Is LHE Dead?

With the passing of PartyPoker from the American landscape, the emerging leaders of online poker are clearly FullTilt and PokerStars. What has also emerged is largely the disappearance of the mid-stakes limit holdem game. As this is my bread and butter, it is a concern for me.

I’ll define mid-stakes for me as $5/10 up to $30/60 (although I rarely play at the $30/60 level).  Between the two sites, there is one full table ($5/10) and eighteen 6-max tables.  Granted, this is at 8:00AM on a Tuesday, but it appears that finding a juicy limit game is simply not going to happen on a regular basis.  No mystery here, but that leads you in one of three directions:  6-max, NLHE, or PLO.

I’ve been working to expand to more no limit as well as Omaha with inconsistent results.  As I move up in stakes with NLHE, I find that more and more sheer aggression start to emerge.  This is more from the 30,000 feet view, but in the macro sense, it seems until you’ve earned the respect of all players, they will put you to the test.  It currently means I often play scared at stakes of significance, feeling the burn of flopped sets ringing in my ears.  It is a major leak I have to get over in NLHE, the pain of losing a buy-in or two.  It may be less than a down LHE session, but I hate it alot more.  My guess is that I need to be alot more structured about what stakes to play and earn the right to move up vs. playing to what my bankroll will allow.

Omaha, well it’s just a different bird.  It is a game of draws, of getting away from hands, of stomaching suckouts that can look bad but often are very legitimate plays.  My Omaha knowledge is about 5% of my LHE knowledge, which is a little more than being a tall midget but not much.  You have Omaha and Omaha H/L, played as limit, pot-limit, and no-limit.  It takes some real thick skin and perseverence to play the game consistently and missing a couple of screws in the brain if you play at higher stakes regularly.   Anyways, I need to adapt or perish, IMO.

Congrats to NewinNov for taking down the MATH last night.  I watched him play on a very, very aggressive $3/6 NLHE table earlier in the night, with a guy pushing with Jackson 5 and other wacky moves.  Not sure if he survived the table, but a nice finish.  I head to Raleigh/Durham tomorrow morning for the day and hope I’m still able to connect with Jason Strasser.  We’ll see.  Let me know your thoughts on this stuff either in comments or with an email to csquard@gmail.com.  gl on the felt.