Poker Night

Winning at Home,
at the Casino,
and Beyond

by John Vorhaus

THE NO-LIMIT REVOLUTION

The other day I got a phone call from a friend. "You play poker, right?" he asked, which was kind of a dumb question, since everyone who knows my name knows I play poker.

"Right," I said. "What's up?"

"I want to play," he said. "No problem," I replied.

"I can hook you up with a home game. How does $1-2 limit dealer's choice sound?"

"No. Hell, no. I want to play no-limit hold'em."

I was floored by this, by the audacity of it, because when I was coming up, no-limit hold'em was the last game a poker player tackled, after he was very well grounded in limit poker play. I shouldn't have been surprised, though, not really, because while it's true that no-limit hold'em is the variation of choice for the game's top players, it's quickly - and I mean at light speed - becoming the game of choice for poker's rawest recruits, too. Television is why, of course. People by the millions are getting their first serious look at poker on TV, and the game they're watching, the game that's inspiring them to play, is none other than no-limit Texas hold'em.

Now, conventional wisdom says that a new player should get crushed in this game. With the possibility of losing your entire stack to a single mistake, it would seem that a newbie or a rookie, the type of player most likely to make big mistakes, would quickly fall victim to experienced players who know how to detect, or provoke, and exploit such mistakes. Conventional wisdom says that no-limit hold'em is exactly the wrong poker variant for new players because it quickly strips them of their bankroll and drives them from the game.

But conventional wisdom has been turned upside down by television. So many new no-limit hold'em players are streaming into the game that they're literally overwhelming the game and changing its nature. Tournament pros have noted this and commented on it. They used to welcome inexperienced players into no-limit tournaments and considered their entry fees to be dead money. But when a significant portion of the field is new to the game, even the most savvy tournament pro loses the advantage of his experience. The sheer weight of numbers has morphed no-limit tournaments from chummy club events into free-for-alls. Many is the well-seasoned pro who has lately discovered the sad truth that, "You can't figure out their strategy if they don't have one."

Cash no-limit hold'em games are likewise undergoing a sea change. Now it's no longer a case of six or seven leatherbutts sitting around waiting to savage one unsuspecting innocent. Instead, with no-limit fever breaking out all over, equally (in)experienced players are sitting down together at poker nights everywhere and basically learning the game together as they go along. What does this do?

It levels the playing field.

And makes no-limit hold'em a playable game, even for absolute beginners.

When everyone is equally skilled and experienced, no one's at that big a disadvantage, so new players need not go broke so quickly. No matter who wins or who loses, furthermore, the money stays in the hands of relatively equally matched players, so that someone suffering an initial setback can still stage a comeback. This would not necessarily be the case if a seasoned pro had taken the no-limit newbie's buy-in or bankroll, and placed it safely out of reach by dint of superior knowledge and play.

Another factor is the advent of low buy-in no-limit hold'em. The Texas road gamblers who popularized the game used to play as high as they could, and newcomers needed major funding just to get involved. But new players with a TV-triggered taste for no-limit hold'em are sensibly looking for, or hosting, games where they can get their feet wet for the smallest possible sums. $10, $20 and $50 buy-in games are common. Some games even go for no money at all: Following the example of the free-play sections of internet poker sites, certain eager beavers are getting together to play $0 buy-in no-limit hold'em, just to work on their game. They find - and this is key - that the challenge of mastering no-limit hold'em and the adrenalating thrill of pushing in a big stack provide sufficient buzz, even when there's not a cent at stake.

And when real money does come into play, even the smallest buy-in seems significant. We've talked about the gulp limit, the amount of money you need to put in play to feel like you're playing for a meaningful amount. Well, it turns out that no-limit hold'em has a tendency to lower that gulp threshold. A $10 buy-in may not inspire much gulping in a fixed-limit game, but put that same sawbuck into a no-limit contest, where you run the risk of losing it all on a single bad call, and suddenly the stakes are magnified.

Providing further torque to the "bang for your buck" paradigm, we suddenly see an explosion in the popularity of home game tournaments, modeled, again, after the compelling poker porn we've all been watching on TV. Where such home grown tournaments were virtually unheard-of a year ago, they've now become commonplace, with a couple (or several) dozen newly minted no-limit warriors gathering weekly or monthly, tossing maybe twenty bucks each into a tournament prize pool, and playing for big glory if not huge bucks. They like it. Check that, they love it. With the downside absolutely fixed at twenty dollars, and the upside going as high as several hundred, tournaments provide a relatively risk-free way of getting the feel for the game.

