Should You Switch to No-Limit Hold'em? Part II - The Critical Psychological Traits

In Part I, I said, … "being a good limit player does not guarantee that you will play no-limit (NL) equally well." It requires different skills, psychological traits, and mental abilities. You can read Part I at http://www.cardplayer.com/.

NL has been called "hours of boredom with moments of terror," and you must be able to handle both the boredom and the terror. In limit, if your boredom causes a careless mistake, you lose a few bets, but in NL, you can lose your entire stack. In limit, you will rarely be terrified, but the risk of losing your stack can be frightening, even when the amount is not financially important to you. NL, therefore demands, much more emotional control.

You need traits that help you to cope with both the boredom (patience) and the terror (tolerance for risk, frustration, and ambiguity). You also need deceptiveness to set and avoid traps (which are less important in limit).

Patience
Patience is essential for all poker games, but NL demands a different type of it. You can grind out a profit in limit just by being disciplined and patient. Simply wait for good cards and focus on pot odds, because the implied odds and bluffing potential are rarely high enough to justify playing bad ones.

To exploit cash no-limit games' much greater implied odds and bluffing opportunities, you must combine patience, deceptiveness, and timing. Instead of waiting for cards such as big pairs and then playing them straightforwardly, you should set and avoid traps - with or without big cards. You need the patience to wait for the right situation, not just the right cards.

You can't commit too soon or too late. If you overcommit before the flop - say, by open-raising all in with pocket kings or queens - you may win the blinds or get called only by better hands. If you overcommit after the flop, you may win a small pot or lose your entire stack.

If the post-flop action is too heavy, you may have to fold your overpair or bigger hand. If you can't fold good hands when they appear to be beat, don't play NL. Many players - especially those who are very tight preflop - can't do it. They say, in effect, "I've waited hours for these cards, and I'm playing them to the bitter end." It's a prescription for disaster.

Risk Tolerance
The essence of NL is that you can lose your entire stack at any time. You need "heart" to cope with the risks of all forms of poker, but - because the risks are so much greater - it is critically important in NL. Jan Siroky, a successful NL tournament coach, put it very bluntly: "The absolutely indispensable quality for no-limit players is courage."

Dr. Dan Kessler, a clinical psychologist, went further: "You need a nearly complete disregard for the value of money." I wouldn't go quite so far. You need a balance between the extremes of regarding your stack as "just chips" and worrying too much about what they can buy. If you think, "Oh, my God, I'm betting my rent or car payment," you will play scared. It is deadly in all poker games, but especially in NL.

If you overreact to NL's greater risks, you will make two diametrically opposed errors: playing timidly or overprotecting your good hands.

Playing timidly: Fear can make you fold winners, check when you should bet, call when you should raise, or make too small a bet or raise. You may be so afraid of a raise or a drawout that you give cheap or free cards that beat you, or you may invite opponents to bluff.

Overprotecting your hands: Fear also can make you bet too much. Tommy Angelo, a poker coach and writer, tells of a novice player with pocket aces. He made a huge all-in preflop bet. Everyone folded around to the oldest, wisest player. He asked, "What are you so afraid of?" Then, he flashed and mucked pocket kings.
Once the pot gets fairly large, fear can become even more destructive. For example, fearful people may push in their stack with top set on the flop, halfway hoping that nobody will call and draw out on them. But, since you get such good hands very rarely, you should get full value from them. Bet enough so that calling is a mistake, but not so much that everyone folds.

Matt Lessinger's "Counterproductive Analysis" (Card Player, Vol. 19/No. 6) discussed overprotection. After a horrible beat, one of his students was whining that he should have pushed all in to protect his hand when he was a 10-to-1 favorite. Matt disagreed, saying, "It would be worth taking the 10 percent chance of going broke if it meant a 90 percent chance that he would get his opponent's entire stack."

If you're a huge favorite, you want a call, and you should not bet so much that you don't get it. If the fear of going broke will make you misplay your hands, play limit poker or in NL games that are small enough to keep your fears under control.

Frustration Tolerance
All forms of poker are frustrating, because our goal is to take each other's money, and we will often lose more than we can handle (either financially or psychologically). NL is especially frustrating because you can lose your whole stack on one hand - even if you play it perfectly.

If you can't handle frustration, your play will often suffer. Instead of focusing on the current situation, you may be distracted, thinking about past mistakes or bad beats, or wondering, "Why am I so unlucky?"

Going on tilt is the most destructive reaction to frustration, and the chances of it happening depend upon your personality. Because you can protect your hands much better, bad beats occur far less often. However, when they do occur, they are much more expensive and frustrating. Your chances of going on tilt therefore depend upon which is more frustrating: more frequent but smaller losses, or less frequent but larger ones.

If you do go on tilt, it is much more destructive in NL, because you can lose so much so quickly. I have seen people lose seven buy-ins in less than an hour. In uncapped NL games, you can quickly blow your entire bankroll.

Ambiguity Tolerance
NL is much more ambiguous than limit because you have so many more options, and you must consider more variables. In addition to deciding whether to fold, check, call, bet, or raise, you must decide how much to bet or raise, and all of your decisions depend on the size of the pot and your own and the other players' stacks. With exactly the same cards, players, and action, you should call with stacks of a certain size, but raise or fold with those of a different size.

Ambiguity is increased by the lack of high-quality instruction for today's games. The major books were written about uncapped games, but most readers will never play in them. Jim Brier (Card Player columnist and co-author of Middle Limit Holdem Poker) and I are relatively new to no-limit, and we believe that there aren't any books on capped NL that are remotely as good as the ones we have read (and he has written) about limit hold'em. We need good advice to play a more complex, ambiguous game, but we can't find it.

Deceptiveness
You can beat most limit games by playing ABC poker, but you need deceptiveness to beat NL, especially against good players. When I polled my NL discussion group, they said the most important NL skills are:

1. Avoiding traps
2. Manipulating opponents into making mistakes
3. Deceiving opponents

The three most important limit skills are:
1. Selecting hands
2. Folding early
3. Selecting good games

Although "deceiving opponents" was only third, the first two also require deceptiveness. Because they are predictable, straightforward players are easy to trap. If you know what they are going to do, just set the trap and they will step into it.

You must conceal your intentions to manipulate people into making mistakes. If they know what you're trying to do, they can easily thwart your plans. If you are beating limit games by playing ABC poker, you may not cope well with NL's demands for deceptiveness.

Final Remarks
Since it is difficult or impossible to change most psychological traits, you should take a hard look at yourself before switching to NL. If you don't have the right kind of personality, NL is probably not the right game for you.

Even if you have these traits, shifting to NL is far from easy. Later columns will recommend ways to make the transition smoother and less stressful.

Dr. Schoonmaker ([email protected]) coaches only on psychology issues, such as controlling impulses, coping with losing streaks, going on tilt, and planning your poker career.