Quote Originally Posted by ttanaka
It's hard to say the importance of knowing the limit game before entering the no limit arena. For me, I realized the shortcomings in the limit game, and how those hurt my profits. Because of the relatively small betting amounts, it's difficult to buy your hand when you're winning. Draw hands become more playable. If I flopped top pair, top kicker, I couldn't get my opponents out of the hand, and they would chase their hand and beat me. I think the limit game relies more on luck and less on skill.
Drawing hands are still huge in no-limit. Here's one of the best plays I ever made and it was on a draw. Too bad I didn't get a history for it.

I got 34s on (or near) the button limping in with a bunch of others. Board comes Q-2-rag giving me a weak flush draw and runners for a strait. $1 is bet and I pay it to see the turn which comes up a 5. No flush, but I now have a strait draw. It's checked to me and I bet the pot ($8.)

Why?
1) With so little agression shown so far in the hand there is good chance for me to take down the pot right there.
2) Lots of players are representing draws, so my flush might be drawing dead. A pure flush draw is highly unlikely to call a pot sized bet with only the river to go, resurecting my flush draw.
3) ~15 outs gives me approximatly a 1 in 3 chance of making my draw. A single caller on my bet gives me nearly break even odds before counting the last round of betting to go. Mulitple callers give me even better odds. If I miss my draw, I'm folding anyway since I missed my draw so very little chance of buying showdown with the second best hand.
4) With a turn that looked blank, other players probably will put me on something like second pair or better. Anything but a draw.

It went down perfectly. Top pair called. The river came up a 6 giving me a strait, flush draw missed. I guess it looked like a blank river to him and he went all-in for around ~$12-$17 more. I called, took down the pot and got an interesting comment from the rock at the table (he disagreed with the play.)

IMHO, the key to draws in No-Limit is using them to semi-bluff off players with hands that missed and playing hands that can set-up muliple draws at once. A flush draw isn't strong. But if you have a flush draw + a pair; flush + gut shot; etc. you have enough chance of making one of your draws to show some aggression.