Turn & River Strategies for Limit Hold’em
In this lesson we will direct our focus to strategies for the turn and the river. If you have reached a turn decision you have not folded pre-flop or on the flop and now the bets double so there is still time to get away from a marginal hand without too much damage to your stack. You may well opine that my approach to limit hold’em appears to be very tight and that would be an accurate assessment. A tight/aggressive approach to this game will pay the dividends while a weak/tight approach would be analogous to bankroll suicide. Taking a hand too far without the correct price in limit hold’em is a formula for losing. Let’s move on to what many believe to be the most difficult street to play … the turn.
The Turn
The reason why the turn is so critical is that the stakes are doubled and more often than not if you don’t fold on the turn you will be calling on the river thereby committing to a least two double bets. One exception would be holding a busted straight or flush that does not warrant a bluff on the end. Having reached the turn you will be holding one of the following type hands.
- The best hand
- A draw
- A contender with outs
- Junk
The Best Hand
You either know you have the best hand because you are holding the current nuts or you believe you hold the best hand because you’re holding Aces, for example, and the board is not coordinated nor does it appear to have helped anyone else. If you hold the nuts in position then you should be betting or raising. Straight forward play is the default action of solid limit players. With a few exceptions such as holding quads, you should not succumb to what Mike Caro has dubbed FPS – Fancy Play Syndrome. If, however, you hold the nuts not in position, then you have a more complex decision to make. You need to assess just how strong your hand is and if someone else will venture a bet if you check. The most annoying bad result of trying to be tricky is checking with the intention of check raising only to have everyone check behind you. The icing on that cake is when a free card winds up beating you when that player may have folded to your bet. When holding what you believe is the best hand and are unsure of exactly what to do… bet!
A Draw
As emphasized earlier, winning limit hold’em is driven by the math. If you’re on a draw know your outs/odds, including implied odds to determine if it is correct to proceed. Bucking the odds by continuing in a hand without the right price is a major leak committed by less experienced players who are flying by the seat of their pants. Remember, there is no shame in folding. The game does not reward the number of pots won at the end of a session but rather the number of chips accumulated. When counting your outs, make sure to focus to “clean” outs versus “tainted” outs. Clean outs are not expected to help anyone else. An example of this situation would be drawing to an open ended straight with one card to come and there are two of a suit on the board. It should be obvious that in this case you have six clean outs and two tainted outs. If this is not obvious to you, think about it until it is before proceeding.
In todays limit games it is not unusual for players to take a card off on the flop as it is still a single bet. If you’re in position, especially against a single opponent who checks, fire a double bet at him to take down the pot. If he instead raises, the vast majority of the time expect that he holds the goods and fold.
A Contender with Outs
These hands are tough to play as you’re not quite sure where you stand but fear you are second best. A perfect example would be holding pocket Jacks when an overcard flops. It is in this predicament that many of the factors such as position, number of active players, knowledge of your opponents and understanding your own image will come into play. There is no question that if you never lay down Jacks when an overcard appears on the board and an opponent keeps betting into you, then you have a big leak in your game. On the other hand, if every time a scare card appears you meekly retire you also have a big leak in your game. There is an old poker expression that states, “There is not a sniper behind every tree”. With that expression in mind, when the other factors favor the play, use that scare card against your opponent(s). Remember if the card looks scary to you, it may well be terrifying to an opponent. If the only time you show courage is when you hold the nuts you will become so predictable as to be exploitable.
Junk
You might be thinking how a solid player has arrived at the turn with nothing but junk. That would occur, as one example, when in position and checked to by a single opponent you bluffed at the pot and received a call. Now if a blank falls on the turn and your single opponent checks again, you should normally follow through and bet again. Remember, many opponents will take off a card on the flop but when the bets double they become hesitant to continue unless the turn improved their hand. If you are not prepared to fire the second barrel then you should not have fired the first one. I cannot stress enough the fact that to make informed decisions you need to consider multiple factors. In this last situation, knowledge of your opponent is critical. While this might sound morally wrong, exploiting the weak in poker is the surest way to enhance your bankroll.
