History of No Limit poker
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History of No Limit poker

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temujin555OP
6mo ago

Hello everyone,

Thanks in advance. Does anyone know of any literature that documents the rise and fall of no limit poker in the United States?

I know it became popular in the early 80s and died out until it had a resurgence with online poker and TV but is there any book that has documented this?

I appreciate any insight.

06 July 2024 at 07:12 PM
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temujin555
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LivePokerTheory
6mo ago

Doyle Brunson's autobiography The Godfather of Poker is effectively the history of modern poker given he was at all the relevant historical events including the birth of modern poker in Texas roadhouses, its introduction to Vegas and then California, then of course the modern TV and online boom.

I had mistakenly believed that LHE was more popular for cash and NLHE for tournaments until the boom. But after reading Doyle's book, it was really NLHE 6 or 7-max cash that really blew up in Texas and was the preferred game of the roadhouse gamblers.

They brought it to Vegas. Vegas had some poker, Nick the Greek and Johnny Moss had their famous battle around 1949 playing a few games with no-limit 5 card stud being the most prominent.

Limit A-5 triple draw, ,7 card stud , and classic 5 card draw were also played but poker was still very niche overall.

Then Binion and Doyle etc started the WSOP and they picked their favorite game as the Main Event which gave hold'em more attention.

The rise of limit hold'em and it taking the prominence from no-limit for a while coincided with the rise of California cardrooms. When they started, no-limit has an image problem of "breaking" people and having amateurs lost their money too fast, so it wasn't allowed. Even to this day, California is home to the most limit hold'em games in the world, and we also see many other states express concern over "no limit" and only allowing "spread limit". I do wonder if they had branded, no-limit "stack limit", whether that would be better or worse for the game overall (certainly "stack limit" is more accurate).

Then television + online boom and NLHE captured everyone's imagination. And even if the mixed game hipsters are bored of it, 6-max NLHE is simply one of the best overall variants so that's why it blew up again. It was the game that really sparked the initial seed in the 1940s , the WSOP in the 1970s, and the boom of the 2000s. Most attempts to push towards other variants came down to the word "no limit" sounding scary.

Doyle's biography is really great because he's basically the Forrest Gump of poker having been at so many events formative to the history of poker and Las Vegas.

Greg (FossilMan)
6mo ago

Here is a link to the schedule at the 2001 WSOP, the first time I played in it. As you can see, it is a lot more limit poker than big bet. https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/festiva...

And my recollection of other tourney series at that time and before is similar. The main event of most series was NLH, and another NLH at a lower price point, plus a pot limit game or two, but all the rest limit poker. And all the cash games everywhere were 99% limit poker in the 90s up until the poker boom.

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