History of No Limit poker

I am sure Doyle had to play solidly to beat the $2K/4K or whatever mixed game at Bellagio. In some private mid stakes NLHE game with almost all amateurs, playing deep with maybe half limped pots, he could probably usually play any pp, suited broadway, suited ace, or suited connector. So he seemed to be playing much looser than pros who mostly just waited for good hands.

Back in 2016, I blogged:

"Limit poker dominated the early days of the WSOP. Initially only the championship event was no-limit. Although no-limit games briefly took over in 1975 (60%) and 1976 (63%), limit games were otherwise the majority of the events until 2000. From 2001 to 2004, limit still held the lead but had fallen under 50%. With the Moneymaker effect, however, No-Limit Hold 'Em alone pushed no-limit games ahead to stay in 2005 (48%), accounting for over half the events since 2008 (54% in 2016)."

I have a year-by-year spreadsheet but haven't updated it recently as it's no longer interesting (skewing even more toward NL due to the preponderance of NLHE in the online bracelet events).

P.S. to Greg (Missed Connection): I wish I'd had time to chat with you at this year's Seniors. I was the guy wearing the "World's Greatest Unknown WSOP Historian" jacket as we ran out of time to get water. Congrats on your run to 40th.

I first went to WSOP starting in the mid 80's and the big bet holdem games were pot limit 25-50 blinds uncapped. They played much bigger than most NL games do now except the true nosebleeds. NL holdem really picked up in Casinos with the advent of capped buyin NL games as I recall, which mimicked the online capped games which started the NL boom on-line. I played in one of the first on-line big bet games I ever saw at CCCpoker - it was 1-2 uncapped and amazing. Then Stars came along with capped games along with Party Full Tilt and the others.

They had an invitational NL 2-7 SD game on Pokergo a few years ago. They played it with a cap per hand. Doyle and some old guys played it with some younger players.

I would assume that game was played stand alone, and that is why it has been a WSOP event at almost every series. They showed a HU NL 5-card-draw match between top players on "Cincinnati Kid". They were playing HU NLHE in "Rounders". HU matches go back at least to the mixed game one between Moss and Nick the Greek I think in the late 1940s.

If you read books discussing razz, it is clear it was played as a stand alone game. Probably there were more different games played standalone. Then most of the games became stud high, then most limit holdem, then most NLHE. Now a lot of games are only played in mixed game rotations or WSOP, etc. tournaments that were played standalone.

When I could get on to the big Stars easily in the US, the had regular NL 2-7 SD games, as well as 2-7 TD, and even pot limit 2-7TD. You used to be able to play standalone razz and limit 5-card-draw online. With a bigger player pool online, a lot of games go standalone. So I am pretty sure they played draw and stud games NL or PL stand alone, before limit poker became so dominant for a while.

i remember party being a 50 blind cap on NL when it first came out.

Greg is correct ...

In 2001, the most popular game online and live, at least in Las Vegas, was Limit Holdem.

Local Las Vegas players would search for NLHE cash games, venturing from Henderson
as far as Texas Station if a cash game were said to be spread.

The most popular "big game" offered for cash online or live was $15-30 limit.

NLHE grew up during 2001 -2002 online for both cash and tournaments.

The single most important factor for the rise of NLHE was the advent of televised games on the Travel Channel. Online sites servers crashed from the overload when the first two episodes, featuring Party and Ultimate Bet aired. My business was frozen out of purchasing a season, but individual markets sold television commercials, especially for Southern California, via a Tijuana super-station.

When television commercials ran on-air, First time depositors boomed in those markets Televison exposure made NLHE cash king..

(Nevada Gaming quickly killed a Las Vegas area commercial which ran for one day, co-branding an online poker company with the WSOP, which at that time could not afford its own television ads. Similarly, a live Four Queens tournament, cobranded with Ultimate Bet was nixed. On the other hand, PokerStars wrapped the entire Palms Hotel Casino building with an ad one year.)

All of this is correct, especially the contribution from the Travel Channel and the World Poker Tour. Our book sales went crazy before anyone heard of Moneymaker.

Mason

I assume when you say 5-card draw, you mean 5-card stud. One card facedown and four cards faceup, with four betting rounds: that's stud.

And although the climactic scene is a heads-up game, other scenes show ring games:

Yeah, I meant no limit 5 card stud. That is what they played HU in "Cincinnati Kid". I played PL 5 card draw tournaments on Stars. I am sure that was played too though.

I know it was almost all limit poker when televised NLHE changed that, but they played a lot of NL further back.

Fish liked limit, because they could play really loose and bad and not lose that much at a time.

Notice they all paid $10 time charge or whatever at the beginning. He said "no limit and no string bets."

"Cincinnati Kid" is from 1965, but set in the 1930s. It is about a match between 2 top players and a 6-handed high stakes game. They had like $10K each on the table, which is like $1M now, bigger than any public game now, and it may or may not be realistic. Although they said "no string bets", it shows string bets. It also shows them taking money out of their jackets during a hand. Both of those are for drama, but not realistic. There were many professional and some high stakes players back then, but it was all underground. Obviously, a no limit game makes for better drama, but it was probably what most high stakes games were.

