getting any cards. Typically it involves a standard raise of somewhere between 3x and 5x the big blind, then a pot-sized bet on the flop if you’re reasonably sure you have the best hand. Obviously there is some room for variation, but that leaves you not having to make too many complicated decisions later on.

Although it isn’t enormously challenging, it’s possible to make more money than playing limit games. For one thing, the NL games have weaker players, which always helps, and your bonus-making potential sky-rockets as other players get involved in huge pissing-contest pots. I saw a pot last night that reached $96 (380x BB!!). I was comfortably playing two tables and won around $30 in two hours, which I would struggle to do even on a good night at my usual 50c-$1 limit tables.

But the most notable aspect for me was seeing just how many people play NL ring games as if they are in a tournament. As their stack reduces to around 30% of the max buy-in they look for all-in opportunities. Why do they do it? I saw someone go all in with 10 7o because there was a 7 on the flop. That’s insane. Without the blinds going up at regular intervals as would happen in a tournament, there is no imperative whatsoever to start playing ‘anything that adds up to
seventeen or more’. You have all night to wait for a hand if you have the patience. That’s the real issue though I suppose. These guys want to gamble and get their chips in there, the way the guys on TV do it. They’ve brought a certain amount of money to the table and they’ll play until it’s gone. God bless ‘em. The trick is to nudge them towards going all-in by gradually ratcheting up the pot when you have the best hand. I busted at least four people out in the space of two
hours doing that.

Of course, the drawback of playing like this is that you’re trying to hide the fact that you don’t want to risk a lot of money. You’re not going to go all-in for $20-$30 before the flop, even if you have aces or kings. But calling an all-in bet from someone who’s desperate to slide all of his chips in when he catches any kind of pair or a weak ace when you have the bet well covered and have a strong hand is a good way to make quick money.