Home poker players by the droves, then, are making no-limit hold'em, and maybe even no-limit tournament hold'em, the only game they care to learn or play or know.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the strategy adjustments you need to make when you first venture into the thrilling and demanding world of no-limit Texas hold'em.

Two Basic Approaches

Most new hold'em players play too loose. They call too much and chase too much and see too many flops. No-limit hold'em punishes this tendency so severely that even the rookiest of rookies quickly learn to snug up their starting requirements. It's a phenomenon that veterans of limit hold'em find quite amazing: the threat of losing their whole stack at any time is effectively trending new players to an appropriate degree of tightness. In a limit game, they might decide to take a flier on a hand like K-3 suited, figuring, What the hell, it's only one bet. In no-limit, where anyone can bet anything at any time, the Damoclean sword of a major raise scares them off that hand.

Of course, not everyone knows what tight is, and not everyone knows how to evaluate the strength of their hands correctly. They may think that K-3 suited is a perfectly playable hand. But the first time they flop a king to that hand and lose their whole stack to someone holding A-K, they learn to treat that K-3 suited for the losing proposition it is. Likewise, the first time their A-7 gets dominated and crushed by an A-Q or A-J, they develop a healthy aversion to playing bad aces. In short, they tighten up, much more quickly and much more fully than they would in a limit game.

Meanwhile, a different sort of newcomer to no-limit hold'em watches all this snug play and quickly discovers the provocative truth that a big bet is a big stick. He finds that he can routinely bully timid players off their hands just by crashing into the pot with a lot of chips. He has a willingness to bet, a willingness that many new no-limit players simply won't have, for fear of putting their whole stack at risk. These other players may think he's bluffing, or even know he's bluffing, but they don't have hands that can call, or the strength of will to call (or raise) without cards. This ability to overbet the pot is one of the critical differences between limit and no-limit hold'em. In limit hold'em, you often can't make anyone respect your raise - after all, it's just one more bet - but in no-limit hold'em, it's possible to bet people off the pot.

No-limit hold'em players, then, quickly sort themselves into two types: those who wait for premium cards and protect their stack by staying out of trouble; and those, not content to wait, who prey on the Timid Timmies. Which sort of player should you be? It depends on type of person you are. Do you like risk? Are you comfortable with gambling your whole stack at once? Or do you prefer to keep your variance low? No-limit bullies definitely run greater risks, but they also put themselves in position to reap greater rewards. Let's paint a picture.

Nick Rauchen is a tight, thoughtful no-limit newbie up against Vietato Fumare, also a newbie, but a reckless one. They have equal experience and equal $30 stacks in a game where the blinds are $1 and $2. The only real difference between them is Vietato's greater willingness to bet. Nick is in the small blind with T-T. Vietato is in the big blind with anything or nothing at all. Everyone folds around to Nick, who throws in $1 to complete the blind, hoping for a cheap and favorable flop. Vietato's having none of that, though. He raises $5, and now it's back to Nick, to call, fold or raise. Nick knows that Vietato is a lying sack of cheese, so he goes ahead and calls. The flop come A-K-3, and Vietato goes all in. Now what does Nick do? He still knows that Vietato is a lying sack of cheese, but even a lying sack of cheese could have an ace or a king in this situation. Tight, thoughtful player that he is, Nick decides not to jeopardize his stack against so unpredictable a foe as Vietato. Discretion being the better part of valor, he cuts his losses and folds.

Giving Vietato a tidy little profit on his random hand in the big blind.

Yes, it's true that Nick could have flopped a set of tens and trapped the bluff-prone Vietato for all of his chips, and maybe that's the kind of opportunity Nick was looking for. But the odds against flopping a set are 7.5-1; Nick is much more likely to encounter the very sort of flop he saw here, a flop so scary that he can't call a big bet even if he thinks he might have the best hand.

The seeds of Nick's defeat were sown when he just completed his small blind. At that moment his hand was almost certainly the best one. Only pocket aces, kings, queens or jacks would be better, and Vietato was better than 50-1 against having one of those hands at this time. A raise from Nick here would have very likely caused Vietato to fold, or at least yield the initiative, leaving Nick more in control of the hand on later streets.

Why didn't Nick raise? Probably he was afraid: afraid to run into one of those few premium hands that dominated his own, or afraid to face a big reraise from a frisky wild man like Vietato. He thought he was protecting his stack, but in fact, as we have seen, he was just opening the door to an untenable situation. Folks, if you're afraid to risk your stack, whether it's worth $10 or $10,000, you have no business playing no-limit hold'em. Those who don't feel this fear will simply eat you alive.

