How would not allowing folding work? You have to allow not matching a bet/raise, otherwise there's no choice. I assume that you mean a low limit on bet sizes in the first round too.
]]>I've heard no-limit is also harder for bots
Yes, much harder. The best limit hold'em bots can do pretty well, even against strong professional players, while most solid amateurs with a good grasp of the fundamentals can beat no limit bots as long as the stacks aren't too small.
]]>There's a lot of smoke blown about "no-limit being an art" when compared to limit.
I guess that makes sense since there's greater breadth of betting strategies. And not just making big bets; pot-limit betting for example wipes out the possibility for slow-fast play which would, well, suck.
I've heard no-limit is also harder for bots, I guess because it's more decisions and more opponent modelling.
Anyway, I was (though not obviously) asking for a discussion rather than rule change, so, OK.
]]>I play no-limit Holdem exclusively, and have no experience (not a single game's worth) with limit Holdem. There's a lot of smoke blown about "no-limit being an art" when compared to limit. See the film Rounders---I think there's a quote in there about that.
]]>How does that work? Surely a rake of even 1-2% would totally eat that up? (But I don't know what the average bet size in bb for professional play would be).
Win rate calculations are post rake. 5bb/100 means that you're actually up 5 big blinds per 100 hands, taking everything into consideration.
]]>I completely agree with Asminthe that anything to reduce the number of rounds in a game would be bad. Actually, I wanted to do the opposite but I hadn't considered it carefully enough. My other suggestion which I should have focused on was a limit on bet sizes (as a per-table option?)
That would the side effect of causing people to play for higher stakes. If a player is risk-adverse (myself, admittedly), then they might not call a $20 bluff if they're only 67% sure that it's a bluff and they've only got $30 in their account. So they'll probably go to much lower stakes which work to to cents per coin (1% * 5% * $30 = 1.5c by Asminthe's rule). Again, it lets you know what amounts you'll actually be risking.
Keep in mind that even good professional poker players are happy with a win rate of 5bb/100 hands, which is like the equivalent of being up 3-4 coins total after a hundred boards.
How does that work? Surely a rake of even 1-2% would totally eat that up? (But I don't know what the average bet size in bb for professional play would be).
]]>I set the antes based on fraction-of-max-buy-in that is used in poker. You buy in with 100x the big blind, for example.
Raising the ante would have a similar effect to giving the players fewer chips (instead of making the ante 2, keep it at 1 and give each player 50 chips). The only difference would be the granularity of bets above the ante (for example, being able to raise a 2-chip ante up to 3 by putting in one chip). But in poker, that kind of granularity is thwarted by the minimum bet and raise rules. You can't raise by half the big blind, for example.
Seeing people go all-in all the time down at the penny tables is a symptom of a penny being worthless. Conservative play is the first step toward becoming more skilled. You don't have to worry about that all-in behavior so much if you move up to a $5 table. At a $100 table (which is more like the norm for poker), each chip is $1, and that ante stops looking so small.
But anyway, there are ways to play against an over-aggressive player who goes all-in all the time... very satisfying ways...
]]>I also feel that if the ante were larger, it would allow me to knuckle people easier, when my pot is larger. That is, being aggressive with decent hands, scaring the other person off and slowly taking away their chips. Right now it's just too slow and risky to do that all the time.
]]>Winning isn't about getting all your opponent's coins, it's about making a profit over the long term, and there are other ways to do that than to have hands play out to the point where people are making enormous bets all the time. Keep in mind that even good professional poker players are happy with a win rate of 5bb/100 hands, which is like the equivalent of being up 3-4 coins total after a hundred boards. Unless you're playing against someone who is so significantly less skilled than you that it's hardly even a fair game, you should not expect to be able to maintain very high win rates (although they will probably be higher than the 6-handed poker I'm used to, since the play is heads up and should therefore end up a bit looser).
You should try lowering your expectations about the average size of pots and work on learning additional ways to profit.
]]>