Turning Your Hand Face Up On Purpose

I, and pretty much every other respectable poker author, have written extensively about making a point to not turn your hand face up, mainly because it makes you easy to play against. As with all things in poker, there are always exceptions. The main time this advice goes out the window is when you know your opponent, who must be reasonably decent, capable of both reading your range and guessing your specific tendencies, will assume you have the hand you are clearly representing and will then try to bluff you off of it. I witnessed a beautiful example of this in a recent high buy-in European Poker Tour (EPT) event.

In this hand, with effective stacks of 100 big blinds (BB), a standard tight-aggressive player raised to two BBs from middle position, a loose-aggressive kid, who I know to play high-stakes, heads-up sit-n-gos online, reraised to five BBs from the cutoff. Another loose-aggressive high-stakes online player cold-called from the small blind (SB) and the initial raiser elected to fold. The flop came 8 5 3. The small blind checked, the cutoff bet seven big blinds into the 13 BB pot, and the SB called. The turn was the 2. The SB check/called an 18 BB bet, making the pot 63 BB going to the river. The river was the 9. The small blind checked and the cutoff went all-in for 70 big blinds. The small blind quickly called with J J and beat the cutoff’s Q J.

While I would have liked the SB’s play much more if he had A-A or K-K, because he then beats both value bets and bluffs, I still think his play is superb, assuming he knows the cutoff will think he has a marginal overpair, namely Q-Q, J-J, or 10-10, and will fold it to an extreme amount of pressure. If the SB knew nothing about his opponent, I think this play would be significantly worse. If you know for a fact that your opponent will try to bluff you if he thinks you have a marginal hand, turning your hand face up as a hand that most people would fold in a specific spot is an excellent idea as long as you know your opponent actually has the fortitude to fire the big river bluff. It is worth noting that most weak players are simply not capable of following through with their reads. They may think you have a marginal hand you are willing to fold to an all-in, but they still will not fire the river bluff.

It should be clear that this play could have gone horribly wrong in many ways. The cutoff could fail to make a turn or river bluff. He could also catch one of his outs, assuming he has some, on the turn or river, costing the J-J a nice pot, especially if he doesn’t plan on folding to any amount of aggression when any card comes on the later streets. Notice if the cutoff is very good, he would probably go all-in with Q-J on the river if it gives him top pair, as well as when he has nothing. The cutoff could actually have a premium hand that has J-J crushed, allowing him to get maximum value by playing his hand overly fast. While there are many things that could go wrong, when this play succeeds, it looks like a work of art.

I want to make it blatantly clear that the situations where you want your opponent to know what you have are few and far between. I think all of the plays, folding, calling or reraising, with J-J before the flop in this situation have merit. Notice both reraising and calling tip your opponent off to the fact that you have a premium hand, but I think reraising, assuming you are an aggressive player who is capable of four-bet bluffing, allows you to have a few more bluffs in your range, making you more difficult to play against. When you cold call, you simply must have a premium holding. This means your range will be somewhat face up and will be easily exploitable by most of your more opponents, who will simply give you a tiny pot because it is clear you have a strong hand. This exact situation that I witnessed was a one-in-a-million type hand that almost never occurs. A perfect storm of events had to take place. I am glad I was lucky enough to see it happen. ♠

Jonathan Little, 2-time World Poker Tour champion has won more than $6 million in tournaments since 2006. He is sponsored by 3bet.com, Instapoker and BlueSharkOptics and teaches poker at FloatTheTurn.com and www.JonathanLittleSecrets.com. Follow him on Twitter @ JonathanLittle.