In this issue, we have Bryan Clark’s quarterly survey of Las Vegas poker rooms plus another article by me commenting on some of the results that Bryan found. But I want to continue my comments a little more here, and talk about no-limit cash games in general.
In 2003, the great Poker Boom began with the first TV shows of The World Poker Tour tournaments where the hole cards were shown. (This was then followed by the World Series of Poker which was won by Chris Moneymaker.) The shows were a sensation, lots of people wanted to start playing poker, and the game that was featured was, of course, no-limit hold ’em. But what was interesting at this time, with the exception of tournaments, was that there were essentially zero no-limit hold ’em cash games spread on a regular basis. Yes, I know there was a game here and there, especially a couple of games in Northern California, but for all practical purposes, virtually no one played no-limit hold ’em in a cash game. But by 2005 this had changed, and today it is the predominate game in all our cardrooms no matter where you go.
However, I still believe that no-limit as a cash game is not a good game for poker rooms to be spreading, especially if you’re playing live. The reasons for this are many, and I won’t go into them here. But suffice it to say that no-limit plays too slowly and the bad players lose too quickly.
On the other hand, what’s a cardroom to do? If their customers want to play no-limit hold ’em, don’t they need to spread it? Of course they do. And this brings us to the current state of live action in many poker rooms around the world. Are they spreading a game that may eventually choke itself off and destroy all the progress in popularity that poker has made since 2003? And what should be done about this?
I think the answer is two-fold. First, our poker rooms should be spreading what their customers demand and this definitely means no-limit hold ’em, not only in tournaments but in cash games as well. But second, each and every cardroom (and their management) should be aware that limit hold ’em, limit seven-card stud, and other limit games are also a viable form of poker which will be good for their business in the long run, and they should make every effort to keep these games going.
Recently, when sitting in a limit hold ’em game at The Bellagio, a young lady introduced herself to me and brought her husband over to also meet me. It turned out they are fans of 2+2. Her husband, as expected, was is a no-limit hold ’em player. But his wife explained that limit is her game and she will only play limit, and my suspicion is as time goes on that there will be more people like her. Furthermore, it’s my belief that those cardrooms which forget about limit may lose out to the ones that (currently) manage to keep their limit games going, even if the ones that keep going are only for very small stakes.
