$1/2 No-limit hold’em and $1/3 No-Limit hold’em are the most commonly spread game found in North American poker rooms.

Update: Did you know I have a poker tells video series? Check it out here.

In the past couple of weeks (November 2012), I played a few sessions of live $1-2 NLHE with the purpose of studying what poker tell information was the most important and relevant. It’d been a while since I played $1-2 (haven’t been playing much at all lately with the exception of some $2-5 and the occasional $100+ tournament), so I was kind of curious what I’d find.

Before getting to the tells, a few caveats about using tells in a live $1-2 NLHE game:

• Playing in these games reminded me that, for your average live $1-2 player, thinking about poker tells is far from the best use of their time. Not that poker tells aren’t present; they are, but most players’ time would be much better spent studying some basic strategies and not looking for tells. So if you’re a struggling live $1-2 player, long before doing something like reading one of my books on poker tells, or getting my video series, I’d instead recommend reading a basic strat book like Dan Harrington on Cash Games, James Sweeney’s Dynamic Full Ring Poker, or Ed Miller’s Small Stakes No Limit Hold’em. I mention this mainly because I think there are many $1-2 players who think they are better than they are, and who need a lot of work put in on basic strategy. Only when you are a decent winner at $1-2 would I recommend spending a good amount of time thinking about tells/behavior.
• Looking for poker tells can often have limited use in a game where players often do weird, goofy, illogical things, which can often be common in a live $1-2 game. For example, getting a read that a player has a weak hand doesn’t do you much good if that player is weirdly going to give a lot of action with that hand. A lot of players at live $1-2 will passively call off a lot of chips with a pair and a draw, or even just a draw, even if they wouldn’t bet it themselves. Many players also overvalue hands like AK and AQ, and will put a lot of chips in pre-flop with those hands. (Of course, there are also a lot of nitty players at these stakes, too, so noticing player tendencies/styles is important.)
• I usually say that post-bet tells, when they come after significant bets, are the most important tells to look for. But there are a lot of very passive players at lower stakes who only make big bets when they have strong hands. For these types of players, there are no real post-bet tells to speak of, reducing a lot of the kinds of tells you might be using more frequently in higher-stakes games where players are more aggressive/active. For many passive players, you can forget about studying them for post-bet tells, just because the likelihood of them ever making a significant bluff is highly unlikely. (This also emphasizes the idea that aggressive players are best to study for tells because you’ll see them in a lot of pots.)

1. The 2-5 No Limit Hold’em level of cash games, is the beginning point where a significant amount of money can be made. At lower levels, the lack of stack depth and higher relative rake, cut into profits to a large degree. An intelligent player at these stakes in poker can make enough money to grind out a living if need be.
2. Oftentimes in a standard $1/$2 no-limit hold'em game, preflop raises are to an amount of $10-$15. Once in awhile, you'll have someone who makes an even larger raise size to $20-$25, but that is.
3. My reference point will be $1/2 in Las Vegas since that is the game I play the most, but the majority of the content will be relevant to live low-limit NLHE anywhere. If you play this game only occasionally or grind out hundreds of hours a year, these articles aim to help you play the game more profitably and with greater enjoyment.
4. With this in mind, here are what I think my top five lessons would be for a new player trying to beat the $2-$5 no-limit hold’em games in Las Vegas. Don’t limp into pots ever.

Decision points
Let’s look at some of the most important decision points where tells can help play a role in your average live $1-2 NLHE game (with a good amount of passive/tight players):

• Deciding when to continuation bet with weak hands in multi-way pots
• Deciding when to bluff the turn
• Deciding when to bluff the river

Most of these spots will boil down to fundamental strategy and player tendencies. But every once in a while a poker tell can help you out in one of these spots.

Studying poker tells can be quite valuable for low-stakes players, not so much for the purposes of spotting other people’s tells, but because they’ll help you prevent leaking your own tells. Knowing the common ways information can be leaked will help you become unreadable. And I think this is the best reason for lower stakes players to study tells.

Most important tells
So what poker tells are most important at your average live $1-2 game?

• Immediate calls
• Taking a long time to check when weak
• Defensive chip handling when weak
• After cards arrive, staring at board when weak

These are mostly waiting-for-action tells, as opposed to post-bet tells, which makes sense as you’ll usually be dealing with players who aren’t betting that much and who are instead more passive and doing a lot of calling. I’ll explain these all in order and give a couple examples.

Immediate calls
Immediate calls are one of the most useful bet-timing tells. When someone makes an immediate call, it means they’ve quickly decided not raise. Because players with strong hands tend to at least consider a raise (even if they end up calling), this means almost all immediate calls are made with weak and medium-strength hands and draws. This tell is rampant in low-stakes games.

