Exploiting Limiting Turn Calls

The idea of a player "limiting" his hand range is a critical hand-reading concept. The basic idea is this: Anyone who has a very strong hand wants to get money in the pot. He'll be looking for an opportunity to do that. If your opponent bypasses one or more excellent opportunities to go for value, particularly on the turn and river, he effectively has denied having a very strong hand.

Put more simply, if your opponent keeps checking and calling, eventually you can be fairly sure that he doesn't have the nuts. He has "limited" the strength of his hand. You can use that knowledge against him.

Here's a hand I played recently in which I used my opponent's limited range to identify a profitable bluffing opportunity.

I was in a live $2-$5 no-limit hold'em game. One player limped in from under the gun, and then a tight, but generally not too aggressive, player made it $25 to go. (This raise size was typical for the game, and I thought my opponent could have a range of hands that included big and medium pocket pairs, big cards such as A-10 and K-Q, and possibly suited connectors or suited aces.) Two loose players called, and I called from the button with the 9 9. The blinds and the limper folded. We were four-handed to the flop in a $112 pot.

The flop came A J 5. The preflop raiser bet $45, the two loose players folded, and the action was on me.

At this point, we each had about $700 remaining. I interpreted my opponent's less than half-pot bet size to indicate possible (but not at all certain) weakness. I decided to call, for a few reasons:

1. I thought my opponent could hold an unimproved pocket pair such as tens or queens. With an ace on board, I thought it would be easy to force him off such a hand.

2. With two hearts and two Broadway cards on the flop, the turn and river were relatively likely to bring at least one scare card. So, if my opponent flopped an ace, frequently I would get the opportunity to push him off his hand. It's often not wise to try to push someone off top pair, but in this case, the stacks were deep enough and my opponent tight enough that I thought it would work fine.

3. While I would have only two outs if behind, there was still some chance that I could catch a miracle set and win a big pot. Since I held the 9, either remaining 9 would give me a hand that I would be happy to play hard for value.

4. It was possible that I held the best hand, and if so, my position would give me the advantage and enable me to win the majority of those pots.

5. My opponent had bet less than half the pot, so it was fairly cheap for me to see a turn card and re-evaluate the situation.

I called. The turn was the interesting J, pairing the board and also completing a possible flush. My opponent reacted poorly to the card and checked. I bet $150 into the $202 pot. I chose this size for two main reasons:

1. I wanted the bet to be big enough to get my opponent off any marginal hands like a pair of kings.

2. I wanted to leave the correct amount in our stacks for an effective river bluff. If my opponent were to call my $150, we'd each have roughly $500 left on the river, and the pot also would be roughly $500. A pot-sized all-in bluff would likely be sufficient to get my opponent off all but some very strong hands.

He hemmed and hawed for a bit and then called. His mannerisms suggested true weakness, not faked weakness. The river was the 3, an innocuous card. My opponent checked. I moved all in. Why?

My opponent limited his hand range by calling the turn bet and checking the river. With a flush or full house, I would have expected this player to have bet the turn, to have check-raised the turn, or to have bet the river. He caught a potentially scary turn card and passed on three opportunities to get value for his hand. An exceptionally tricky player might do that with a flush, but most players wouldn't. I played the odds and assumed that this betting sequence was limiting.

In my opinion, my opponent was limited by his actions to a hand no better than K-J. Because he called my turn bet, he likely held at least an ace (though a drawing hand such as the K Q was also possible). It was significantly more likely that he held an ace than a jack, for a few reasons:

1. Three aces remained in the deck, while only two jacks remained.

2. He raised preflop and bet the flop, and I would expect him to make both actions more often when holding an ace than when holding a jack.

3. He chose a very passive betting line after the turn card came. He might have been more aggressive if he held a jack.

I thought this opponent would lay an ace down in this situation to an all-in bet nearly every time. He wasn't going to risk going broke to my "obvious flush," even with A-K, on this scary board. In fact, I thought he might even fold trips. I didn't expect him to fold trips, but on multiple occasions in similar situations, I've had opponents fold trips faceup. So, it was possible.

I thought he would fold the significant majority of the time, and therefore my roughly even-money bluff would show a profit. Indeed, he did fold.

I was fairly certain that my opponent was limited in this hand both because of his betting pattern and because of his mannerisms. If I had to rely on the betting pattern alone, I wouldn't have been quite as certain. Absent the tells, my opponent possibly could have bet the same way while holding true monsters like quad jacks, aces full, or jacks full of aces. Sometimes players make seemingly strange checks and play very passively when they think they have the deck crushed.

But even if you're not 100 percent sure that your opponent's hand range is limited, you can often still find good bluffs. After all, you're not looking for a sure thing. It's OK if you get caught sometimes. You just need an edge. When your opponent's hand range is limited mostly to hands you think he'll fold, a well-executed bluff will usually have the dealer pushing you the pot.

Ed is a featured coach at StoxPoker.com. Also check out his online poker advice column, NotedPokerAuthority.com. He has authored four books on poker, most recently, Professional No-Limit Hold'em: Volume 1.