A Bad No-Limit Hold'em Overbet

In December I attended the River City Group's Online Poker Conference on Nassau's Cable Beach in the Bahamas, to speak on integrity issues in online poker and methodologies of stopping cheats. I found myself wandering through the Crystal Palace Casino's new poker room. I always thought the Bahamas would be a natural for poker, but legislation permitting gaming in the Bahamas didn't include poker – until a few months ago. And as is the case in other places, the game of choice seems to be no-limit hold'em. One new rule that's helping no-limit's newfound popularity is the maximum buy-in, which eliminates the advantage of having a larger bankroll and helps protect the inexperienced player from losing his whole bankroll by making one mistake. Having maximum buy-ins in no-limit games is very good for poker.



A small tournament and two $1-$2 blinds no-limit hold'em games with a $200 maximum buy-in were in play. The games were social and friendly, comprised mostly of tourists vacationing in Nassau and having some fun playing poker. Some had never played before. In spite of the small blinds and buy-in, the games played pretty big! Three or four players at one of the tables had more than $1,500 in front of them. There was some serious gambling going on here!



No-limit plays differently from limit. Many of the concepts are identical, and a conceptually sound player can adjust between the games, but there are big differences. One issue of significant importance in no-limit is the ability to bet the correct amount based on the style of your opponent, the range of hands he may hold, and the size of the pot. Most importantly, the feel of the games is very different: different pot sizes compared to bet sizes, different drawing equations, and different player styles. In spite of the fact that the games are dealt the same way, they're different – very different.



I've played some no-limit hold'em, and my results are nothing to be ashamed of, but limit hold'em is by far my best game. It's the game I grew up on in my formative years in the Pacific Northwest, and it is without a doubt the game in which I have the best feel. When I play no-limit, I seem to make more feel and reading errors than I do in limit.



I jumped into the $1-$2 blinds no-limit game. In spite of the fact that it isn't my best game, I wasn't in any trouble against this field. Within a couple of hours, I had cranked my $200 buy-in up to almost $2,000. One player in the game was bullying the table. He both looked like a middle linebacker and possessed the mentality of one, aggressively attacking every pot with almost any two cards. The poker gods had been incredibly good to Mr. Middle Linebacker; he had forced his opponents to lay down the best hand many times by severely overbetting the pot, and the several times that he was trapped into putting in a lot of money with the worst hand, he made lucky drawouts to take down the pot. He had a stack in front of him of close to $2,000. His girlfriend was sitting on the rail watching him, and he was obviously enthused about impressing her with his poker prowess.



Now, Mr. Middle Linebacker also had had a few too many drinks, although he wasn't smashed. But his lucky draws had him feeling very full of himself, and he had the table chasing him while being a bit intimidated by him. I was fantasizing about how good Mr. Middle Linebacker's $2,000 would look in front of me when I picked up the A K in early position. The player in front of me limped in and I, looking to trap Mr. Middle Linebacker, I limped in, too, hoping he would raise, as he almost always did. The player in between Mr. Middle Linebacker and me called the $2, as did Mr. Middle Linebacker, much to my disappointment! Several other players called and we took off the flop eighthanded, which was not a terrible situation for my holding.



The flop came A K 9, a hugely favorable flop for my hand, giving me top two pair. I thought about how to play my hand in order to maximize my edge. I wanted to trap Mr. Middle Linebacker. He was the guy with the money. Getting involved with him and busting him would be better than busting the rest of the table combined. I checked, knowing he bet most flops that were checked to him. Mr. Middle-Linebacker didn't disappoint me, and fired $50 into a $16 pot. The rest of the field folded to me.



I thought about flat-calling and letting him bluff off his chips, as he had a propensity to do, but something he did struck me funny. In pots in which he bluffed, he always jabbered and challenged everyone, as if he was trying to intimidate. In this case, he was dead silent. I thought he had a hand that wanted a call. Now, I was seriously thinking about how to get his whole stack!



I decided to raise $50. I wanted to give him an opportunity to reraise without having him think I had a huge hand. One thing about this guy was that I hadn't seen him back down from a challenge, and he seemed to have a psychological need to get in the last bet. I wanted him to perceive me as being somewhat afraid of him, hoping that he would make an out-of-line bet, as he had often done, in an effort to force me to fold.



He didn't make the out-of-line bet that I'd hoped he make, but he did reraise $100. When he did that, I knew he had a hand and was trying to bleed me of my money. Since my $50 raise had worked so well, I decided to try the same play again and reraised him $100, the same amount he had raised me. I wanted to taunt him into making a big bet, knowing he had a need to dominate. He would just have to put in a bigger bet than mine to prove himself superior.



He reraised $300. I thought about how to get the rest of his money. There was little doubt in my mind that he thought he had a legitimate hand, and he hadn't made a laydown all night. If there was anyone who was both financially and psychologically prepared to call an out-of-line bet, it was this guy. The fact that his girlfriend was watching strengthened my thoughts. He just didn't seem like the type to admit or show vulnerability. This guy wouldn't back down in front of his girlfriend, would he? I reraised $1,000, by far the biggest bet in the game all evening.



When he reacted to my bet, I knew I had screwed up. While I thought all of my prior thinking was correct, I missed one key point: This guy had never faced a bet of that size before in his life, and it caused him to step back. A thousand bucks was a very meaningful amount of money to him. He thought for a long while, showed me an ace, and tossed his hand into the muck.



I was very disappointed in myself. I had messed up an opportunity to take Mr. Middle Linebacker's whole stack, and those opportunities don't present themselves often. It was a mental error due to my lack of feel in no-limit. I thought I had thought things through, but my thought process was not deep enough. A quality, experienced no-limit player would not have made the same error.



In retrospect, either a call or a smaller raise would have been correct, as he had shown a comfort level with raises of less than $500, and I should have recognized that fact.



Not too long thereafter, Mr. Middle Linebacker took down the third-biggest stack at the table and got himself pumped up again. He spread some more chips around, and then at his girlfriend's urging, he locked up a good-sized win and wandered off with her to enjoy his vacation in a different way. This fellow believes he can beat up on small no-limit hold'em games, and his cash will be back in play sometime soon, either in a South Florida game or back in Nassau. And that's surely not a bad thing for poker.



I'd like to thank Sue Schneider of the River City Group for the opportunity to address many of my Internet poker industry peers about the important issue of integrity in online poker, and hope that perhaps I may have helped some see steps they can take to help make our game as clean as it can be. I look forward to seeing Sue and the River City crew again at their Global Internet Gaming Show & Exposition (GIGSE) in Montreal in May of 2006.

Roy Cooke played winning professional poker for more than 16 years. He is a successful real estate broker/salesperson in Las Vegas. His books are available at http://www.conjelco.com/. His longtime collaborator, John Bond, is a freelance writer in South Florida.