Poker Strategy
/ Short-Stacked Shamus / 01 September 2011 / Leave a Comment
Back during the World Series of Poker I recall a certain "WSOP Hand of the Day" between Matt Matros and Jonathan Lane that came up during Event #52, the $2,500 Mixed Hold'em (Limit/No-Limit) tournament eventually won by Matros. The pair were heads-up for the bracelet, and after Lane had won a sequence of LHE hands to take the lead, Matros retook the advantage and after winning this particular NLHE hand soon cruised to victory.
I've had the chance to help cover a few of these Mixed Hold'em events at the WSOP over the years for PokerNews, including a couple of memorable ones in which Gavin Smith won his first bracelet (in the $2,500 Mixed HE event in 2010) and Erick Lindgren his first (in the $5K version of the Mixed HE in 2008).
In these tournaments, players alternate between a half-hour of fixed-limit hold'em and a half-hour of no-limit holdem. When talking about that Matros-Lane hand I mentioned how often in these events -- especially during the latter stages -- LHE "plays bigger" than NLHE, thereby resulting in larger chip swings. That observation was somewhat anecdotal; that is to say, I was thinking of what frequently had happened in the tournaments I'd seen, and not of any sort of mathematical breakdown of why that might be the case.
Obviously with these WSOP mixed HE events the schedule of blind increases directly affects how "big" LHE and NLHE play, relatively speaking. But the issue got me thinking... how do LHE and NLHE compare when we're talking about regular cash games? In other words, what are the relative "swings" players experience when playing LHE as opposed to NLHE?
On the surface, it might appear a simple question to answer. Perhaps thinking about how we can only win a few bets per hand in LHE while we can double-up or lose our entire stack in a single NLHE hand, for many of us our instinctive response would be to say no-limit clearly "plays bigger." In fact, it is a commonly-held assumption that players who wish to avoid big swings are encouraged to stick with LHE rather than try NLHE, since in the fixed-limit game they stand to win or lose much less on average.
But is that actually the case? Like I say, watching these mixed hold'em tourneys has gotten me wondering -- when it comes to comparing entire sessions or longer-term segments of play, is it possible that LHE sometimes plays as "big" or even bigger than NLHE?
In The Math of Hold'em, authors Collin Moshman and Douglas Zare devote a series of sections to "Statistics and Variance" in which they explain concepts like "standard deviation" and their application to bankroll management. There the authors note how when it comes to online poker, in limit hold'em "your standard deviation is typically about 15 big bets per 100 hands for full ring, [and] about 17 big bets per 100 hands 6-max."
Adding the disclaimer that all of these figures are obviously going to be affected by how loose or aggressive you and/or your opponents are, Moshman and Zare go on to note that when playing NLHE online "your standard deviation is typically about 85 big blinds per 100 [hands] for full ring, and about 95 big blinds per 100 for short-handed." (The authors note also how the relative deepness of the stacks are going to affect things in NLHE, too, but to keep things simple we'll set that aside.)
So let's say I'm a "typical" player and I am trying to choose whether to sit down at an LHE or NLHE table. I have $100 with which to play, and I'm going to take a seat at either a $0.50/$1 NLHE table or $2/$4 LHE table. And while I expect to win, I also don't want to lose my money too quickly, so I'm trying to pick the game that poses the least risk to my hundy.
I'm thinking here of what players often buy in for at these particular limits when playing online. I know, for example, that in Internet Texas Hold'em, Matthew Hilger (interviewed here) says with regard to LHE that "I prefer to sit down with at least forty times the big bet to minimize the chance that I might have to add chips later." Thus I wouldn't really be following Hilger's advice by sitting down with my 25 big bets here. But just eyeballing the games I think many would probably think of $0.50/$1 NLHE and $2/$4 LHE as being in the same neighborhood, stakes-wise.
Looking back at Moshman and Zare's figures, then, let's do some math. If during 100 hands of LHE I experience "standard deviation," I'd expect to win or lose as much as $60 (full ring) or $68 (6-max.). Meanwhile, if during the first 100 hands of NLHE I remained within the expected range, I'd be looking at winning or losing as much as $85 (full ring) or $95 (6-max.).
One can win or lose more, of course. As I mentioned, the authors do note that the relative looseness/tightness of a game can affect the standard deviation -- by as much as 15% in either direction in LHE games and 30% in NLHE games, they say. That means that if I happen to draw a loose LHE game, it could in fact "play bigger" than would a tight NLHE game.
All of which is to say, that while it looks like NLHE typically is going to be a game in which one experiences somewhat larger swings than in LHE, the difference isn't necessarily as enormous as one might expect. In fact, it looks here as though the chances that I'll burn through my $100 -- or, perhaps, double it -- aren't hugely different whether I play $0.50/$1 NLHE or $2/$4 LHE.
That's, assuming, of course, I'm equally proficient in both games. And that my opponents are as well. And, well, a lot of other things, too.
Even so, I think we can still take away another lesson here -- in fact, one about avoiding another assumption, namely, the one that says by sticking with LHE we'll avoid the big swings of NLHE.
Join Betfair Poker Now.
As a general rule the average poker player in today's game is much more skilled, or at least more knowledgeable, than they were as little as three years ago. There are a number of reasons for this, not limited to...
I was playing short-handed pot-limit Omaha the other day when a hand occurred that demonstrated a couple of truths frequently encountered when playing low limit PLO online. One was how a lot of players -- likely influenced by hold'em --...
One area that many poker players struggle with is playing against an aggressive opponent who has position on them. For the most part good players try to avoid these situations but sometimes they cannot be avoided and the player just...
Play Casino & Poker here
News 
Opta 