SYWTSPP 2 - What Game Type Should You Learn First?

[ This is the second part in a continuing series about starting playing poker from the ground up.]

There are two sets of choices to make when picking which poker game to learn first. The first choice is whether or not you'll start with limit poker or “big bet” poker. The second choice is which specific game to learn first.

Before I give further advice on this choice, I should note that those of you that might be invited to a game at the home of a friend might be facing an existing structure. Due to televised popularity, many home games are the two games I will recommend in this article — either purely limit texas hold'em (usually spoken as “limit hold'em” and abbreviated in writing as “limit HE”) or no-limit HE (abbreviated in writing as “NL HE”). However, there are still many home games in the USA that are “dealer's choice” of some sort.

Personally, I started with dealer's choice poker myself, and I found it a useful introduction to poker. However, I was playing for extremely low stakes. I would certainly warn against starting too soon with mixed games (more or less, another name for dealer's choice) for stakes that are enough to hurt.

A few years ago, I used to tell people outright to start with limit HE. I felt then that a number of factors demanded that one start there. First of all, it's the easiest way to limit one's losses. Mistakes aren't that expensive. Low-limit HE (up until about $5/$10) is also a straight-forward game that you can beat with some basic discipline, knowledge of the odds, and patience.

It's honestly tough to recommend that one only play limit HE at first given the current state of poker, unless you happen to live near a public poker room (in CA, CT, or NJ) that has constant juicy limit HE games. NL HE has taken over the poker world by storm. On the Internet, many sites have much juicier NL HE action than limit HE. Indeed, on many sites, limit HE games are so filled with multi-tabling sharks that it's very tough for an newbie to avoid losing.

However, the problem in starting with NL HE is two-fold. First, mistakes are extremely costly, and the bankroll requirements for a new player can be large. You can mitigate this some by playing extremely tight, which tends to work ok at big casinos and online — where player turnover at the tables usually keeps you from being pegged as “tight-weak” and getting run over. However, in the home game world, it's tough to play extremely tight and get enough action on your good hands, unless you opponents are truly horrible players. OTOH, you should probably take the losses and still start a bit “tight weak“, as the variance (the amount your bankroll fluctuates up and down from session to session) will be substantially less than any other approach. This worked pretty well for me when I started NL HE; I got run over some, but didn't lose too much.

The second problem with NL HE as a game for newbies is that still, even to this day in the middle of the NL HE boom, there are very few books at the lowest introductory level designed for NL HE cash games. Sure, there are at least a dozen starter books for new players who want to try tournament NL HE. Some of those books “pretend” to be about cash games but are really written by tournament experts who aren't the sharp cash game players they once were. There are precious few books designed for new NL HE cash game players. There are a few gems out there, but I know from my own learning that they were far over my head until I had at least a few thousands hands of NL HE experience behind me.

I have been unsuccessful in my arguments to keep people away from NL HE as a starter game. The interest and draw seems too great. So, I inevitably live with the fact that new players will be drawn in and they'll have to fly blind for a while.

In next week's post, I'll be nonetheless suggesting starting books for both limit HE and NL HE.