The game that has popularized poker is No Limit Texas Hold’em. The No Limit betting structure is seldom applied to other forms of poker, like Omaha, Razz or Stud. The basic rule of No Limit betting is simple: When it is a players turn to act they may bet any or all of their chip stack. The No Limit bet or “All In” as it is commonly known is a powerful move, which some purists will tell you is overused by beginning players. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, while your entire stack is your high end limit for your bet in a No Limit structure, there is also the minimum bet to consider.

Hold’em is generally played with two forced blind bets, called the small blind and the big blind. Let’s just take for our example a No Limit tournament situation where the blinds are 100/200. Once the 100 small blind and the 200 big blind are posted, the down cards are dealt and the first player to the left of the big blind is first to act. They may fold, call the big blind of 200 or raise. If a player decides to raise then they must raise “at least” the amount of the big blind. So the minimum raise would be 200 making the minimum raise bet 400 (200 to call the big blind + a minimum raise of 200). The next player to act may fold, call the 400 or raise to at least what? The answer is not 800 but 600. A raise must be “at least” an additional bet of whatever was the last raise or the big blind whichever is more.

Let’s try one more example. The blinds are 500/1,000. After three players fold, the next player makes it 4,500. What is the next bet, if the next player only wants to raise the minimum?

Well the first raise was 3,500, from 1,000 to 4,500; so the next player could minimum raise another 3,500 making the bet 8,000.

Now the easy question. What is the maximum raise?

That’s why so many players like No Limit Hold’em, the maximum raise is always whatever you have in front of you. If you have only 6,400, then you can make it 6,400 and if you have 65,000, well go ahead! Its called No Limit Hold’em.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #111

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