No fold em Hold em

I swore after my last trip to Vegas that I was done playing low stakes limit poker. I suffered so many bad beats and suck outs that I was going to stick to no limit and/or tournaments only. People tend to play poorly when the most they can lose is $20. You cannot use a raise to chase away poor hands and you end up losing to someone playing something like 4 6 offsuit. Unfortunately, living in Colorado there is not any no limit games available in the casinos aside from the tournaments. I was going to need to just learn how to play this type of game.

I always read of people who had huge amounts of success in these types of games. People would talk about how it was so easy to take the money off of the "fish". I researched, read up on and asked some questions on the various poker forums of how to play this type of game. What I found was my problem was that I was not being patient enough. The secret is to not allow yourself to get bored and then play a hand you wouldn't otherwise play. Basically pick your spots and crush people when you have the hand. The best part of this strategy is that you can use the time you are not playing to work on your reading and observation skills.

Grandma gave my wife and I a night off from our daughter and so we used the time to go up to the local casinos to have dinner and play a little. The casinos here only offer 2/5 limit or 5/5 limit. The 5/5 game has a lot of action and a lot of money changing hands all the time. I chose 2/5 since the 5/5 games were all full of people who had more money than good sense. The ups and downs of a game like this is more than I care for.

When I got crushed in this game in Vegas it was because I was constantly being outdrawn by people with inferior hands. I never could raise enough to chase someone out of a pot. I made a promise to myself to be patient and pick my spots. Just play smart even if it is boring.

The result was a lot of folding but at the end of the night I had over $100 in profit. I was not in a lot of pots but the ones I was in I won and they were big. Rather than trying to chase people away, I encouraged them to build the pot while they prayed for their miracle card. If it looked like they may have hit, I folded.

I was very happy with my overall play and of course my profitable results. I no longer hat limit hold em which is good since that is all I can play here in Colorado.