So we see that there are two sorts of players in no-limit hold'em: those who attack, and those who defend. Your first job is to commit yourself to being the attacking type, for that's where real profit lies. Your next job is to figure out which category each of your opponents falls into, for you'll play very differently against each of the two types.

Defendy players are looking for cheap flops and low-risk, high-reward situations. They want to wait for a sure thing before making big bets, and when they make those big bets, you can be reliably certain that they have real strength - assuming, again, that they know what real strength is. Against these players you have broad freedom of action. Almost any time they don't raise, they're practically begging you to bet them off the pot. Many is the time in low buy-in no-limit hold'em that four or five players will limp in, only to face a big raise from an aggressive player in late position and all fold. Once more we see the advantage of proactive poker. When your late-position raise can pick up a pot the size of five or six big blinds, that's a significant stack builder. It also reinforces your table image as a force to be feared.

Not all your foes will be so accommodating, of course. When you find yourself up against attacky players, you need to adjust your approach. Don't bother battling them with marginal hands, and don't get involved in so-called pissing contests, where the two of you are betting and raising with nothing, and whoever gets lucky gets the pot. There are better ways to deal with aggressive no-limit players. Dial back your own starting requirements. Fold where you would have called and call where you would have raised. And no, this doesn't turn you into a Timid Timmy. You're not like our friend Nick Rauchen who was afraid to bet his pocket tens. You have something very different in mind.

In this circumstance, you're not waiting to hit your hand, you're waiting to strike! You know that your attacky foe has the ability to get out ahead of his hand, and as soon as he does, you're going to pop him back with a big reraise and put him to a hard choice. This strategy absolutely requires two things. First, you must know who your tricky, aggressive enemies are, and second, you must be willing to make big bets if you think you can move them off their hands. You obviously wouldn't try this against an opponent who never folds, but many tricky players are alert to, and wary of, trap situations. Your big reraise says, The trap is sprung. It takes courage to spring such traps, but courage wins chips, so there you go.

Limit poker players quickly learn that a selective-aggressive strategy is a winning basic game plan. No-limit hold'em amplifies this principle. Be more selective, but more aggressive. Of course, if you find yourself a wolf among sheep, you can splash around in a lot of pots, knowing that the only one likely to make a big raise is, well, you. But people do get tired of being pushed around, and if you raise too promiscuously in no-limit hold'em, you'll find yourself regretting it when someone wakes up with a hand or simply decides to take a stand.

In sum, then, if you think you have the best of it, raise, and if you think everyone will fold, raise. Otherwise, basically, stay out of the hand. If you're flat-calling a lot of pots in no-limit hold'em, you're probably playing both too weak and too loose.

There are exceptions to this, of course. If you have something like J-T suited, or a low or middle pair, and if you're in late position, and if a lot of people have called, and if no one has raised, and if you can be reasonably sure that nobody behind you will raise, then you can go ahead and limp into the pot, hoping to catch a very favorable flop. That's a lot of and ifs though; you may be better off folding what you know to be an inferior hand, even if the size of the pot could argue for a call. After all, they can't capture your stack if you don't put it at risk by entering the pot.

Now that we're talking about stacks, let's examine the question of stack size. Unlike limit hold'em, where the relative amount of money doesn't come into play unless you're going all-in, in no-limit hold'em, and especially in tournament situations, the size of your stack, and the size of the stacks you face, is often as important as the cards you hold.

If Your Stack is Large

A large stack protects you in two significant ways. First, if you have more chips than anyone at the table, no one can bust you with a single bet. Second, your big stack is the aforementioned big stick, and anyone acting before you must necessarily fear that you'll use your tower of power to put them to a hard choice for all their chips. Consider your large stack, then, to be the potent weapon it is. Use it judiciously. don't squander it on reckless adventures. but recognize its strength. It does give you certain freedoms.

A big stack lets you steal pots. When you raise with nothing, you're not raising with nothing. You're raising with the threat of raising again, and even if they feel they have you beat, they might not want to put their confidence to the test.

A big stack lets you punish draws. By adjusting the size of your bet, you can manipulate the pot odds that your foes face when deciding to call or not. Someone who is 3-1 against completing a flush, say, would be happy to call a $10 bet into a $50 pot. But if you can bet $100 at him, suddenly he's not getting good enough odds to call. If he does call, he'll be betting with the worst of it, poker's fundamental flub.

A big stack allows you to speculate. Suppose you're in middle position with a major stack and a minor hand like J-T suited. If you just call, players behind you with smaller stacks will be reluctant to raise, knowing that this would create the opportunity for you to reraise them all-in. They're thus more likely to just call (or fold) giving you a cheap look at the flop. Then, if you hit the flop (or even if you don't) you can use your big stack to muscle your opponents off their hands. Just remember that giving yourself a cheap flop gives your foes one too, which may put you in the unhappy situation of being trapped by an inferior hand you'd never have had to face if you had either raised or folded preflop.

