Limit Hold'em

It’s Hold’em, except the bet sizes are decided for you

Same cards, same board, same hands as no-limit. The only thing that changes is that nobody gets to choose how much to bet. Every bet and raise is a fixed size, and that’s why limit Hold’em is the “H” in H.O.R.S.E.: it’s the game every mixed table can play without a stack-size argument.

You’re not going to bluff anyone out of a pot for their whole stack here. You’re going to call a lot more, with a lot more hands, and the pots are going to get big anyway.

30-second cheat sheet

• Two hole cards, flop, turn, river. Button, small blind, big blind. Four betting rounds.
• Pre-flop and flop use the small bet, equal to the big blind. Turn and river use the big bet, double the small bet. At $4/$8: $4 bets before the turn, $8 after.
• A raise is the previous bet plus the current limit. There’s no “raise to whatever”.
• Under WSOP rules, a round allows one bet plus four raises with three or more players. After that you can only call or fold. Heads-up from the start of a round: raises are unlimited.
• Button straddles aren’t allowed. A new player posts the big blind to get a hand.
• Showdown is plain Hold’em: best five of seven, high hand only.

Full rules

The deal

Dealer button, small blind, big blind, two cards each, exactly like no-limit Hold’em. The small blind is half the big blind, though some rooms round it down at stakes like $5/$10. The dealer burns a card before the flop, turn, and river.

The betting

Pre-flop betting starts left of the big blind. After the flop, it starts with the first live player left of the button.

Bet sizes

• Pre-flop and on the flop: the small bet. At $4/$8, every bet and raise is exactly $4.
• On the turn and river: the big bet, $8.

Raising. You raise by exactly one bet size on top of the bet you’re facing. On the flop at $4/$8: bet $4, raise to $8, re-raise to $12, then $16, then $20. On the turn the steps are $8: bet $8, then $16, $24, $32, $40.

The cap. Under WSOP rule 130, a round allows a bet and four raises when three or more players aren’t all-in. A raise cap means after the fourth raise you can only call or fold. Straddles don’t count as a bet for the pre-flop cap. If the round starts heads-up, raising is unlimited (rule 131). If a round starts multiway and shrinks to two players mid-round, the cap still applies.

Short all-ins. An all-in for less than half a bet does not reopen the betting for players who already acted. Half a bet or more counts as a full bet or raise (WSOP rule 133; the TDA uses the same half-bet idea). See short all-in.

Buy-in and posting. The WSOP full buy-in is ten small bets. A player entering a limit game posts the big blind to be dealt in. No straddling on the button.

Kill pots. Some rooms run a kill. In the WSOP rules, a “full kill” is a kill blind of double the big blind that doubles the limits, and a “half kill” is 1.5x with limits raised by that amount. It’s usually a lowball and hi-lo thing, and rooms may or may not run it in Hold’em.

Showdown

Best five of seven, any combination of your hole cards. Ties split the pot, and the odd chip goes to the first tied seat clockwise from the button. Side pots split separately.

Rooms disagree

The raise cap is a house rule. WSOP: one bet plus four raises, unlimited heads-up. PokerListings says one bet plus three raises, unlimited when only two players remain. The TDA says the house limit applies even heads-up until the event is down to two players. This page uses the WSOP version. Ask the dealer what the cap is before you re-raise the third time.

The small blind and exact limits ($6/$12, $8/$16) also vary by room, and kills are optional.

Worked examples

Same pair, better kicker

Both pair kings, the better kicker takes it

Board

Alice

• Pair of Kings✓ wins

Bob

• Pair of Kings

Alice scoops the whole pot.

Both Alice and Bob pair the king on the board. Alice’s queen is a better kicker than Bob’s jack, so she wins. In limit Hold’em this is the whole story of a lot of pots: both players called all the way down with a king.

Board plays, split

The board is a straight and nobody beats it

Board

Alice

• Nine-high straight✓ wins

Bob

• Nine-high straight✓ wins

Alice takes half · Bob takes half

The board is a nine-high straight. Alice and Bob both play the board, and chop. In a limit game you’d have seen a lot of bets go in on the way to this pot, since nobody had to fold to a big raise.

How you’ll embarrass yourself

• Trying to bet a number. In limit you bet one size. NLHE habits like min-raising or “pot-sizing” mean nothing here.
• Betting the small bet on the turn. The bet doubles on the turn, not the flop. Small bet twice, big bet twice.
• Raising when the round is capped. Call or fold. That’s it.
• Playing like it’s no-limit. Bluffs work worse, and draws are cheaper to chase, so you play closer to showdown with more drawing hands. Value-bet your good hands.
• Straddling the button. Not allowed in limit.

Lore and reputation

Wikipedia calls limit Hold’em historically the most popular form of Hold’em in US casino live action, until no-limit overtook it with the televised WSOP and WPT. In mixed games it’s the “H” in H.O.R.S.E., which debuted at the WSOP in 2002 with a $2,000 buy-in, and it’s in the WSOP Poker Players Championship’s 8-game and 10-game mixes (the 10-game mix, since 2015, includes limit Hold’em). Wikipedia also mentions the University of Alberta’s “Cepheus” program (Science, January 2015) which plays heads-up limit Hold’em nearly perfectly.