Here in Florida, the law limits bet sizes to a maximum of $5 (and allows no-limit games with buyins of $100 or less, but in this article, I'll be discussing limit games). Due to this, there are a number of "strange" limit games in the state, for example:

$2 straight limit ($1-$2 blinds) almost everywhere.
$3-$5 fixed limit ($2-$3 blinds) at Sarasota.
$5 straight limit ($3-$5 blinds) at Naples/Ft Myers.

Now, admittedly, the competition at these games is fairly weak, but there are adjustments to be made to optimize your play in them.

First, preflop. In the SB, for example, in the Sarasota game, you're OK to call limpers with almost any two cards, even if it's folded around to you! Consider the case of 2 3 in the SB against K K in the BB: you're getting 5:1 odds from the pot (completing your $2 blind costs $1, the blinds total $5), and your hand is a winner 15% of the time. Yes, it's slightly -EV, but the KK would likely NEVER fear a board of 2 3 7, so your implied odds are greater. It's fit-or-fold on the flop; if the flop hits your hand hard (not bottom-pair-weak-kicker, not middle pair, I mean at least a pair and a draw, or two pair), you can play it out and make some money from implied odds, and if not you can get away cheap.

Your hand selection in the straight limit games should be different; your high card values go up, while your suited and connected values go down. Why? When do most straights and flushes hit in a "normal" limit game? On the turn or river, when the bets double and the straight or flush gets paid big. In the straight limit games, however, since there is no higher betting limit, the straight or flush doesn't get paid well, and is therefore less valueable. Therefore, hands like 6 7, that are playable in late position in a normal limit game, aren't so good here, while hands like K Q become more playable in early position (as the players who DO play small-card drawing hands in late position are giving up equity to your higher cards).

In the Sarasota game, your hand selection should be relatively standard; since there is a higher betting limit, straights and flushes get paid off reasonably. However, since the higher limit is $1 less than in a "normal" limit game, you can more easily fold your weak straight/flush draw hands preflop; you'll need more callers to give you odds than you would in a "normal" game.

Postflop, as indicated above, in the $2 and $5 games, you can draw more inexpensively, but you don't get paid off as well. Because of this, it's almost never a good idea to slowplay a good hand; you want to make it expensive for the draws to happen (and, when they arrive, it won't be as costly to you as it'll be on a "cheap" round). You don't want to be playing draws as much; free card plays negated in value, and your implied odds are lower. Strong draws are still playable (eg, A Q on a flop of T J 3), but weak ones can be safely mucked, even though your pot odds on the turn are better!

In the Sarasota game, postflop adjustments can be more limited; basically only the weakest draws should disappear. You can safely slowplay huge flops, and free card plays just become cheaper-card-plays (a raise from the button in our above situation with A Q on a flop of T J 3 costs you $3 to save you from the $5 turn bet, so you save $2 instead of the normal $3). Semi-bluff opportunities are OK for such plays, but don't do it if you only have the straight or flush outs to beat top pair.

Interestingly, in all these games, many players seem to take a sort of binary logic on whether or not they'll play their hand; they look at the cards, decide to play or not, and then see the flop or fold. Note that at no time is there a "re-evaluate the strength of my hand based on the preflop raise from the UTG player" stage in that logic. Additionally, players in these games almost never let go of a hand when they've limped and are raised preflop! Therefore, your preflop raises should be more based on value than on wanting to narrow the field. All of a sudden, hands that are perfectly callable in other games become raising hands in late position, and your field-limiting raises in early position should be severely reconsidered.

Low limit games like these have a ton of weak players; they offer a skilled player a nearly ATM-like opportunity to take money off the table. With minor adjustments to your play, you can raise your expectation in these fishponds.