A big stack, then, gives you both flexibility in your choices and a weapon that only you can use. Acquire one through judiciously aggressive play, and then use it as the powerful force it is.

If Your Stack is Average

When you have an average stack, the power of your chips is effectively neutralized. You have neither the hulking club of a large stack, nor the "when you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose" freedom of a small stack. At times like these, you want to revert to your good, solid, patient poker and wait for the cards or the circumstances to present you with favorable opportunities.

Avoid going to war against large stacks because they have chip strength that you don't have. If you're holding a fair amount of chips, but not as much as your foe, you can put him to a reasonably hard choice, but he can put you all-in. In tournaments, this can be catastrophic, because once you're out, you're out. Even in low buy-in home cash games, where you can rebuy for a standard amount if you go broke, you're digging yourself both a financial and a psychological hole with every all-in loss you take and every rebuy you have to make.

What you're looking for, then, is the harmonic convergence of appropriate cards and appropriate foes. Ideally, you'd like to have a chance to act after the big stacks have folded, giving you the opportunity to go to war against players even less chip-wealthy than you. You may have to wait a while for this circumstance, but if you have an average stack, you can afford to wait. The blinds will not be so large in relation to your chip holdings that you're immediately imperiled. So tighten up your starting requirements, and look for the chance to make moves against smaller stacks.

Why must you tighten up your starting requirements? Because both the large stacks and small stacks surrounding you will be loosening theirs. As we've already seen, someone with a lot of chips can afford to be more liberal in playing his speculative hands. If you have something like 8-8 and raise into a big stack, he may feel justified in calling with a couple of picture cards or a fair ace in hopes either of catching a solid piece of the flop or catching a scary flop he can use to bet you off your hand. In this case your overly aggressive stance with a second-rate holding is tantamount to putting your head in the lion's mouth. Yum, says the lion; ouch, say you.

Small stacks imperil your play in the opposite way. Someone on the verge of going broke is looking for a place - any old place - to get his money in the pot, and he might not have time to be too picky. When you raise with your middle pair into such a player, he may feel constrained to call with something as weak as Q-T, but Q-T in this circumstance is not much worse than 50-50 to win the pot, so he's not completely out of line or out to lunch. One thing he knows for sure is that he doesn't have to worry about you betting him off his hand after the flop. His money's already in the middle. He is literally bluff-proof.

So with a stack that stands between larger stacks and smaller stacks, it's incumbent upon you to pick your spots with care. Remember that you can afford to be patient, but when you see an opportunity, seize it! If you're behind a big stack who has folded, for example, and in front of a small stack who's desperate, plan your attack and execute it. It helps to have a hand, but it helps even more to know your foe. How desperate is he? If you know he'll call with anything or nothing, then you can feel confident betting him all-in with your own semi-strong hands. Either he'll fold or else call you with a bad hand.

Interestingly, if he's not completely desperate, if he still has a shred of his own patience, you can afford to be even more aggressive in deciding to make your move. A player getting down to the felt is always weighing his prospects in this hand against the possibility of picking up a genuinely superior hand on the next deal or the deal after that. When you know your foes, you know how likely they are to go with "the devil they know" or, conversely, wait to see what's behind door number three.

When Your Stack is Small

Short stacks come with their own problems and opportunities. The obvious problem is that you don't have enough chips to bet anyone off their hand. A more subtle problem is your image. If you're sitting on a short stack, you look weak and feeble. Other players will figure that you're running unlucky or playing badly or in some other sense morally inferior, and they will come after you. Just when your stack is at its smallest, it's also hardest to defend.

Moreover, you don't have much flexibility. With a large stack, or even an average one, you can raise preflop, or call a preflop raise, and still have a move or two to make on later streets. Since a small stack is likely to be all-in before the flop, it becomes, metaphorically speaking, the final bullet in your gun. You're going to have to pick your target, fire away, and hope your hand holds up.

On top of everything else, you're running out of time! You know that you'll have to make a move soon or risk being blinded into oblivion. In a tournament (one without rebuys) that oblivion is permanent. Once your chips are gone, hey, so are you. In low buy-in no-limit cash games, you'll have the option of buying more chips once you go broke, but that will only put you back to average stack size or worse, plus it's forced you to rebuy, with all the financial and emotional fallout that implies. You'd really like to rebuild your stack without having to go back into your wallet, but the clock is ticking and you may not be getting much help from your cards.

