New Wave in Poker Tournaments?
By Susie Isaacs

No-limit hold’em tournaments have been rapidly increasing in popularity since the early ’90s. Prior to that, there were very few, if any, no-limit competitions offered in Las Vegas outside the major tournament terrain. Thanks to several innovative cardroom managers, you can now play and practice in inexpensive no-limit tournaments at least two or three times a week. What a great training ground this has been for me. I would especially like to thank David Hriscina, for being the first to offer no-limit tournaments on a weekly basis when he ran the cardroom at the Gold Coast and eventually moving them to the Orleans. It took me and some other players only about a year of driving him crazy with our relentless requests for no-limit tournaments before he finally decided to give them a try – with great success, I might add.

Following David’s successful lead, Cardroom Managers J.R. Rose at the Desert Inn and Jerry Rowell at the Plaza soon implemented similar weekly no-limit tournaments. These weekly tournaments make for a terrific and inexpensive practice arena. I believe you not only need to read, study, and participate, but continue to participate and participate until you get the feeling of how the game is played correctly. Now I have a new quest. Back in September of this year I attended the Reno Hilton’s Pot of Gold tournament. Cardroom Manager Mike Gainey, decided to add a pot-limit hold’em event to his nightly tournament schedule and with much success, I might add. Over the last year it had been suggested by various tournament players that since I preferred no-limit hold’em so much that I should give pot-limit hold’em a try. I didn’t think much about it until I noticed a twilight pot-limit hold’em event offered at the Pot of Gold. To my surprise, I found myself playing my first pot-limit hold’em tournament. The next thing I discovered was how much I enjoyed the game. Due to the tremendous amount of similarities of my favorite game, no-limit hold’em.

I was immediately addicted. It was then, that I realized I needed a practice arena, if I were to learn to play pot-limit hold’em properly. What I needed was an inexpensive weekly tournament in Vegas where I could get enough experience to eventually play a major pot-limit tournament. That’s when it hit me, “I have to convince a cardroom manager in Vegas to add it to there weekly schedule.” The question was, “who do I convince?” David is no longer at the Orleans, the Desert Inn doesn’t have a cardroom anymore, maybe Jerry at the Plaza will give it a try or possibly Mike Vento at the Orleans. That’s where I’ll start! Here I go again, bugging the powers-that-be.

I see the same trend happening with pot-limit hold’em as I mentioned earlier with no-limit hold’em. I predict within the next two to three years we will be seeing more pot-limit hold’em tournaments creeping into the tournament arena, just as we did with no-limit hold’em. One reason is that there is a large European contingency that is becoming a regular part of the United States tournament trail. No-limit and pot-limit hold’em games are widely played in Europe making these players well trained and more advanced in the field of pot-limit and no-limit hold’em. They also play a lot of pot-limit Omaha and seven-card stud. I believe the wave of the future for poker tournaments in the United States will include more pot-limit and no-limit hold’em events than we now see.

If you have never ventured into a pot-limit hold’em tournament, and you are a fan of no-limit hold’em, try one and see if you feel as I do. For some of the same reasons I find no-limit to be exciting I also found in pot-limit: you can protect a hand much better than in limit hold’em, if the pot is large enough you can still get the thrill of pushing all your chips in with the hope of doubling through or maybe even tripling through, the anticipation of waiting on those trap hands allowing you to out-play your competition, putting yourself in perfect position to force someone to either commit all their chips before the flop or fold, and my personal favorite, “the art of bluffing” so much more stimulating in pot-limit and no-limit.

The biggest difference I found in no-limit versus pot-limit was being able to see more flops in pot-limit because the betting and raising is normally not enough to deplete the pre-flop field. So now that I am hooked on pot-limit hold’em I hope to be able to convince one of my local cardroom managers to add it to their tournament schedule. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to enter a pot-limit hold’em event at the WSOP and feel confident enough to play against the big boys and win it. If any of you cardroom managers are reading this, be prepared for to be bugged and possibly driven crazy until you cave in and add pot-limit hold’em to your weekly tournament schedule.

You can all thank Mike Gainey for my most recent pursuit of happiness!