While driving down 75 (I had some business to take care of in North Carolina, so I was returning home. Alas, I'd spent the previous night in Jacksonville, but the St Johns Greyhound track -- which has a poker room -- was about 30 miles from my hotel, and I didn't feel like taking an extra 60 miles onto my trip, and the much-nearer Jacksonville Kennel Club has not yet opened their poker room.), at about noon, I was in Sarasota and decided to stop at the dog track there to have some lunch and play some cards. The track is relatively easy to find, about 6 miles west of of exit 213 (it's the big building with a mural of a greyhound, kind of hard to miss). It turns out that I picked a good day to go there, as it was "50¢ Friday," with admission, as well as hot dogs, soda, and draft beer all costing 50¢.

The poker room is upstairs, under the grandstands. There isn't a whole lot of signage, but if you spot the logo (a smiling greyhound with an eye patch and one ear up), you can find it easily enough. Up the escalator, and then up a ramp to go under the stands, and you're in what is likely the physically nicest poker room in Florida. The ceiling is high, there are chandeliers, marble counter tops on the brush/cashier station and the bar, everything is decorated professionally in shades of brown and beige, giving the whole area an air of relaxed luxury. The tables are covered in beige, with a betting circle, and pictures of One Eyed Jack on each table. There are two types of chairs, one high-back with firm padding and one low-back with a softer cushion.

I was early, as the room opens up at 1PM (hours of operation are 1PM to 1AM, Monday through Saturday. They are closed on Sundays; likely due to Florida's laws that mandate parimutual poker rooms can only operate on days when there is live racing), so there was no waiting on the list for $3-$5 (that's right, $3-$5. $3 for the first 2 rounds, $5 for the last two. Blinds are $2 and $3. I'll discuss adjustments to make for such a game later, in another entry), but I did have to wait for the game to start. Fortunately, one of my table-mates brought a newspaper, and I got caught up on the chess and bridge columns while waiting for our dealer. When he sat down and sold chips to the table, we still had about 10 minutes to go until start time, so we chatted for a while. It turns out that he and some of the other dealers at the club share a hobby with me -- chip collecting! He called over one of their main collectors, and we chatted for a while, comparing collections. It turns out that One Eyed Jacks' $1 chip won the CCGTCC (Casino Chip and Gaming Token Collectors Club -- the national collector's group for casino chips and slot tokens) "chip of the year" award. Next time I go up there, I'll be bringing any extras I have along with me, to see if anyone needs a trade. I also pocketed one of each of their chips (50¢ -- you'll see the reason for this chip shortly -- $1, and $5), so now I have a full set of One Eyed Jacks chips.

The game was a typical low-limit affair. It started off fairly tight, for low limit, with only 4 or 5 players seeing the flop when it was unraised, and no preflop raising (literally, for the first hour I was there, there was no preflop raising). Post-flop, nobody seemed to respect bets or check raises (One hand I had was a 4-limper unraised BB with K 2, flopped K 7 6, bet out into 2 callers, turned a 2, check raised the player to my left, rivered the 6 bet, got a call, and lost to his A A, which he'd limped with UTG. Well, that was $15 and a good checkraise into the equity bank.)

At the 1-hour mark, it was like a switch was pulled. All of a sudden, any pretense to "tight" went out the window. 8- and 9-way action was the norm on the flop (myself and one other player being the one or two who folded preflop consistently), and there were even some preflop raises. I took advantage of this in one hand: I was on the button with A K, and there are six limpers to me. I raise, both blinds call, and all the limpers call (woohoo, a $54 -- well, really $49 with the rake -- pot preflop in a game with a $3 preflop limit!). Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, as I flopped A 3 8. Check to me, I bet, get 4 callers. Turn is a lovely A, check to me, I bet, get 2 callers ($63 pot). River is a harmless 6, check to me, I bet, get a caller, and win a $73 pot ($54 profit!) with the king kicker over A 9.

