Fixed Limit… Beware!
When I began my poker odyssey years ago I played very little other than fixed limit cash games. These days I wouldn’t sit down at such a game even if I could hand-pick my opponents. You might assume from this that I lost a lot of money in that format. The truth is I didn’t do too badly overall, but the bankroll swings were immensely stressful. In the end I had to ask myself whether or not the amounts I was winning compensated for all the tension and misery that seemed to come with the territory. I decided not.
Now we all know that the ‘beauty’ of Texas Holdem - depending on your point of view – is that just anybody can win a game if they’re lucky enough, regardless of experience and ability. Only in the long-term will the best players prevail. But it seems to me that fixed limit poker takes the biscuit. It could have been invented to lure in unsuspecting, naïve new players to the lair. There may even be an unwritten poker rule that states that the newcomer at the table has special outdraw privileges. Whatever this pact with the devil involves, it seems to allow a novice fixed limit cash player to play every hand, call every bet and still win all the money.
When it’s going well it seems to be the easiest game in the world but when events turn on you it’s hard not to feel powerless. After much deliberation I concluded that good players would be wasting their time pinning all their hopes on fixed limit cash games. This is largely down to being unable to vary your bet size. If you think about it this is a major handicap to good play.
Let’s say for instance that you play tightly until you wake up with a premium hand, which you raise with pre-flop. You’ve already made your one play. It’s now completely out of your hands how many opponents you’ll get. If the competition is loose then it’s not unusual for 4-5 players to call any number of the fixed-sized bets with a wide-range of holdings just to see a flop. You’re big hand is already in huge danger. Individually, the others are heavy underdogs but the chances of one of them beating you by the river are high, especially if your monster fails to improve.
The following scenario has played out in a similar way more times than I care to mention. In a 10-seat ring game I opened the raising with KK. Three players called the raise and one re-raised. When the action returned to me it barely mattered whether I re-raised again or not because history suggested that the players who had called the initial bets weren’t going anywhere without at least seeing a flop first. My four opponents had AQ, 77, 45(spades) and J10 respectively. (I might add that the quality of hands being called with on this occasion was quite high. Fixed limit cash games frequently attract menaces who re-raise to the maximum pre-flop with 7-2o as well).
Anyway, when the flop came Jspade- 9spade-Qheart, I was still leading with an over-pair and feeling obliged to bet and call raises with KK. There was no way the guys with 45(spades), AQ and J10 were going anywhere having all hit a piece of the flop. The thrill-seeker with 77 took the commonly held view that there was ‘too much money in the pot to be folding now either. Fixed limit might as well be called ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ poker.
So to clarify my predicament I was now in a huge pot, and leading after the flop, but the danger cards which threatened me were any spade, any 7, any 8, any J, any Q and any A. Oh and I nearly forgot, either of the remaining Kings. One of which ‘miraculously’ did appear on the turn giving me a set, but, of course, Mr J10 had hit his straight. There was no miracle full house on the river for me, only another tale of despair. What could I have done differently? Fold after the flop when I was still ahead, or maybe just fold KK from the outset? It was a ridiculous situation which will always occur if you can’t limit the field and you can’t stop the chasing with a big killer bet. In other words, I concluded, fixed limit cash is a game to avoid.
Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker