I noticed a very interesting fact at this year’s WSOP. While the No Limit Hold’em tournaments have gotten much much tougher, the Limit tournaments seem much softer than they have been in the past. I have been at several starting tables where I wondered if some of the players had even played the game we were playing. My brother (Howard Lederer) was at a Stud 8 or Better table with someone who did not know the rules. This was a $2,500 buy-in tournament and that player did not even know the rules of the game!

I find it fascinating that people would be willing to pony up that much money to play a game they do not know. Now I have no doubt that many of the people are very good at another discipline of poker. I was at a Razz table where there were a couple of players who were very poor at Razz, but I was thinking that I would not want to be at a No Limit Hold’em table with them. The reason they were playing Razz poorly was because they were using the No Limit Hold’em strategies in the Razz game. Now they were applying those strategies very well, trying to put pressure on their opponents, making interesting later-street plays. The problem is that those strategies are inappropriate for Razz. So while I could see they would be very tough opponents in No Limit Hold’em, I was happy to have them at my Razz table.

Years ago when I was first starting out, I played Limit Hold’em as my cash game. I also played No Limit Hold’em, but that was only in tournament settings since it wasn’t spread much in live action. But the key here is that I was a Hold’em player and I was a good one, willing to sit in on the biggest Hold’em games that were spread, ones that could get as high as 400-800 during the WSOP. But my usual game was 75-150 Hold’em, which was the biggest Hold’em-only game that happened on a regular basis in Vegas.

At that point, the mixed games started getting really popular and those were soft games that played much bigger. The usual mixed game was 200-400, a much better opportunity to make money if you knew what you were doing… that is if you had good control of all the games in the mix. The problem for me was that I was a Hold’em player and didn’t have a grasp of the other games.

But each game has subtleties that take practice and dedication to learn and master; and without mastery of those concepts you will play that game poorly even if you are an awesome player in another game. For example, since pots are often split in Eight or Better games, there are strategy consequences that just don’t apply to single-winner games like Hold’em and Stud. If you try to apply one-winner game strategies to split games, you will be a losing player in the long run. And even if you are the best Hold’em player in the world, you will be the big fish in the mixed games if you haven’t mastered the other games you are playing. To be a successful mixed player you can’t have a weak game.
So when I was eyeing these juicy mixed games years ago, my brother urged me to play low limit Stud before jumping into the mixed games. I had played a lot of Omaha Eight or Better by that point, but I had never played Stud before and he forbid me to get in those mixed games until I  understood Stud. So I started playing the $5-10 Stud games, and over the course of 6 months or so worked my way up till I was a winning 75-100 Stud Player. A lot of people made comments that I must have gone broke when they saw me playing $5-10 instead of the big Hold’em games. But I checked my ego at the door and just bore down to learn how to play so I could get into the mixed games. By the end of that year I was playing 200-400 HORSE and doing very well – because I understood all the games by then.

In actuality, stepping down in limits can be a decision that can keep players from going broke. I had my brother to guide me; otherwise I might have fallen into this trap as well.

So back  to the WSOP: I am seeing excellent players of one game, like Hold’em, jump into high buy-in tournaments for games they have no mastery of, thinking that it is all just poker. Well, that kind of thinking creates a big equity and bankroll mistake. Get each speciality under your belt. If you think about how long it took for you to become a truly good Hold’em player, you might realise that you can’t just sit down and play a game like Stud Eight or Better and assume you’ll know what you’re doing. Put in the work first!

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