The most played poker game, as opposed to the most popular, or most watched, is still limit hold ‘em. Far fewer books and articles have been written about limit hold ‘em than no-limit. Much that has been written focus on two primary components of limit success: odds (especially pot odds and implied odds) and starting hands. I’m here to tell you about a third important component.
Patience.
For long-term success in limit hold ‘em, you must have patience.
A good example was this past Sunday. I was playing a friendly $6/$12 game at Artichoke Joe’s. It was my preferred type of game: loose/passive. And I started out well, getting up nearly $100 in the first hour plus.
But then I went utterly card dead. I saw 8-4 offsuit three times in four hands. 8-3 offsuit. 7-2 offsuit. Even though preflop raises were not that frequent, when it got to my big blind, it would often get raised.
And when I did get big hands (note I said “big hands,” not “pocket pairs”) and raise preflop (or even change up and not raise preflop), I’d totally miss the flop. For example, with A-J offsuit I might raise, see 4 or 5 callers, including 2 or 3 cold callers, and get a flop of K-x-x rainbow, then see a bet and a call before it gets back to me.
In no-limit, this might be a time to try and buy a pot. Not so in limit. This is a throwaway situation; I am almost certainly behind with little chance of catching up and nearly no chance of pushing everyone off the pot.
So even this hand gets mucked.
For a good 2 hours, I saw my stack slowly drop, some form blinds, some from good starting hands that went nowhere.
But the game was still good. that is, still generally loose/passive, lots of players seeing flops, infrequent preflop raising, little aggression, little trickiness going on. So I played on, “played” as in mucking preflop, then watching the play of others.
And that watching is the key to patience working. I saw lots of showdowns, saw what cards everyone played (nearly everyone playing too many starting hands), saw how they played them.
For example, one player would limp in with any pair or any face card. Another player, an older gentleman on my immediate right with a very large chip stack, raised preflop almost exclusively with premium pocket pairs.
I used this information in one hand, when this particular player raised preflop, and then I saw I had a low pocket pair, and even though there had already been a few callers, I knew that I would start out this hand far, far behind, and mucked.
I did begin to get bored. I was getting really, really tired of mucking hand after hand after hand….
But at one point, I just set my mind to re-focus. I perked up and tried to watch a little more carefully. It wasn’t changing the cards I was getting, but I knew that forcing myself to focus would prevent me to try and force something to happen, to–eventually–let the game come to me.
And as the hours passed (I put in a 9-hour session), the tide began to swing. It did take two critical wins, one when my stack was down to 3 chips, and one where I went all-in, both hands I won to keep my stack alive.
Twice I was able to limp in with decent suited aces (decent being 8 or above), lots of preflop callers, a nut flush draw on the flop and the flush coming on the river, taking down large pots both times.
Once I flopped quads when I had limped in with pocket 7s in early position. With 6 callers total, I checked the flop. Unfortunately for me, it was checked around to a late position better, meaning that I didn’t want to raise and make most of the field face two bets. Fortunately, the table was such that the flop bet, from a loose player, got several callers. The same strategy on the turn left 5 players in, more than if I had raised, and more than if I had bet out. My final bet on the river, with several low cards, that could easily have made a straight, unfortunately got just one caller, the flop and turn better, but the pot itself still turned out to be quite big.
In 9 hours, I never saw pocket aces or kings, yet by being patient, even through a long, low period, and by putting my chips in preflop only with playable hands, I was able to get action enough to walk away with about a $200 profit, or about 2 big bets per hour. Not the best session by any stretch, but it wasn’t a losing one, and it reinforced the importance of patience in the limit game.
Too many people are not patient enough to play limit hold ‘em. some of those get wild at the table, and sometimes pull off some big stacks. I can’t let myself be affected by such events and let myself chase those occasional big rewards. Patience is the key to long-term success, at single sessions, and in the bigger session called life.