On the other hand, your short stack means that if you enter the pot at all, you're probably committed to playing all your chips. This is not the worst place to be in poker, especially against strong, frisky opponents who like to mess with you after the flop. In this circumstance there will be no messing with you: Your chips will go in the middle, and your hand will either stand up or it won't.

When your stack is short, you have to strike a balance between committing your chips prematurely (going all-in with an inferior hand) or waiting so long that by the time you finally do bet your small stack, even winning the pot won't materially help your situation.

So then what sort of hands should you go with? Ideally you'll pick up a big pocket pair in your hour of need, but since that's a longshot, you'll have to be prepared to make an informed selection from among a range of second-rate holdings. The hand you want is one that can beat one or two opponents with little or no help from the board. Hands containing an ace or two unpaired picture cards are reasonable candidates, as are pairs of any size. Small unpaired cards, whether suited or connected or not, should be avoided, as you'll probably have to make two pair or a straight or a flush to win, and that's asking for just too much help from the board.

But selecting which hand to go all-in with is a last resort move anyhow. You have two better alternatives, at least in cash games. One is to leave the game while you still have a little money and a little discipline left. The other is to rebuy before you go all-in. In most low buy-in no-limit games, players can rebuy any time they like - and yet short-stacked players tend not to. When they start to get close to the felt, their thinking switches from playing aggressively to getting lucky. They don't want to take that next buy-in, so they hope that they can make an all-in stand that works. This is wrong-headed several ways.

First, it leaves you short-stacked, which is the most vulnerable state a no-limit player can be in. Second, it sends the message that you're scared: scared to lose your money, and scared to put more money into play, lest you lose that, too. Third, it costs you the opportunity to make real money. Suppose you decide to cling to your short stack, only to pick up pocket aces when you have almost nothing to bet and therefore almost nothing to win. Wouldn't you rather have reloaded before you hit that big hand? Remember what I said earlier about fear: If your fear of losing money keeps you from playing no-limit hold'em correctly, you probably shouldn't play it at all.

Bet Size

In limit poker, you have no choice about the size of your bets and raises: Before and after the flop they're one unit; on the turn and river they're two. In no-limit poker you have maximum flexibility. Though you're never allowed to make a raise smaller than the bet you just called, you can nevertheless choose to bet anything from a modest amount to everything you've got. With this in mind, the size of your bet becomes a major strategic consideration. In all circumstances, you want to ask yourself, What do I want this bet to achieve? Do you want loose money to call? Do you want to close out the field and get heads up against one opponent? Do you want to drive out the draws? Do you want to find out where your foes are at? Do you want everyone to fold? Are you bluffing? Let's look at these in turn.

Getting loose money to call. Small bets and raises have a tendency to invite players into the pot. If you know that certain foes are too loose, you can tempt them into the pot with a modest raise, figuring to blow them off their hands with a big bet later. Likewise, with a small bet you might be able to milk a few more chips from someone holding a hand inferior to yours, whereas if you bet big, he'll get scared and fold.

Closing out the field. Suppose you have something like J-J and someone in front of you opens the pot for a raise. You suspect that he has something like A-Q, or, ideally, a pair smaller than yours. Your most profitable play is to take on this player one-on-one, so you make a substantial raise, sending a message to the rest of the field, Stand back, boys, he's mine! This raise, then, is intended to get all the bystanders to fold. As an added advantage, the original bettor might also fold, closing out the field completely and winning you the pot right there.

Driving out the draws. You'll remember from our discussion of pot odds and card odds that a call is either correct or incorrect depending on the return on investment that the pot is offering. If you have an opponent on a draw, you want to make sure that your raise is big enough to put him on the wrong side of his draw. That way if he calls, he's making a mistake, and if he folds, hey, you win. Should you make a small bet here, you're offering him a favorable investment, otherwise known as pricing him into the pot. The only time you'd want to do that is when he can't beat you even if he does improve - when he's drawing to a flush, for example, but you already have a full house.

Finding out where they're at. Sometimes you might want to make a modest raise, a probing raise, to find out whether your opponents have real hands or not. I call this active sonar: pinging the target to define it more closely. It's common, for example, not to know whether a certain flop has helped your opponent or not. If you're first to act and you just check, you're basically surrendering the pot, because he can bet whether he has a hand or not. But if you come out swinging, you put him to the choice of calling, folding or raising, and whichever action he takes will clarify your picture of his hand. The key here is to make a bet big enough to be meaningful, but small enough that you can still wriggle off the hook by folding if he comes back at you for a huge amount or all his chips.

Getting everyone to fold. If you think you have the best hand, don't be afraid to win the pot right there. Make a big bet and encourage everyone to surrender without a fight. In can be disastrous to get greedy and bet small, trying to build a big pot. Suppose you have A-9 and you're looking at a board like 9-8-6. Yes, you have the best hand now, but your holding is fragile. Straight draws are rampant, and any K, Q, J or T can give someone a bigger pair. You want to bet this hand big enough to discourage people from trying to catch up. Remember, when you get the goods, bet the goods. It doesn't pay to try to get too cute.

You're bluffing. Depending on how your opponents read you, the size of your bet can suggest to them whether you have a real hand or not. If they know you to bet big with real cards, you'll have to bet big when you're bluffing too. On the other hand, if they know you to be tricky and capable of betting small with huge hands, then you might be able to bluff successfully with a small bet or raise that smells like a trap to them. Always consider the pot size, since there's no point in making a small bet into a big pot if you'll only succeed in pricing drawing hands into the pot. A big bet bluff, or all-in bluff, is the most nerve-wracking play in no-limit hold'em - but it's a thing of beauty when it works.

There are other reasons for making raises, and you'll discover them as you learn and grow in the game. In all events have a reason when you raise. A raise can typically either build a pot or narrow the field, but it can't really do both. Also make sure that your reason for raising is based on strategy and not emotion. If someone has just bet you off a hand, and you come back firing on the next hand, your take that! raise is likely to be read for what it is: a reckless adventure launched by a hothead. Cooler heads prevail in every form of poker; a player on tilt in no-limit Texas hold'em is just giving his money away.

It's common for new no-limit players to make the mistake of betting too small. Either they're stuck in the habits of limit poker, where the raise is only as big as the bet in front of it, or they're afraid to jeopardize too much of their stack at once. Don't fall into this trap. When you raise, raise. Here are three useful rules of thumb.

1. If you're raising pre-flop, make raises that are roughly two or three times the size of the big blind. That's a bet big enough to drive out the shoe clerks, but small enough so that you can get away from your hand if you face a significant reraise. Make your raises of a consistent size whether you have a great hand or a good hand or a stone cold bluff. That way, no one can deduce the strength of your hand from the size of your bet.
2. On the flop or the turn, make bets or raises that are about the size of the pot. This will always be a substantial sum, relative to the size of the pot, and it will keep you from betting too little and letting inferior hands come after you. Of course, you'll have to consider your stack size and the sizes of the stacks you face but, again, if you consistently make your bets in this range, no one will be able to pick off the sort of tells that wildly varying bet sizes are prone to revealing.
3. Don't be too anxious to go all-in. Just because you can bet everything doesn't mean you must bet everything. The beauty of no-limit hold'em is the opportunity for finesse it offers, and while pushing in your stack is adrenalating and fun, it takes away your options. Plus, if you constantly use your stack as a weapon of mass destruction, you're just asking for your opponents to wait till they've got a big hand and trap you for all your chips. The all-in bet is a powerful force that can only be used for good or for evil, so pick your spots with care.

A Few Words on Tournaments

To say that no-limit hold'em tournaments are all the rage is to do a stunning disservice to the word "rage." From a couple or three tables crammed into someone's apartment to modest buy-in online jousts to major tournaments attracting thousand-player fields, the no-limit revolution is here. Whether it's here to say remains to be seen, but if you find yourself playing in a no-limit hold'em tournament, whether at home or away, you'll want to go in with a game plan. Here's a quick-and-dirty strategy for dealing with the common stages of a no-limit Texas hold'em tournament.

At the Start: Don't Jump the Gun. When a poker tournament starts, it's easy to feel nervous, edgy, excited. This is especially true in no-limit where you could literally bust someone out (or get busted out) from the first hand forward. My advice for this part of the tournament is go slow. Your stack will large enough, relative to the size of the blinds, that you can afford to practice patience. Right now it's more important to get to know your foes than it is to play a lot of hands. After all, you'll only advance in the tournament if you win lots of chips at the expense of this very set of players. Restrict your starts to premium hands - big pairs and big aces - and let everything else go in the muck. Then spend your time watching your opponents very carefully. They'll be giving you lots of information on their starting requirements and betting patterns, plus possibly some very useful tells. You'll need to pay close attention to pick this information off, and if you're frisking around in a lot of pots, you probably won't be making the most of this learning opportunity.

Early Stages: Rebuy or Freeze Out? Poker tournaments come in two flavors, rebuy and freeze out. In a rebuy tournament, if you go broke during the early stages (typically the first hour or two of play) you can buy your way back into the tournament. In freeze out tournaments, you don't have this option; once your chips are gone, you're gone. Playing strategies are greatly affected by whether the tournament is rebuy or freeze out. Generally speaking, players in a rebuy tournament will play much more wildly than in a freeze out tournament since they know they're protected from busting out, at least until the rebuy period ends. You'll see a lot of so-called maniacs making large bets with improbably hands, in hopes of getting lucky, but prepared to rebuy if they don't.

