Pro vs Pro: Limit

Pro limit

Fighting limit’s corner is Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi, runaway contender for player of the year stateside with over $2m in tournament winnings from this year alone

Limit is more of a grind but there’s definitely a lot of skill to it. I prefer limit cash games to no-limit. I play pretty tight in these type of games – totally the opposite to the way that I play in tournaments. In my opinion there’s more dead money in limit cash games. Lots of people make stupid calls in no-limit cash games. People don’t like limit because you have to have more patience than in no-limit – there, you can be impatient and get lucky. You can play 3-4 or 4-5 and flop the straight and get paid off to the max, and in limit you can’t force everyone out for the maximum bet – whatever stakes you’re playing for.

It’s not easy to bluff in limit but you can still be creative. You can four-bet out of the blinds with nothing once in a while and steal people off. They start thinking you’re loose but the next time you actually have it. You want to try and isolate the field in limit because it’s not like you can push in. Limit is all about losing the minimum and winning the maximum in every hand.

Anti limit

As one of the most prolific no-limit tournament players in the UK, Paul ‘ActionJack’ Jackson is a passionate advocate for the case against limit poker

I have watched the high-level fixed-limit hold’em cash games online and all I can deduce is that the players try to take the lead in every hand they play. The key seems to be to act as the aggressor, continually raising or re-raising until they meet some strong resistance in the hope of winning the majority of hands where both players miss the flop. It seems little more than continually hitting the raise button, which in my opinion amounts to a ‘policy’ rather than a ‘skill’.

I am aware of a few online Scandinavian players that have played these games and appeared to be highly successful and great ‘exponents’ of the game, amassing bankrolls in excess of $1 million only to go broke within six months. I accept I do not fully appreciate the nuances of fixed-limit poker, but to me it always seemed to be a game devised by a chimpanzee who wanted to call for a back-door flush – and get the cheapest possible opportunity to do so.