Fixed, Spread, and Pot Limit

There’s no shortchanging this discussion. The structure of your stakes is absolutely key to the length of your home poker tournament. As discussed, tournament poker revolves around players being eliminated as they run out of poker chips. That means as time progresses, fewer and fewer players are chasing the same amount of chips. It also means the average chip count per player is higher as players are eliminated. If the stakes in your poker tournament never changed as time progresses, then each pot would be less and less consequential to any player’s overall chip count. Further, the tournament could last days if the stakes didn’t increase over time. It is important to the poker tournament structure that stakes increase with time. That way, the fewer and fewer players are playing for larger and larger pots. It also means the antes, blinds, and bets (depending on the game you choose to play) continue to increase so that players with small amounts of money left are eliminated from the tournament by attrition. Stakes need to increase with time in a poker tournament to ensure that players are eliminated without having to play for a week.

There’s more than one way to set up your stakes structure. There are four different betting limits in poker: fixed limit, spread limit, pot limit, and no limit. Let’s look at the four of them separately and then talk about how you can use one, two, or three of the four formats in your tournament.

Fixed Limit

The amount that a player can bet or raise is fixed. If the fixed betting limit on a given round is $1, then any player that wants to bet has to bet $1 – no more, no less. If another player wants to raise that bet, that player has to raise by $1 – no more, no less. The fixed amount means that each player has the decision to fold, call, bet, or raise, but in doing so, it has to be with the fixed betting amount.

In Texas Hold ‘Em, there are four betting rounds. Typically, the first and second betting rounds have one fixed amount, while the third and fourth betting rounds have a fixed amount that is double the first fixed amount. If the fixed amount of bets and raises on the pre-flop and flop is $1, then the fixed amount of bets and raises on the turn and river is typically $2.

In Seven Card Stud, there are five betting rounds. Typically, the first and second betting rounds have one fixed amount, while the third, fourth, and fifth betting rounds have a fixed amount that is double the first fixed amount. If the fixed amount of bets and raises on third and fourth street is $1, then the fixed amount of bets and raises on fifth, sixth, and seventh street is typically $2.

Spread Limit

The amount that a player can bet or raise falls within a certain range. If the spread betting limit on a given round is $1-4, then any player that wants to bet can bet anywhere from $1 to $4. Unlike fixed limit, the player has the option to bet as little as $1 or as much as $4. Home poker players that are used to playing Dealer’s Choice are likely the most familiar with this format. If you’re used to playing quarter-ante, one-dollar maximum raise, then you’re probably used to being able to bet and raise within a spread of anywhere from 25 cents to $1 on any given round.

There are a couple of considerations with the spread limit format. The first consideration is that on later betting rounds, the range itself usually increases. In Texas Hold ‘Em, for example, if the spread limit range on the pre-flop and flop is $1-4, you may determine that the spread limit range on the turn and river is $4-8. Now, a player that wants to bet on the turn or river has to bet within a range of as little as $4 or as much as $8. The second consideration is that when a player raises another player’s bet in spread limit poker, the amount of the raise needs to be as least as much as the amount of the original bet. For example, if the spread limit range is $1-4, and the original bettor bets $2, the raiser needs to raise by at least $2 – for example, he cannot see the original $2 bet and raise it by $1.

We do not find the spread limit format to be very popular in tournament poker. For one thing, it lends itself to a little more confusion since there is a wider range of options available to each player. This as opposed to fixed limit, where a player who bets or raises can only do by a fixed amount. Also, where tournament poker strays from fixed limit, it tends to pass right over spread limit and into the far more exciting world of pot limit and no limit.

Pot Limit

The amount that a player can bet or raise is limited only to the amount of the money that is in the pot at the time that the bet or raise is made. If there is $20 in the pot, then any player can bet as much as $20. In this example, if a player bet the $20, the next player is now looking at a $40 pot. That second player has the option to raise as much as $40. As noted in the spread limit section above, the amount of the raise – while it can be as much as is in the pot – must be at least as large in size as the bet that preceded it.

There are a couple of points that should stand out from this description. First, keeping track of the amount of money that’s in the pot every time a player bets can be onerous. Typically, the table has a general idea of what’s in the pot. Unfortunately, the more mathematical players at the table give away one of their greatest strategies if they admit too frequently that they know exactly how much money is in the pot at any given time. The second point is that, as opposed to fixed limit or spread limit, a player can lose a lot of money very quickly. In the example above, if the raiser raises $40 on top of the original $20 bet and loses that hand, that player is down $60. That’s a fair chunk of change in one hand. Having said that however, we’ve already noted that the stakes in a tournament need to increase as it progresses. Moving to pot limit is sometimes how you can accelerate the elimination of players from the tournament. And after all, pot limit has a far more intimidating cousin named No-Limit Poker.


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