I think in the 1980s and 90s, fish realized they would be taken worse in no limit games, and those games died out mostly because there weren't the donators.

I don't think you should be taking scenes from a Hollywood movie as accurately reflecting how poker was played at the time. I have never seen a movie that wasn't very wrong in often bizarre ways about how poker works.

I haven't seen this one, but I know it ends with a straight flush beating Aces full, a one-in-millions chance, and according to Wikipedia, the loser decides to "place a $5,000 marker" mid-hand, which sounds like the game wasn't being played table stakes, the most ridiculous of all mistakes ever seen in movies about poker.

$10k in 1930 is only about $188k today adjusted for inflation.

Yeah, all that was ridiculous, string bets, taking money from their pockets in the middle of the hand, and a straight flush is almost impossible in 5 card stud, much less against another big hand.

The scenes of the back room games in "Cincinnati Kid", and the high stakes games and HU match seem fairly realistic.

"Rounders" seemed pretty realistic. It sort of copied the HU match. The big hand boat over boat in NLHE was much more realistic. However, the betting in the HU match was not realistic. Also, a few things like "the same guys make the final table of the main event every year."

maybe that is what is the statistics say, but the average wage was $500/year. In any case the stakes were greater than 100/200 PLO today. Maybe comparable to 5/10K limit mixed. Not sure if those stakes were realistic.

Rounders got some things about poker better than most movies, but one scene was so ridiculous that it blew its credibility.

The main character interrupts a stud game in the middle of a hand, instantly knows what each player has, then gets his friend to bluff out 6 or so other players with one bet on the end.

Not to mention that what he did there was outright cheating to help his friend, but no one complains and he stays a hero who everyone loves.

I'm having trouble finding the post, but years ago there was a similar post to this one that had a link to a magazine article from the 50s or 60s talking about the emergence of a new poker game called IIRC "no limit texas hold me."

Of course, no limit poker in other forms existed prior to hold 'em.

I couldn't find a straight link to the article. You can click on the images in the link to get larger images of the pages. Sorry for taking up so much room in the thread, but thought it was important. The is from Life Magazine from 1968. Cover of magazine has Nixon and Agnew.

Article is very basic and not that informative. He talks about sitting down with just $50 and betting $100 into a $150 pot, so it seems like it was NLHE. He mentions that 65s can be a decent hand. He also mentions that 5 card stud used to be the main game. It was called "Hold Me Darling" and "High Holdem".

https://forums.operationsports.com/fofc/...

You can also click on the images in my above post and make them bigger and more readable.

The article mentions 5 card stud was the main game. It doesn't seem like a good game for fixed limit, because most people just won't have much on their first 2 or 3 cards.

One thing to remember about Cincinnati Kid is that regardless of how realistic it was, either for the 1930s or 1965, just like Rounders in 1998, it inspired a lot of people to play poker. I don't know if any of those people played no limit, but I definitely played 15 or 20 years ago in Las Vegas with older people who told me they got started because the Cincinnati Kid was so cool!

When I got started playing for serious money in the early 80s I was in New Mexico - no casinos at the time but underground rooms and private games were readily available. We rarely played holdem (I tried to talk guys into it sometimes) but rather a variety of stud and draw games. And all were played "table stakes" as they called NL at the time.

LHE was still the biggest tournament game in the early 2000's at the WSOP. It used to be the second event at the WSOP after the Employees tournament. I had been beating the 10-20 thru 20-40 LHE games in Cali since the early 1990's and decided to play the LHE at the WSOP in 2003. Finished 5th my first time out and 7th two years later. NLHE was already taking over at the WSOP with more and more events every year. Business got in the way and I rarely played the WSOP for over ten years. By then the fields had greatly diminished and it was no longer an important tournament at the WSOP. I still managed a 10th place in 2015 and even got a 28th last year in the 3K LHE. Decided to play the Main Even this year and made it until near the end of Day Three. Got knocked out with under 1,900 left. Not bad for a near 80 year old (July 19). It will be my last. I'm not made for that kind of endurance any more.

I started playing in cardrooms in the 1960's in Gardena. It was all Five Card Draw, either high or low. No other form of poker was allowed until 1987, and that's when poker boomed out here, with first the Bell Club and then the huge Bicycle Club coming along. The Commerce followed shortly after and Hawaiian Gardens began in a tent. All three are giant cardrooms to this day, well over 100 tables and lots of other card games available (Pai Gow and Baccarat).

In the 1970's I moved to Bakersfield and got in a Lowball Draw game at Buck Owen's Blackboard Inn. They played Table Stakes and you could bet whatever you had in front of you at any time. It was a wild game and I was the young kid there. I did all right though. I never heard of NLHE until the WSOP began later in the 70's.

Was there more action in pool than poker in the 70's?

I have two copies of that Life Magazine issue stashed away somewhere.
It’s a truly great origin article.

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That was an interesting article, thanks for sharing.