Tips From Phil Galfond on How to Raise Your Limits

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Arved Klöhn Pokerlistings Author
  • Fact Checked by: PokerListings
  • Last updated on: February 10, 2025

When people choose poker as the primary occupation, there’s one specific question that will come up after a while, and that’s – How to raise the limits of the ABI?

Professional poker player Phil Galfond has an answer to this question and in this article, we’ll tell you exactly what he says!

Photo Credit: Danny Maxwell

Excuses For Lack Of Growth

According to Phil Galfond, there are three main reasons for why people cannot move onto more expensive games. The key idea here is that only one of these reasons is an actual problem.

The other two are excuses that poker players often use only to avoid raising the limits.

Excuse 1: Everything Is About The Bankroll

One of the most popular misconceptions among many players is that their bankroll is the main problem. Some people think that they have enough poker skills to go on higher limits, but that their key problem is that the bankroll is too small.

Of course, this could be the case. However, many people make the mistake of initially thinking like that and allow their bankroll to be the reason why do they don’t go further in their poker careers. The key takeaways here is that – if you blame the bankroll, it cannot grow by itself!

The more you talk about it – the less time you spend on actually working with your bankroll. At that point, you have to focus on skills such as Bankroll Management. In the end, your bankroll doesn’t actually matter in the long run.

Excuse 2: Bad Luck And Misfortune

The second reason of the bunch is probably the most common mistakes that poker players tend to make. Many players attribute their losses to a lack of luck. In other words, if it weren’t for their bad luck, they’d already be playing high stakes poker tournaments. However, the key point here has nothing to do with luck.

Variance is huge in poker. It’s what poker is based on. The important thing to remember is that even the best players don’t know how to deal with the poker variance; and you can’t either.

For Ganfold, the key takeaway is that putting in the work matters more than luck here.

For instance, if you come back with some bad results, there are two ways to go about it. The first is to blame everything on luck. The second is to work on some skill or trait that you can affect, something other than luck and variance. At this point, everything is up to you.

How To Be Successful Despite Bad Luck and Bankrolls

As it turns out, for Phil Galfond it all boils down to two main things you should do. The first is to take Bankroll Management responsibly. The second (and possibly more important one) is to work on your poker skills constantly.

Downswing in Poker

Now that we’ve gotten the excuses out of the way, it’s high time to discuss the Downswing in poker. There are two main components that comprise the downswing and if you work on them, you’ll be able to manage how often you get into the downswing.

  • Personal Advantage and Expectations – there are two important things here. The first one is BB/100 which is how many Big Blinds you won for 100 played hands. The second one is the Return On Investment that you expect.
  • Poker Variance – we already discussed that variance is part of every poker game and that it’s measured in BB/100. This indicator also can vary depending on the game. For instance, if the game is played tight, then variance will be lower.

When it comes to poker variance, an abundance of players make the mistake of playing with lower variance. This decision can badly affect their win rate and will get players into a downswing more frequently than not, leading to less money over all.

As an example, let’s imagine that you have won 1 Big Blind in 100 hands in a No-Limit cash game. In this case, it is hard to predict your future results because the variance is higher than your win rate.

But let’s consider another example. Let’s imagine that you have won 15 Big Blinds in 100 hands in the same poker game as above. In this case, you can have positive expectations about your results.

If you improve your advantages and constantly work on them, then it will become hard for you to get into a long downswing.

Phil Galfond Tricks For Soft Games

First of all, when you play softer games with weaker players, you should know that complicated strategies are useless. In such situations, you should use simpler tactics based on more basic rules and tricks. There are also two other suggestions that you can use in such games.

Just keep in mind that these suggestions will be useless with professional players.

Trick 1: Play Aggressively

The first thing to know about soft games is that weak players feel uncomfortable when someone raises bets and plays confidently – you can use this as an advantage.

For example, weaker players could overfold when they see an opponent who plays aggressively. 

The main takeaway is that an aggressive approach should be used only against weak and sometimes middle-ground players. Stronger poker player can easily detect your style and will use your aggression to their own advantage.

Trick 2: Nitiness

According to Phil Galfond, the second thing to know is that the average $1/2 player can be either too loose or too passive. That is why they usually don’t bluff or play too many hands – again, you can use this as an advantage.

In this situation, you should play a better hand than them on the pre-flop, and you should also look for folds when they start to place bets. This is a solid strategy when playing weak players, but will be useless with higher stakes games.

More experienced players will understand what you’re doing and will simply bluff more. On top of that, if they see you playing only premium hands they will just start to fold against you. 

At this point, some players start to think that they can just take the pot, but actually, everything’s not so simple. The only way that to win when you play nitty is for other players to call you down. But when you start to play with more professional players, they can easily recognize when you’re playing nitty and will easily play against you.

When Skill Does Not Help To Grow

Sometimes, poker players have good natural skills, they understand the game and can easily go onto higher limits and play against stronger opponents, but it simply doesn’t happen.

Phil Galfond claims that the main reason for this is players fooling themselves. Galfond notes three main psychological reasons why people try and avoid higher limits.

Lack of Confidence

According to Galfond, the first reason is a player’s lack of confidence, which can flourish under certain conditions.

For instance, people are usually afraid to move up when they’ve been playing at the same limit for a long time. Your skills improve and you become better and better at your limits. You start to understand your opponents, what they are doing, and how to react.

When such players go onto higher limits they start to question their skills. They start to think that their previous skillset will not work with higher limits. Furthermore, when you play on the same limit for a long time you start to think that you belong to that limit.

To deal with this problem, Phil Galfond suggests to start to consider yourself as a player of a new limit. For example, you can tell everyone that you have started to play on $2/5 instead of $1/2. On top of that, always remind yourself about that before every game.

Fear of Huge Pots

Of course, when you start to play on higher limits the pots and amount become bigger and higher. A fear of such pots is a common when you change your limits and it’s completely understandable since you will need to risk a larger amount of money.

Another thing that you should remember is that a $200 pot in $1/2 games is not the same thing as a $200 pot in $2/5 games. That is why players sometimes make the mistake of expecting the same hands and strategies on new limits. When you choose to play on a higher limit you should be careful with certain pots, as it will take some time to understand their ratio with blinds and stack.

Emotional Suppression

Phil Galfond says the third mistake players tend to make is suppressing their emotions.

Galfond says that he also did it at the beginning of this career. That is why you should always understand that your emotions are a crucial part of your life. Understanding this point will help you to avoid serious logical and psychological mistakes.

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