Of course, the same possibility to rebuy that protects them also protects you. You can afford to be a little more liberal with your starting requirements. Especially be on the lookout for cheap flops and big fields. If many players have limped into the pot, you can limp too, hoping to catch a well-disguised big hand that you can trap with and win a lot of chips. At the same time, don't be too reckless with your stack. You don't want to get a case of rebuy fever, where you go broke and rebuy so many times that the tournament ends up costing you five, six, seven times as much as you had originally planned. Most tournament players have a set number of rebuys that they're willing to take; beyond that number they figure, hey, it's just not their day.

Freeze out tournaments require that you guard your chips more closely, since you don't have the option of replacing them. In a freeze out situation, be selective in the hands you play, but aggressive when you enter the pot. Raise more than you call, and raise a standard, sizeable amount - three times the size of the big blind is usually good. You want to win your share of uncontested pots, but also want to be holding some kind of hand in case they don't all get out of your way.

Middle Stages: The Long Run. After the rebuy period ends, play tightens up considerably, as people are aware that they can't replenish their precious chips. Also, limits are going up, which means that people will start to feel like their stacks are imperiled and in need of protection. For these reasons, in freeze out and rebuy tournaments alike, the middle stage of the tournament is the time to muster your fortitude and attack! Since players are more likely to fold hands they'd have played earlier, you should be more likely to raise in late position with somewhat less than perfect cards (or even with downright lousy ones.) Ideally, you want to "take over the table," to be the one who's doing a lot of raising while others are doing a lot of folding. You don't want to get too far out ahead of your hands, of course, nor imperil your own stack, but no one wins poker tournaments without at least a certain amount of aggressiveness at the right time.

Also - let's be frank - no one wins tournaments without catching a little luck along the way. There are times when luck will run against you. when you make exactly the right move at the right time against the right opponent, and end up, tragically, with the wrong result. Don't worry about busting out. It happens to almost every player in the tournament! Of this you can be sure: If you're so afraid of busting out that you fail to bet strongly when the situation warrants, you will certainly not win. Like the man said, "Go big or go home!" The middle stage of a tournament is the time for you to go big, because many players around you will be playing more conservatively than they should.

Late Stages: In Sight of the Barn. When you start to close in on the final table, or, if it's a big enough tournament, the final few tables, you face a certain crucial decision. Having come this far, will you now play it safe and limp into the money, or will you continue to play strongly in an effort to win the tournament? It's a fact of tournament life that most of the prize money is concentrated in the top three places, so that's where you should concentrate your energy and interest. Yet many people are satisfied to play for any "in the money" finish. They're content, in other words, to win their buy-in back, and not a whole lot more. This seems to me a pernicious sort of false economy. Of the person who's satisfied to put six or seven (or many more!) hours into a tournament, only to get back more or less the same money he started with, I have to wonder why he bothered to play in the first place.

Be in it to win it. Recognize that many of your foes will freeze up when the get in sight of the barn. They'll start playing not to lose, instead of playing to win. Note which of your opponents are in this mode and go after them - not recklessly, but judiciously. At this point in a no-limit tournament, blinds are quite high and antes are also in play. It simply costs too much to sit and wait for great cards. You have to get in there and mix it up. The final joust is yet to come, and you want to go into that battle as heavily armed as possible.

The Final Table: The Final Frontier. The final table of a tournament is a unique place for a couple of reasons. First, everyone who's there is in the money. They know that they've overcome long odds and a large field to guarantee themselves some sort of payday. This will make some players play with more confidence, and it will cause others to become quite careless and sloppy. If you've been doing your job - watching and studying your foes all along - you should be well inside everyone's head by now, and aware of which of your opponents to attack, and to which you should give a wide berth.

If you find yourself at the final table without a lot of chips, you'll have to decide whether to try and fight your way back into contention, or sit back and let players eliminate one each other, guaranteeing you a higher money finish. This decision is dictated by cards, relative stack sizes, the quality of your opponents, the size of the prize pool and many other factors. It's a challenging situation to be in if you've never been there before, and to top it all off, for the first time in the tournament, you'll be playing short-handed, then very short-handed, and then (if all goes well) heads up. This is one reason you see the same top pros finishing first in tournaments over and over again. They've got sufficient experience to know how to "close the deal."

While I can't guide you through the specifics of final table play, I can give you three concrete pieces of advice that will help.