For instance, in a few hands, players called my continuation-bet on the flop immediately. This tells me that, almost all of the time, they are on the weaker side of their range. If I am bluffing or semi-bluffing, I will continue bluffing on the turn most of the time with this read. For example, I raise pre-flop with KJo and get heads-up. The board is T -7-4 rainbow. I bet and the player immediately calls. I will usually continue betting the turn and maybe even the river, because I think the player will most often have, at most, a ten, and often a lot of hands like 99 and 88 or 98.

I would also you want to be choosy about who you’re attempting to bluff. I wouldn’t want to do this against a calling station, because you could be completely correct in reading them for a weak hand but they still may call you down or even just shove in with their hand. So you want to ideally be focusing on players you know are capable of folding.

Also, board texture is a factor in understanding immediate calls. For more aggressive players, immediate calls will also mean that it’s very unlikely they have a strong flush draw. For example, you continuation-bet a board of Kh 9h 3s and your opponent immediately calls you. If this player is capable of bluffing at all, this immediate call will make strong draws like Ax of hearts and QT of hearts very unlikely, because that player would probably at least consider a raise, even if he ended up deciding to call. So in a lot of cases, immediate calls can help you define a player’s range a bit more than usual.

Taking a long time to check when weak
Some players will take a long time to check to the aggressor when they hold weak hands. Don’t use this tell generally, though, because most players will vary their bet- and check-timing enough (both consciously and because there can be a lot of thought-inducing situations with many different types of hands) that it’s hard to get a good read. But against some players it can be very useful information.

For example, let’s say a player calls your pre-flop raise, hits a medium pair on the flop, checks to you and calls your flop bet. The turn card comes, doesn’t improve him, and he then takes like ten seconds to check to you. Whereas if he had a top-pair hand or better, where he knew he was probably going to be calling, he would only take a couple of seconds to check.

I’m not saying this is extremely useful information, because sometimes, with a medium-strength hand, $1-2 players will call you anyway. It’s going to be mainly useful against the most nitty players; the ones you know are scared to carry on without very strong hands. Those are the ones who you might bet off the hand on the turn if you get some sense of weakness.

Along with taking a long time to check, a player might look very studious in studying the board, as if trying to figure out what to do. That combined behavior is usually a sign of a vulnerable hand. As is the following tell, which you can sometimes see in concert with these:

Defensive chip handling when weak
The gist of this one is that players will often try to make you think they’re interested in calling by handling their chips in a defensive manner when it’s your turn to act. They might hold their chips in their hand, as if ready to put them in. They might start cutting out chips as if ready to call. Basically, any chip handling action that looks vaguely defensive in nature, even if it’s quite subtle, is usually a sign that the player holds a vulnerable hand. When a player holds a strong hand, they want to give no impediment to your bet, no matter how small.

This is a very useful one; it’s one that came up a handful of times in hands I was in, making me feel better about making a large river bluff. In one hand in particular, I had been betting first to act on the flop and turn, and I thought it was quite possible my opponent had flopped the flush draw. When a low flush card came on the river, I probably usually would have given up on the bluff, except for the fact I saw him riffling his chips in his hand while he stared at me (staring at an opponent when they’re waiting to act can also be a sign of weakness), so I bet $100 and he folded.

Two other hands went down very similarly to that. In one three-bet pot, where I’d three-bet and whiffed with AQ, an opponent called the flop, but I pushed all-in on a turn of 9JK3 based on my opponent grabbing his chips and holding them up defensively as he checked to me. It wasn’t usually a spot I would have felt so comfortable in.

Again, even if this tell is only 75% reliable, that’s still a great reason to carry through on a bluff that’s already got a lot of logic behind it; in my experience, though, this tell is more reliable than that for most players.

Staring at hole cards and board cards when weak
When players stare at cards, whether it’s their own hole cards or the board cards, it will generally mean they don’t have a strong hand. I had forgotten how much the staring-at-cards when weak type of tells apply to low stakes.

Why is this a pattern? Players who look at strong hands tend to look away quickly. There’s an instinct to “hide their treasure” from their enemies or competitors. This accounts for the common tendency of players to look at pocket aces and immediately put them down. Whereas players with weak hands don’t have a reason to look away.

Pre-flop, this can be useful when you spot limpers or players behind you looking for a second or two or longer at their cards. When you see this, and if you’ve decided it’s a reliable tell for those players, you can choose to become more aggressive in the hand. For example, you see a few limpers staring at their cards before they call, and you decide to raise pre-flop lighter than you normally would. Or you see a late-position player staring at his cards for a few seconds and he ends up raising. You might decide to call him or 3-bet him lighter than normal.

