Mason Malmuth comments on NL Holdem saying "I suspect that it may fail again as a viable form of cash game poker unless cardroom management is able to correct a few issues, one of which I will address here".

He goes on to say "What I have noticed...is that this same idea of being irritating to gain calls, but now more so on the later streets where the bets can become quite large, is a problem. (Being irritating is the bad form of a loose, lively image.) Some players are not only very irritating with their comments and behavior, but they slow the game down to an unacceptable rate. The result of this is simply a game that is unpleasant to play, and many of the no-limit games that I play in seem to feature one or more players like this"

Can the fact that live play may bee too irritating or unpleasant actually be a deciding factor as to what form of poker will be more prevalant? I would think online tastes have just as much weight on this issue as live play preferences especially in this day and age. And as stated in the article, in online play this really isn't an issue. Especially with the ability to multi-table.

If Limit Holdem ever does become the game of choice again I don't think this will be the reason. If anything, the fact that in Limit Holdem you can play more hands and not lose your whole stack in one hand, and the fact that in NL the skill differences are magnified, will play a bigger factor in the migration of casual gamblers back to Limit.

lanyi--

I wouldn't worry too much. I think I've played more hours of live no-limit than Mason has, and the problem is just not as big as he thinks it is. Perhaps Mr. Malmuth is "running bad" at getting pleasant tables...

Your comments are also interesting.

All my best,

--Nate

i agree with nate. its irritating if you make it

I have been playing quite a bit of 1-2 and 1-3 on the strip recently, and I agree that the NL games tend to be insufferable. I disagree, however, with Mason's analysis as to why this is so.

I think it is the nature of the NL format that makes the games irritating. First, the fact that a player's entire stack is at risk at every moment makes some, if not most, of players a little bit edgy. Second, the big pots in no limit where one player loses his entire stack and the other wins an entire stack tends to bring out the worst emotions in each player. That is, the losing player gets overly annoyed since he just lost all of the money in front of him while the winning player gets overly excited since he just doubled the money in front of him. This contrast of emotions in two people at the table is a recipe for an unpleasant experience for basically everyone except the guy who won the huge pot.

Additionally, during all-in pots with cards still to come some players feel the need to stand up and cheer while the remaining cards are dealt. Then, of course, they either get more boisterous when the board is favorable to them, or they sulk and moan when their luck is not so good.

There are certainly pleasant NL games to play in, but in my experience they are the exception and not the rule. My solution has been to move over to the limit games which tend to be loose, lively and several times more pleasant than NL games of equivalent size.

This supports the notion Mason Malmuth holds that because limit games are more suited for the casual gamblers (the tourists and the like) eventually they will once again become the game of choice for live games. While this may be the case for live play I don't think it will be the case for online play as it affords the option to play for much lower stakes.

lanyi--

I dunno, the casual gamblers I know really love no-limit. For example, in Arizona, where there's a $150 bet cap (and thus the games spread are exclusively limit [up to 75-150] and spread-limit), the casual gamblers sit around bemoaning the fact that the bet cap exists, that they're forced to play this less interesting game, etc.

Furthermore, when casual gamblers get annoyed at the pace of a game, they often react by finding a different cardroom with a different atmosphere.

--Nate

As long as 1/2 and 1/3 games are around, casual players will prefer NL.

They do now. What's going to cause them to change their mind? Maybe the recession, but (hopefully) it's temporary.

My anecdotal experience has casual gamblers preferring No Limit games as well. Nobody wants to play limit in home poker games, and all my casual friends find it boring. While limit games are better for them, they just lack the excitement for the casual audience. This trumps all the downsides of NL when people are looking for fun.

Limit games at the local casinos (Vancouver) generally have an older demographic. Has anyone else seen this? If true, I'm not sure if this is good (many of us will switch to limit as we age) or bad (limit will die off) for limit poker.

I don't think limit will ever die off, but it was definitely waned in popularity. Matt Savage has already said that the most popular poker game in Vegas is 1/2 NL.

Morongo Casino in SoCal is almost entirely 1/3 and 2/5 NL. Occassionally a 3/6 kill limit game breaks out, but even that's considered a redheaded step child. The floor couldn't even find the game for me!

The only reason a casino will have majority limit games is when there smallest NL table is 2/5 and/or there is no NL due to local ordinances.

Finally, the cardroom manager for the Mirage came on the 2p2 pokercast and basically had to argue that limit was a more "civilized" game. Why would she argue this? Because casinos get more rake per buyin from limit games. Casino's prefer limit for this reason, which is one reason why the game will always be around.

Keep in mind that NL with low caps are very similar to limit in many ways, which is why many places have very low buy ins. Hawaiian Garden has a 1/1 $20 NL game, for example. In these cases, casinos get the best of both worlds in terms of entertainment value and rake per buyin.