PRACTICE TOURNAMENT PLAY. Every online poker site offers no-money no-limit hold'em tournaments, where you can work on and refine all your tournament moves and especially your final table play. Single-table sit-and-go tournaments are, in essence, final tables from the start. They're a great place to practice your chops.

READ WHAT THE EXPERTS HAVE TO SAY. Detailed no-limit hold'em tournament strategy is considerably outside the scope of this book, but fortunately there are many excellent books out there that can walk you through the process step by exciting and agonizing step. You'll find several listed in my "recommended reading" section. Track down those books or some of the other worthy titles out there. No-limit hold'em strategy is something that can be taught and learned, so there's no need to go in ill-informed.

BE IN IT TO WIN IT. It's a shattering experience to put long hours into a tournament, only to finish on the bubble (one place out of the money). To avoid that agony, many players will play way too conservatively as the final table or tables approach. Don't be like that. The big money and the big glory rest at the top of the leader board. No one remembers who came in 10th. It's better to play correctly and finish out of the money than to wimp out and limp to a second-rate payday.

Top Ten Tips

There's much more we could discuss on the subject of no-limit hold'em. Scratched the surface? We've barely scratched the surface of the surface. But it's clear that no-limit Texas hold'em is here to stay, so if you're going to get good at only one version of poker, this is probably the one to choose. I'll close out this section with ten top tips for no-limit hold'em play. They won't tell you everything you need to know, but they'll get you pointed in the right direction.

1. TAKE YOUR TIME. When bets and raises start flying all over the place, it's easy to get reckless - but with your whole stack at stake, you can't afford to be rash. Even if you're sure you know what the right move is, take a moment to think it through. Many a bankroll, or tournament, has been lost by a hasty move.
2. SNUG UP YOUR STARTING REQUIREMENTS. Hands like A-J or A-Q are often quite playable in limit poker because the price of failure with them is not that high. In no-limit, these are the hands you'll go broke with if you play them against A-K or A-A. To avoid this peril, learn how to fold even good aces.
3. RESPECT RAISES AND RERAISES. People get out of line all the time in limit poker because, again, the price of failure is not that high. In no-limit, though, if you find yourself facing a bet and a raise, a raise and a call, or a raise and a reraise, you can be quite certain that multiple players have quality hands. Stay out of these fights with all but your very best holdings. Something like J-J, for example, is well worth a bet if no one else has opened, but if there's a flurry of bets, raises and calls before the action gets to you, those jacks must go in the muck.
4. BE PREPARED TO BLUFF. Some players pride themselves on "never getting out of line." In no-limit, you have to get out of line from time to time, just to win your share of uncontested flops. Regardless of your cards, for example, be ready to attack the blinds by raising unopened pots in late position. Players who can't bluff give away too much edge in no-limit.
5. BE PREPARED TO CALL. Not every bet or raise signifies a real hand, and if you don't call 'em down from time to time, they'll just run all over you. It takes real courage to call someone you hope is bluffing, but successfully snapping off a bluff is almost as emotionally rewarding (and every cent as financially rewarding) as successfully running one.
6. BE AWARE OF THE ODDS. In limit poker, the pots often get so large that it's correct to call one more bet with even the slimmest chance of winning. Not so in no-limit. If you're contemplating calling a big bet, you need to know that you'll get sufficient return on your investment if you hit your hand. Practice keeping track of the pot size in hands you don't play so that you'll know where you're at in the heat of real battle.
7. SET TRAPS. Sometimes when you have a big hand you're better off not betting it. Check, then check again, and maybe someone will be emboldened enough to make a big bluff at the pot. Remember that whole stacks are at stake. With well-concealed monster holdings, your goal should be to capture every chip they've got.
8. BEWARE TRAPS. You're not the only one tricky enough to trap, nor can you always avoid falling into them. If someone check-raises you for a huge amount of chips, bear in mind that they're much more likely to be check-raise trapping than check-raise bluffing. If discretion is the better part of valor, be prepared to do the brave thing and flee.
9. KEEP CARING ABOUT THE MONEY. If you're running badly in a no-limit cash game, it's easy to stop caring about how many buy-ins you've put into the game. It's also easy to get desperate about getting even. Both of these leaks in your game will cost you much, much more in no-limit than in limit poker. When you find yourself past the point of pain, you've got to get out of the game.
10. TAKE YOUR TIME. A tip so nice I had to list it twice. Rushing is death in no-limit. Treat every decision as a puzzle to be solved, and take the time to solve the puzzle properly. You might discover an overlooked piece of information, but in any case you won't fall victim to your own impetuosity.

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