Of course, players are still capable of calling you with their weaker hands, and then you’ll have to play some post-flop poker. But because the read is generally reliable (and sometimes very reliable for some specific players), you’ll be putting yourself in a lot of profitable post-flop situations where a flop bet will often take down the pot.

Sometimes players look back at their hole cards after the flop, too, and the longer they look at their cards the more it becomes likely they’re weak.

For communal cards, it’s the same basic idea: players who connect well (like top pair or better) tend to look away from the board when the cards come out. This can be seen as an involuntarily, unconscious attempt to distract attention away from their “treasure.” Staring at communal cards, with no looking away, will tend to mean the player had no real reason to look away or be thoughtful about the hand.

Playing some $1-2 again, I got back into the habit of trying to watch everyone in the hand during multi-way flops, trying to see if anyone looked away immediately. Mainly I tried to watch the player or players behind me, because that is more valuable information than what the players in front of me do.

For example, in most three-way (or more) pots, if I’m the pre-flop raiser, I usually will shut down if the board comes down pretty scary and I haven’t connected. Like if I raise pre-flop and the board is 9TQ or something similar, I generally check if I raised with 6-7 suited, or AK, or something that missed completely, because those are the types of boards that hit right in the range of most players who call a raise. Whereas on a really dry board, like K-7-3 rainbow, I will usually bet my misses into two other players (but not usually three other players).

But looking for opponents who are staring at the flop can make me feel more comfortable about betting into a multi-way pot. It happened several times in three-way and four-way pots where I wouldn’t usually have bet from a fundamental strategy perspective, but the amount of staring going on by my opponents made me feel safer. Occasionally, I would still get one caller out of the bunch, but that still put me in more profitable spots than not betting, and I felt more confident, based on their staring, that they had weak hands.

Again, this is not something you want to use to make very large decisions. Good players are capable of staring consistently at the flop whether they hit or not. And even for the people who exhibit this tell very reliably, it won’t always be accurate. This will mainly be useful for determining fairly borderline situations, like when you decide to get aggressive and follow through on flop bets in multiway pots, or follow through on turn bets. Or, when you see people looking away from the board cards, for deciding to take a more passive line. There are a lot of fairly borderline situations where checking or betting or raising could go either way, so a little extra information can go a long way.

Conclusions
All in all, I never want to give the impression that tells are something that will let you crush microstakes, or any game for that matter. I think they can give you little hints here and there for the best action to take, but these are often actions that are dictated by fundamental strategy. Occasionally, you can get really obvious signs from some players that dictate a very specific course of action, but you shouldn’t try too hard to look for those spots. Those are spots that will come to you naturally, the more comfortable you get with tells.

Want to learn more about Poker Tells in $1-2 No-Limit Cash Games?
$1-2 No-Limit Hold’em cash games are one of the most popular forms of poker played today. In this short ebook, Zachary Elwood examines 35 actual $1-2 NLHE hands, finding meaning in opponents’ physical and verbal behavior.

The ebook bundle comes with the book in 3 formats: PDF, EPUB, and MOBI (Kindle). (It’s easy to sync third-party files with your Kindle reader.

So, you want to learn about betting limits in poker? Let’s start with a general idea of what we’re talking about.

Betting limits refer to the different rules or structures you have to follow for betting and raising. These rules will affect how much you can bet or raise, and when, at any given point in a hand/round.

And it’s a pretty big deal. If you jump from one limit to another – with no experience – you’ll feel like a fish out of water. Because each one has a different strategy to learn. Each one has different mistakes to avoid. This page will cover all that in more detail.

One thing though – reading about different limits can be confusing. If you want to fully understand them, we suggest playing a few rounds of free money poker of each. Chances are you won’t be any good by the time you’re done. But at least you’ll “get it”.

Now let’s get into it.

The Different Betting Limits or Formats in Poker

The different betting limits used in poker include:

What we’ll do is explain each one and give you an example.

How Many People Win At 1 2 No Limit Poker

With fixed limit games everything from the amount you can bet or raise – if you can do either at all – is predetermined. There is a limit to both the amount you can bet or raise, and how many bets or raises can be made per round.

This is how limit games work:

Preflop and on the flop, you’ll be able to bet and raise the small blind – in our case that’d be $1. And in many games the max number of times you can raise is 4. So, at most each person will put in $4.

On the turn and river (or later rounds in razz and stud), the big blind is doubled. In our case that’d be to $2. The 4 raises per round applies here too.