Oddly enough, the very next hand, I was dealt A 9, it was folded around to me (weird, at this table, to be in steal position and have it folded to you. I think this was the first time I saw it happen at this table, in fact.). At this point, the devil on my shoulder told me to pop it. Obligingly, I raised, the blinds called, and the flop came Q 7 4. Check to me, the devil says "you can push them off it." I bet, they call. Turn is a 9, check to me. "No, really, you can push them off it." I bet, they fold. Score 1 for Satan, I suppose.

I had to resist the urge to flash my cards to the player I'd beaten the previous hand (and who had called my preflop raise and flop bet this one), and say "That's how you play ace-nine."

At 2:30, I realized I had to get back on the road, so I racked up and left a winner, up about $40 (slightly less, if you count the fact that I've kept some of their chips for my collection). I'll be back there next time I'm anywhere near Sarasota, though. Or if one of my friends wants to learn to play (they offer a $2 straight limit game that seems to go all the time, as opposed to my local poker room, which rarely gets the $2 game going). Or if I feel like a bit of a drive.

A note on their games: they spread $2 straight limit holdem and $3-$5 limit holdem, Omaha, and Omaha/8, 50¢ ante $2-$5 stud and stud/8, $1-$2 no limit ($60 buyin), $2-$3 no limit ($100 buy-in), and single table tourneys. They run sit-n-go's as well -- $27+13 paying $180 and $90, $47+13 paying $250, $140, and $80, $95+$15 paying $500, $300, and $150, and $275+25 paying $1400, $900, and $450. While I was there, a $47+13 and $95+15 got together.

They also spread multi table tourneys the six days of the week that the room is open:
Monday: 1PM $50 with a $40 add on, 7PM $40
Tuesday: 1PM $30 with $20 re-buys, 7PM $30 with $20 re-buys
Wednesday: 1PM $65, 7PM $65
Thursday: 1PM $30 with $20 re-buys, 7PM $65
Friday: 1PM $50 with a $50 add on, 7PM $120 with a $100 add on
Saturday: 3:30 $330 (30-minute levels), 7PM $65

Also, every day at 10:30, there is a $40 "blitz" tourney, with 40 players maximum.

There are single-table satellites into the Saturday tourneys, $70+15 paying two places to the $330 game and $20 each. Satellite entries must be used for the next Saturday game.

The rake is moderately steep; 50¢ at $5$, $15, $25, and every $5 thereafter up to $60. There is also a 50¢ jackpot taken at $10 and $20. The overall effect is to make the rake 10% to $6, but nominally it's 10% to $5 with a $1 jackpot -- they just rake slowly as the jackpot is being pulled out. NL games charge time, which is (I believe) $5 per player every half hour.

There are a number of jackpots. Each form of high hand has it's own jackpot, ranging from quad deuces to the royal for both hold em and stud (both cards must play for hold em, and for all jackpots the pot must be $20 or more), and all straight flushes for Omaha. The jackpots vary, depending on when they've been hit last (and, I presume, the royals get more of a share of the jackpot drop), ranging from $39 for a steel wheel in Omaha up to $599 for a straight flush to the king in hold em, and $4396 for a royal in clubs (the royal jackpots vary by suit). Additionally, on Friday, any player getting a flush (not flush or higher, just a flush) is entered into a drawing for a "dueling rack attack." Blindfolded, 2 players rack up chips. The one who racks up more, gets to keep them. The loser gets 1/2 of what they rack. Also, on Mondays, starting at 6PM, flushes win you a square on their board for Monday Night football (either the first 100 flushes, or the end of the first quarter, close off the board) -- the first through third quarter scores win $100, and the game ending score is $200.

Cocktail service is available in the room, which has it's own bar. The waitress was rarely near my table (she was serving the tourney players, perhaps?), but it's not hard to get a drink. The room also has its own restrooms, which is a nice perk, and like all Florida poker rooms, is nonsmoking. The grandstand, right outside the door, is a smoking area for those who need to light up.

So, UltimateBet offers a jackpot now. On jackpot tables (shown red in the client, and labeled as "jackpot") they take an extra 50¢ from the pot when it's raked to add to the jackpot, which currently stands at $61,000 and growing (up from $57,000 when I sat down this evening). Now, at upper limits (say, $5-$10, which has jackpot tables), an extra .50 from each pot seems negligable, but at .50-$1 and $1-$2, that's pretty steep.

It's a bad deal for the players, and I'll tell you why. One, most jackpots tend to take money out of circulation as effectively as a rake. If I were to win either share of the jackpot, the likelihood is that I'd take most of it out of my bankroll to do something like put down a down payment on a house, or buy a car, or expand my wardrobe, or travel. You probably wouldn't see me taking a shot at $30-$60 with it (well, most of it). Effectively, that money would be removed from the poker economy.

Now, the other reason that the jackpot is bad for the players is this: UB's jackpot kind of sucks. The breakdown is 25% to start the next jackpot, 10% to the house, 32.5% goes to the loser in the bad beat, 16.25% to the winner, and of the remaining 16.25%, $1000 goes to each of the other players dealt in that hand, and the rest to everyone playing on a jackpot table of that limit.

So, if I win a pot with the jackpot rake, of my .50, .05 is going to the house (technically, .0325 and .0125 from the main and backup, respectively. Hey, doesn't UB get enough rake as it is?), .125 is going to the backup jackpot, and only .325 is coming back to the players directly.

Now, I know that it's common practice in offline rooms to charge a "jackpot administration fee," to their jackpots (One room I know of takes almost 50%!), but the fact that UltimateBet feels the need to charge this fee seems excessive; one of the joys of online poker is the lower rake, due to the lower overhead, and it seems to me that this jackpot fee is just another way to charge rake.

Oh, and the jackpot requirements? Quad eights cracked, with both hole cards playing in both hands, and at least 4 players on the table (although, it seems that with fewer than 4 players, the jackpot rake isn't taken, so at least that's fair). Most poker rooms' jackpot requirement is aces full of queens or better cracked. Some don't even require both hole cards to play!

OK, so my objections are (beyond generally not liking jackpots):

1) The jackpot drop is steep at the low limits.
2) The admin fee is excessive.
3) The requirements are too high.

Solutions?

1) Change the jackpot drop to an extra 2.5% of the pot, up to a max (say, $1). Have multiple jackpots running, one for each limit, and drop that extra rake into the appropriate limit's jackpot.

2) Stop charging the 10%, give it to the loser of the hand. If UB really needs the extra rake, they should just rake the low limit games up to $1.05, and the upper-limit ones to $3.05. They already get to hold our money in their account (which, I'd be willing to wager, is interest-bearing), and the jackpot gets held there too (so there's at least $50k that's impossible to cash out sitting there at all times); take the interest, and give us the fee.

3) Start with high requirements, but as the jackpots get bigger, lower the requirements. For example, if the jackpot is under $10k, require a straight flush to be cracked, while between $10,001 and $15k, allow for quad aces to be cracked, and for every $5k in the jackpot, move the requirement down one notch (up to $20k, allow for kings, $25k allows for queens, etc), down to a "bare minimum" of aces-full being beaten, which would be at $75,001 and above. This would seriously increase interest in the jackpot tables as the jackpots get bigger. Note that this is an example; I'd have to work out the math to figure out where the transitions should be (hey, a project for next time I travel...). Alternately, make it a "must go" jackpot, where the best losing hand for each time period (hour?) gets the jackpot money accumulated that hour -- sort of like the high hand bonus that UB ran when they first opened up, although in that case, UB just put the money up themselves, and saved the players the trouble of double-raking us.

Last night, while playing online, I sat down at a $1-$2 limit table (yeah, sue me. I like low limits.). The statistics were nothing special; 40% seeing the flop, $10 or so in each pot.

However, when I sat down, I noticed quickly that the texture of the game was quite different than what I'd expected. Most low-limit games are loose-passive affairs, with a lot of hands going to showdown, and not much preflop raising (call this "east-coast low limit," as most low limit games I've seen in the west coast tend to be loose-aggressive, with lots of preflop raises and more action). Most pots aren't won uncontested, and bluffs rarely work.