People who predict NL will die off are either casinos looking for more rake or are "old school" poker players who have never felt comfortable playing big-bet games.


I'm more interested in the future of PLO. I know the Bike spreads a 5/5. And now Excalibur spreads 1/1 PLO on an electronic table. The future is near! If there's ever a reason to push for electronic tables, the ease at which it can deal 4 cards and count the pot is one of them.

I think it's just wishful thinking on his part to make his knowledge of limit games more relevant.

I agree. No-limit has always had its share of bad players, but what some find irritating, others find attractive. The big providers in live no-limit have always been drama queens; they see it as their chance to hold center stage with a captive audience. TV shows of tournaments and big games have only helped advertise this aspect of it. Winners have found ways to exploit this, many of which such ways can be annoying, but trying to make a live game go faster would be counterproductive over the long run.

jmo

Phat Mack--

Interesting. But I think the situation isn't even that dire. It's not only that the Hollywooding is attractive to some people; it's that there isn't even that much Hollywooding in the first place.

--Nate

I think that the game can be irritating if you let it be irritating, the only way to counter on that is if you're doing some of the irritating...Remember you make most of your profit in NLHE from these so called aggressive players when what they're really mostly doing is just playing loose, not aggressive.
I have a big problem with televised poker, and I know some people will say the opposite, but I have a big problem when Gus Hansen is on TV because now you have guys trying to copy him and they don't understand that he's making plays that are more complicated than it looks, they see him raise with 5-8 off and they don't see the rest of the hand or notice that he's on the button and no one is in the pot yet and he's trying to steal, things like that irritate me because now you have guys trying to that exact same thing, except they're doing it with lik 9-2 off into a table where there is already a raiser and a couple callers and it just won't work, now that's how the game gets irritating and I can understand that.
As for Gus, he's a great player and he probably plays a lot tighter than what we see on TV, remember they can edit out the boring hands and prefer to show these types of hands so we get a big dose of this and don't see him play his other cards really well.
I don't think you have to worry as much about the game being irritating as much now because people are more informed on how to play correctly and what plays are decent to make in what spots and so on and so forth. Just keep playing and beat the game, that's the perfect way to make it less irritating!

two words:

i

pod



Seriously, there are some annoying players playing NL, sure, but I think if you are disciplined enough to do all the other things required to win, you should be discplined enough not to let them bother you. If the issue is that the annoying players chase away the other fish, well, I'm not sure about that. I think a lot of the annoying players are the fish, and I think there are many more fish than annoying players to begin with.

The higher up you go the less irritating the players are- but it is more stressfull......

+1 to mason

u got it

all depends how you play and what you are looking to accomplish!

i hate nl, its very messed up.

exactly..

I just found this thread, which is why my post is so out of date. At Poker Stars, in ring games (but not in tournaments), whenever there is an all-in situation, the hole cards of the players involved remain face down until all of the community cards have been dealt. Then, beginning with the "last aggressor," the last player to bet or raise, only those hole cards required to be shown are turned up.

The result is that about 90% of the time, only the winning hand is ever shown. Even the winner seldom knows what the loser, or losers, had; so, he can never be sure if he sucked out or not and neither can anybody else at the table. Needless to say, this takes almost all the drama, and associated problems discussed in this thread, out of all-in situations. If you're curious, you can email support at Poker Stars and they will give you a very reasonable explanation of why they do it this way.

You do realize that if you go into the hand replayer (or HH for that matter) you can see all the hole cards that made it to showdown so this point is inaccurate.

This is because it is standard for any ring game live or online that only the winner has to show cards to take down a pot. Tournaments are a different story. You have to flip them when the money goes in. It isn't poker stars doing anything different than other places.

And if you want to see what the loser had all you have to do is go to the hand replayer not that hard.

It's true you can see that in the hand replayer, but the complaint had to do with people's behavior when they could see the hole cards in real time.

This is incorrect. I play a lot of ring games at Full Tilt and Bodog and at both sites, the hole cards of all players involved in an all-in situation (once everyone is all-in) are always turned up while the remainder of the community cards are dealt. And, to repeat what I said in the previous post, the complaint had to do with boisterous behavior in real time.

marvin24241 is so right-on. I play low stakes @ Commerce in L.A. and play against guys that play the way players play on TV. They'll call my big raise OOP w/ 810 off-suit against my pair of Kings and get lucky and hit a straight. I get my monster hands busted quite often by some idiot that had no business even being in the hand in the first place. So many bad beats come from these types of players who get lucky. Then you have to suffer and listen to other people telling them "nice hand." It totally sucks! If I had a job, I've move up in stakes.