The River
The river is possibly the easiest street to play in limit hold’em. There are no more cards to come so there will be no further improvement to anyone’s hand. There are basically three objectives to consider at the river. If you have the best hand, how can you make the most of it? If you don’t have the best hand, how can you lose the least with it or make an opponent fold? If you have a busted draw can you make an opponent with the winning hand lay it down in order to steal the pot? You accomplish these objectives through:
- Value betting
- Inducing bluffs
- Bluffing
- Folding
Value Betting
If the single most important aspect of playing winning limit hold’em is folding, then the second most important aspect is value betting. The first aspect saves you money and the second aspect makes you money. Since limit is about making an extra bet or two versus possibly putting your whole stack at risk, it is almost always correct to value bet on the end. This holds true even if you’re not certain that you hold the best hand. The times you lose an extra bet will be more than compensated for by the times you encourage a winning hand to fold thereby taking the entire pot which would have been lost in a showdown. There is a caveat to this strategic consideration and that is … do not attempt to value bet when the only hand that will call will beat you. That would be called a bluff and we’ll get to that in a bit.
Inducing Bluffs
As an alternative to value betting, you may wish to induce a bluff in order to win a bet that might have been lost if you attempted to value bet because your opponent will simply fold to your bet. Inducing a bluff occurs when you are out of position with a hand that does have showdown value and you check, inducing your opponent to bet in the hopes of stealing the pot. If your hand’s showdown value does prevail, you have successfully induced and snapped off a bluff. The upside is the gained bet. The potential downside is a missed bet should your check be met with a check from your opponent. As you can see, there is a fine line between these two strategic concepts – value betting and inducing bluffs.
Successfully inducing bluffs requires some knowledge of your opponent to assess whether you are better off checking to hopefully induce him to bluff or just betting out if you expect him to make his “Calling station crying call”. There is also a hidden value to this concept and that is you will be demonstrating to an observant opponent that you do not always value bet hands that have some value. This will make him less willing to attempt to bluff you, which makes him more predictable, which makes him more exploitable. Know your opponent’s tendencies and then train him to be predictable to your actions. It is this type of multi layered thinking that separates the winners from the contributors.
Bluffing
Many players feel that it is near impossible to bluff successfully in limit hold’em because it is only one additional bet to call and generations of players have been taught that losing a single bet is no big deal but losing an entire pot is a disaster. While bluffing in limit is not as sure fire as in big bet poker, there is certainly a place for it and if you never bluff in limit, you are just giving too much away. There are certainly times where you know your hand cannot prevail in a showdown against a single opponent and the only way to win is to bluff. There are several keys to successful bluffing:
- Utilizing your image if it, as it should be, is tight.
- Usually (almost always) only attempt to bluff a single opponent.
- Ascertaining from the betting sequences and knowledge of your opponent if it is likely he will fold. Consider this situation – both you and your opponent were on draws, you were betting all the way and the river does not complete any draws. You would expect him to muck his broken draw to a bet while it may well have been the winning hand. When you check it down on the end only to see that “his nothing” is better than “your nothing” will you have wished you had bet. These situations become fairly obvious to experienced players.
Your bluff needs to appear believable. In the previous point, since you were leading on each street, it appears that you have a hand, even if it is only a pair. Desperation bluffs on the end that don’t correlate to the betting sequences are usually destined to fail. You only need to win a small fraction of the time to break even when bluffing. The exact number, of course, depends on the size of the pot. Smaller pots will have greater success when bluffing while huge pots are almost always called down. An additional advantage occurs when you get caught and lose. You then will need to stop bluffing for that session but can expect to receive greater action on your good hands later. Everyone remembers failed bluffs and then tends to label that player as a bluffer who needs to be called down. If you’re playing solid, tight/aggressive poker, you have just hidden your real style of play behind a failed bluff. It will pay dividends to your more observant opponents who now may believe they can take advantage of their newfound knowledge.
Folding
While folding should be your predominate action pre-flop and even on the flop, the river is not the place to make sophisticated laydowns because the pot is usually large enough to warrant a call. That having been said, there are many times that you will be throwing money away to call on the river and many players do just that. They can’t bear the thought of being bluffed out and, as mentioned earlier, they have been conditioned by the poker pundits that losing a bet is OK but losing the pot is horrible. While this may have an element of truth to it, you cannot just become a calling station on the river … it adds up too quickly. You need to consider what you know about your opponent, review the betting sequences, put your hand reading skills to good use and understand the price the pot is laying you. If you’re convinced you hold a losing hand then fold. If your opponent then shows you a bluff, do not let it rattle you. The way to do this is to remind yourself that even the best players get bluffed out occasionally, while it never happens to the worst players because they always call.
In the next and final lesson we’ll try and pull these four lessons together with some final messages and recap the most important elements. We’ll also include a listing of additional resources to further your advancement in limit hold’em.
Next Lesson: Limit Hold’em Conclusion & Recap