Do Limit Poker Books Hurt Pot-Limit Players?

A reader from across the pond recently sent me an E-mail decrying the lack of good books about pot-limit and no-limit poker. He's a relative novice, and like most Europeans finds that most of the games near his home are pot-limit. He has been trying to learn by reading books, but the vast majority of poker books focus on limit poker, and he wanted to know if he could actually be hurting his pot-limit poker development by reading limit books.

I think the answer is an unqualified yes.

I believe limit poker and pot-limit poker (for the sake of convenience, I'm just going to use the phrase "pot-limit" from here on out, although my comments apply to no-limit and pot-limit equally) are so different that, for example, limit hold'em and limit seven-card stud are much more alike than are limit hold'em and pot-limit hold'em.

That's not to say that limit hold'em and limit seven-card stud are particularly similar games, because they aren't. They require different skills (remembering folded cards comes to mind), involve different strategy and tactics (chasing is much more frequently correct in stud), and I don't know too many players who are equally adept at both.

Yet, I maintain that limit hold'em and pot-limit hold'em are even more dissimilar. In limit hold'em, you never face one bet that can put all of your chips at risk, unless you're almost out of chips (or you're in a tournament where the blinds have grown humongous, and when you reach that point, most players believe you're effectively playing pot-limit). In limit hold'em, one hand rarely makes or breaks you for the night. In limit hold'em, the utility of playing small cards in the hope of flopping something tricky drops way down unless you're in late position and already know you have multiple opponents.

In pot-limit, one false move and you're a goner, and one good trap can make your night. In pot-limit, you can make a bet big enough to protect a leading hand, or to bluff out someone else's leading hand.

The two games are both hold'em, a statement that means about as much as saying a car and a motorcycle are both mechanized transportation devices. Knowing how to drive a car safely helps only very minimally when you're trying to learn how to handle a Harley. So, with such huge differences in the two games, can limit books harm players who are trying to advance in pot-limit?

Although very advanced players who play only pot-limit are probably capable of screening out limit information that would hurt their games, "very advanced players" is not a description that applies to most people reading poker books.

There certainly are a few books that do deal with pot-limit. Most of T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy's Championship Series books are helpful, and much of Bob Ciaffone's work is, as well. Doyle Brunson's Super/System, the premier poker book when it was written, also qualifies, although some of it is outdated. Nonetheless, there is no question that the American poker literature is heavily skewed toward limit poker. My best guess about why this is comes in three parts:

First, limit poker is easier, and hence easier to write about.

Second, because there is so much more limit poker here in America, the writers correctly perceive that the market will be bigger for limit books, and when you write a book, the idea is to sell a lot of copies.

Third, most of the people who really understand pot-limit are making so much money playing it that they aren't all that anxious to write about it and reveal trade secrets. I've seen enough of the top Europeans playing in the last year to recognize that in pot-limit, they've taken "the quintessential American card game" and improved on it. In pot-limit, I'd bet the top 10 Americans against the top 10 Europeans, but in a matchup of the top 200 Americans against the top 200 Europeans, I'd bet Europe and lay the points.

The second and third problems above aren't likely to go away anytime soon, although as the European market continues to grow, some authors will become tempted by the size of that market. Until then, players whose main ambitions lie in the pot-limit arena should watch as many big-money tournaments as they can, because they'll see good players playing their "A" games. They should also see if they can find a mentor who might be willing to share knowledge individually even if he isn't willing to share it with the world in general. Tournament play also lets you get a handle on pot-limit concepts without risking the rent money.

When it comes to "book learnin'" (as the Texas road gamblers might call it), novices and intermediates who want to focus on pot-limit should stick to poker books that focus on pot-limit principles, or books that focus on the psychological end of things (such as The Psychology of Poker or The Zen of Poker), rather than those that focus on the technical side. If you do read the limit books (and most Americans should, because that's the game they'll see most often), read them knowing their limitations when it comes to shifting over to a very different game.

Andy Glazer is the weekly gambling columnist for the Detroit Free Press and the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way. He is also the online poker guide for www.poker.casino.com, and welcomes your questions there, or via E-mail at [email protected].