Hi all.

Lately I've been playing NL (I guess it's technically spread limit, see below) hold'em at a couple of my local card rooms and comparing them to what seems to be the accepted norm around here these games seem to play a lot bigger than usual. I'm looking for your opinions on what you level (in terms of blinds) you guys think these compare to.

At both places, the buy-in is anywhere from $100 to $1000 at the start of the game. Later on you can match deepest stack if it's over $1000. Most of the serious players will buy-in for $500 with a few of us buying in for $1000 and a few buying in for $300. There are also a few weaker players buying in for less but they usually don't last long so aren't much of a factor.

The first place spreads $1/$3 blinds two nights a week and due to a city ordinance has a maximum bet of $500. A $500 bet can be raised another $500 and reraised and so on, so all the money can go in the pot but it has to do so in $500 increments.

The second place spreads 1/3 on one night and 3/5 on another night. There's also a city ordinance limiting the size of a bet or raise but in this case it's $200 increments.

The biggest factor seems to be that the maximum buy-in's are higher than I see reported elsewhere for games with these blinds but the caps on the bet sizes have an effect as well. Also, since these are the only NL games for at least 60 miles around they tend to attract people who would normally play higher. It's not at all unusual to see opening raises be $20 or $25 bucks. Heck, it's not that unusual to see blind straddles of those amounts.

So what do you guys think? What level would you compare these games to? 5/10? Or is this fairly normal for 1/3 games?

Thanks.

Fairly normal.

Compare to in what sense? Player quality? Play style? Median pot size? Biggest pots? Average stack? Amount of $ changing hands per hour or session?
Also, 1/2, 1/3, 2/5, 5/10 (and larger) NL games themselves all vary a lot around the country (and even from day to day in the same room).
IMO, NL (and PL) game sizes (in terms of pot size and cash put in action) are much more determined by stack size than by the blinds. This is partially a function of buyins, and partially of how long the game lasts. It also depends on what range of games are available (i.e., are there larger or smaller games running in the same room).
IME, spread limits don't really affect the game as much as buyin limits and stack sizes do. (Although they will reduce some of the largest pots.)
Having said that, frequent opening raises to 20-25 in a 1/3 NL game are not particularly uncommon, but (obviously) it varies and depends on the individual game.
But if you simply want a comparison in terms of typical opening raises, I'd say the game you describe would be toward the larger end of the spectrum for 1/3, on the smaller side of average for a 2/5 game, and not close to the typical 5/10 NLH game. (I would raise this opinion depending on how frequently there's a straddle, also if straddles >2x the BB are allowed and common.)

The first one is basically just a 1/3 game.

Second one is kind of goofy because the bet cap actually matters. The 1/3 game is basically still just a 1/3 game though. The cap could make some goofy spots in the 3/5 game.

The bet cap determines at what point the NL game becomes a FL game.

In the first case, someone has to 1. have and 2. bet nearly 165 bb for the cap to matter. It's essentially a NL game.

In the second, someone only has to have and bet 40 bb for the cap to matter. It will be distinctly different from NL (e.g., you can call down for a mere 120 bb).

My local cardroom has a 2-100 SL with 1/2 blinds and a 4-200 SL witg 2/4 blinds in which my winrates and variances are on par with equivalent-blindsized NL games. The cap comes up once in a while, but the buyin caps are low enough (200 and 400, respectively, meaning people often buy in for 50-100 and 100-300, respectively) that almost always betting/raising 200 puts one person all in.

Certainly, against most of the people you want to push against, you're almost always putting them all in with a max bet.

Thanks guys. It just seemed a little weird to me. I'm used to thinking in terms of a buyin being about 100bb whereas several people regularly buy in for 3 times that approching the levels that I see people buy into the 5/10 NLH game down at the Commerce Casino.