Limiting Pot-Limit

Do you know the house rules of the game that you are about to sit in? It is definitely in your best
interest to know all of them before you get involved in any serious pots. I can go to a different basement game every single night of the week, but I live in a huge metropolitan city so it should be expected. My hometown, however, is in an area of northwest Ohio with a population of around 10,000; it is as rural as rural can be. My hometown high school has one day a year that the FFA members ride their tractors to school! Nonetheless, there is a poker crowd and basement games are going on every night of the week. And make no mistake; these guys know their poker!

I was introduced to the concept of the limitations of Pot-Limit here, in the middle of corn country. Almost every game that I attended was a pot-limit game. This is done in an attempt to keep the games ‘friendly’. Although every person at the table would be greedily longing for my chips in the same manner as the grinders in Vegas, labeling it a ‘friendly game’ makes everybody feel better about it. Pot limit games can get pretty intense, and this trip was no different.

Let me set up the scenario for you: We were playing $2/$4 Pot Limit Hold‘em. Although labeled ‘pot limit’, there was a cap of $100 per bet. I was dealt AK in late-position. There was a caller in front of me in position three. Pot being $10, I raised pot. Big Blind re-raised $20, making it $30 to go. Position Three called again, and I called. The pot was now $92, and one of the bigger preflop pots of the night. The flop came out 10 J Q. Big Blind bet $92. Position Three called. Seeing the flush draw, I raised $100 (max bet). Big Blind re-raised. Position Three called. I re-raised.

Now here is where it got interesting: the rules were pointed out. Normally, when playing no-established-cap Pot Limit Hold‘em, you would/could keep raising the pot until you had no more money. Because there is an established limit on each bet, it is limit-style rules. This means that there are only three raises allowed per round.

Now any idiot should have been able to call out my hand, as well as what my opponent should have been holding. The caller was the interesting piece to the puzzle. Had he caught a set and therefore needed the board to pair, or was he on the flush draw? In the few hours I had been there, I had already targeted him as the minnow of the table, so I knew he had one of those two hands. I just knew this capped-bet rule was going to screw me.

Then came the turn, 6. I was watching the guy at position three and he didn’t appear too excited about the turn of events. Big Blind came out firing again. $100. Position Three called. Maybe he had the set, I thought. If I were to raise at this point, and he did hit the flush, whether he re-raised immediately or raised the Big Blind’s bet on the river, he would get an extra $100 from me, so I called.

The river card hit the board – 2. Big Blind, either oblivious to the flush or having hit it himself, came out firing again. Just as I feared, Position Three raised. DAMNIT! I folded, knowing that I was screwed by limit-rules-capped-bet-pot-limit-poker! Big Blind called and showed A K. Position Three showed his suited connectors 5 6 and raked in a monster.

Now, I am not one that typically complains about people putting themselves in a position that eventually has them giving their money away. This guy called $400 on a flush draw because he ‘felt it coming’. That’s cool. In most $2/$4 games a $400 call would pretty much be all-in anyhow, but this guy had been winning all night. Limit-rules-capped-bet-pot-limit-poker screwed me in this particular circumstance, since both Big Blind and I would surely have been all-in post flop. I had $850 in front of me, and he certainly couldn’t have called that large of a bet on the draw.

When you sit in on a game that you don’t regularly attend, chat it up for the first half hour. Knowing the rules probably wouldn’t have saved me any money, since I’d probably play limit poker the same way. But somehow, I have the right to feel a little cheated. Putting a cap on a pot limit game is a little crazy, in my opinion. The money shoots up at the beginning of the hand substantially, and then gets limited to less-than-pot for the remainder of the betting rounds. I guess that the moral of the story is just to realize what you are getting yourself into.