However, the game I sat down in played more like it was out of Hold'em For Advanced Players, with more than half the pots being raised preflop, semi-bluff checkraises on the turn driving out players, and river bets with unimproved hands winning pots. Yes, there were 3-5 players in on each flop (either the raiser, a caller, and one of the blinds, or 3 limpers and the blinds), and the pots were hovering around $10, but that's because they were either $5 and won uncontested on the flop, or $15 and won on the later rounds or shown down. Probably 1 hand in 4 reached showdown (and that estimate might be high. Of 111 hands in the session, I showed down less than 7, while winning 14 pots total.). The game played like an aggressive $5-$10 game, not a $1-$2.

It was kind of nice. Some of the more "advanced" plays that you wouldn't make against fish (can't bluff out someone who's too stupid to know that your bets say he's behind) worked! Call a raise in the BB with J Q, catch a flop of 9 8 3, and checkraise to win! Limp with A A, then reraise preflop to trap a 9 9 for an extra bet! Make free card plays! Push at big pots! Ultimately, I wound up down $3.50 for the session (getting KK cracked on the flop for 4 preflop bets helped; someone called with QJ, and flopped JJ3, and it was a bet on each round to me), but it was money well spent in entertainment alone.

What's the moral of the story? Well, there isn't much of one -- if anything, it'd be this: Don't be a victim of Fancy Play Syndrome in games where fancy play doesn't work. None of those plays I made last night would have flown in a "normal" $1-$2 game; when has a checkraise on the flop ever pushed out most low-limit fish? However, having recognized the kind of game I was sitting in, I could adjust my game to fit the game texture.

Make sure you know how the game runs when you sit down.

So, after work yesterday, I went to go play some cards at my local dog track. Not feeling like buying in short to the various NL games (it seemed like everyone had a couple buyins in front of them, and I hate playing short), I sat down in the only limit game spread in the state, $2-$4 (yeah, yeah, I know, tiny. State law limits the bets to $5 in limit, so it's what they can spread. Deal.). The following hand came up when we were 9-handed:

I'm on the SB, dealt 4 5. Everyone limps, I complete, the BB checks. That's $15 in the pot after rake and jackpot.

The flop comes A 2 7.

I check, the BB, a fairly predictable rock, bets out, 4 callers (gotta love low limit, hopes and prayers are worth a call!), 3 folds, and it's a $2 bet into a $24 pot (after rake) to me. 12:1 for a gutshot, backdoor flush (albeit a bad one), and implied odds after that? Sure, $2 is good for 11:1 odds. The SB folds, and we see the turn 6-handed in a $26 pot. (Note: I did not raise here to build a pot for a turn draw as that has been done earlier, and it caused a pretty good clearing of the table; I'd have likely forced everyone but the BB out, thus killing my odds play. Were I in late position, rather than the SB, I'd consider it.).

The turn is the 6.

All of a sudden my hand looks pretty good -- 6 straight outs, 9 flush outs. I check, the BB bets out, there's a caller (who has me slightly worried that he's on a flush draw with something like 8 9, but he could also have 7x), everyone else folds and it's $4 into a $33 pot to me. 8.5:1 pot odds, I'm delighted, it's just under 7:1 for my straight, and just over 2:1 if my flush is good. Call. 3-handed, $37 pot.

River, a 3. I've got the nuts. I check, BB bets, the in-between caller folds, I raise, BB thinks about it, says "you can't have been drawing with 45," and calls.

"Nope, I wasn't drawing with 45. I was drawing with 45 suited." He mucks his cards (probably Ax), and begins bitching about how you can't keep the drawing hands out.

Which is true -- when the drawing hand isn't riding on the schooling effect of fish. Pull a good pot ($52, of which $16 was mine), AND put the player to my left on tilt, what isn't to like?