With A Twist

Leave it to Otis.

He had an idea last week. It was a good idea. Last night we implemented said idea.

****

When you play NL ring games, where do you think the cap on the buy-in should be? Many of our home games and underground games had adhered to the online tradition of making it 100x the big blind. In fact, for probably the past two years plus, that's exactly the buy-in I've used, whether the game was uncapped or not.

However, that's not always enough cash in play to make the game truly interesting. Otis theorized that the max
buy-in is really more of a function of the opening raise than the big blind. And I think he's right.

Our 1/2 NL games tend to have opening raises in the $10 to $12 range. Assume for a moment that you get three to four callers and the pot is near $50pre -flop. Any sane continuation bet that gets called in one place almost makes you pot committed by the turn. With the thought of "I can just rebuy" in most everyone's head, the looser calls from the draw monkeys make the 100x big blind buy-in a heavier action game.

****

Last night at Gucci Rick's, we made the max buy-in 200x the big blind. The resulting game was very different. From my perspective, it was different in a good way. With more at risk each hand, the play was more cerebral. Fold equity all of the sudden became a viable notion in NL ring game poker. Strong hands could put weaker hands to the test earlier in the hand without fear of an "aww hell, fuck it" call. I actually enjoyed myself more last night than I had in a while.

I posted a small win to alleviate my hemorrhaging. And now, whenever possible, I'll buy-in for 200x and see what happens.