You’ll only be able to make a bet/raise the size of the big blind. You can’t bet in multiples or cap the betting at the same time.

For example, if you make a bet of $2, the next person can only raise it $2. Then the next guy $2. That’s the gist, anyway.

Limit holdem used to be a real popular game. That is, until no limit games were shown on TV. Now limit is mostly used in poker games like stud and razz. It’s one of the easiest betting formats to learn.

And because of the cap on every betting round, it’s a bit easier on the bankroll. That said, limit games are the hardest to master.

For one thing, there’s no room to bluff. Since you’re only able to make a bet the size of the big blind, there’s always odds to call. And it’s almost always correct to do so. In fact, experts say a common mistake is to fold too much.

(This is opposite of no limit poker where players don’t fold enough.)

Since you’re only able to bet so much and so many times per round – and the fact that every player will have odds to call to draw – slow playing only means you’re missing out on LOTS of value. You really need to maximize what you win when you have the best hand. This also helps make up for the times you draw to better hands (correctly) and lose.

The bottom line is fixed poker is more or less a passive math game rather than an aggressive game that often relies on guts and brute force – like no limit games often do.

This is arguably the most popular type of poker today. This is what you mostly see on TV. The exciting part is when you see someone say they’re “all in”. It’s exciting because they’re willing to put all their chips – sometimes their tournament life – on the line.

This encourages a brute force style of strategy that many players use. Very much UNLIKE fixed limit poker. Not only that, but there are no limits as to how much you can bet. So long as you meet the blinds with your bets and raises, you can do whatever you want.

The minimum raise is $4. From there the min raise is to $8. Then $16, and so on.

But so long as you meet the min raise, from there you can raise/bet whatever you want. You can raise from $2 to $10, $8 to $20 or $50, or $16 to $35.50. Or, you can shove all in.

You can do whatever you want.

This creates a different dynamic. One that is less focused on odds and the cards you hold (although both are still important), and instead a game that is more focused on player styles and stack sizes.

You can be a winning player simply due to being more aggressive. You can bet and raise more. Bluff more. Good players win more money by seeing fewer showdowns.

But this can also open the doors to more mistakes. It is possible to be overly aggressive – to bet or raise too often, play too many hands or stay in a hand longer than you should.

You got to learn when to fold, too.

And because you have the freedom to bet however much you want, you need to learn how much to bet. You need to bet enough to discourage people from drawing, while not over betting, because there’s no sense in risking more than you have to to achieve the results you want.

This is sort of a mix between fixed and no limit poker. You have a cap on how much you can bet, but you’re only limited by the size of the pot. As you can probably imagine, once you make a few bets and raises – or get a few streets in – the pot is big enough where you can go all in.

For example, if the pot is $2, that is the max you can bet. But once you bet $2 (and make the pot $4), the next person can raise another $4 (bringing it up to $8), then the next guy can raise $8 (making it $16), and so on.

(It’s important to point out that you don’t have to “pot it” every time you raise. You can raise anywhere from the minimum (double the last bet/raise) to the size of the pot. Anywhere in between that is fine.)

Strategy is somewhere in the middle, too.

You want to be someone that can play the odds, bet for value (real important early on to build a bigger pot later), and still play the player.

It’s a challenging, yet profitable betting limit for players up to challenge of mastering it.

The general idea with cap limit games is there’s a limit to how much money you can put during a hand. This is relative to big blinds, and is often between 20 and 30. Once you’ve reached the cap it’s treated as if you’re “all in.”

Experts say this can lead to more lively and aggressive games since your risk is capped more so than no limit and pot limit. Since you can only lose so much, it probably encourages more ‘screw it, let’s run it’ type moments.

Spread limit games are similar to fixed limit poker.

You’ll have a range or spread – say $2 to $5 – that you can choose from for your bets and raises.

It’s not a popular betting limit, based on the fact that we don’t see it online (much) and when you Google the phrase the results are scarce. But these games do run.

Beginners tend to make the mistake of betting the top of the spread with their best hands and at the bottom with weaker hands. But anyone paying attention will spot this.

So, you want to be more aware of how you size your bets relative to the strength of your hand.

Other than that, since this is so much like limit poker we’d recommend following those strategies. Bet for value, fold a little less often compared to pot and no limit poker, and bluff less.

$1 $2 No Limit Poker

If you’re a visual person it’s going to help to play a few rounds of each game to fully understand how it works.

But that’s okay.

It also gives you a chance to see which formats you like best. Which formats you want to learn first – not just how to get through a hand, but all the strategies and tactics that are so different from one betting limit to the next.

And that’s a deep hole that’ll keep you busy for the foreseeable future.