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August 10 ­— Most players are incapable of turning medium-strength hands into bluffs.  Use this to your advantage when hand reading.

If you have read some of my columns in the past or have viewed my training material over at CrushLivePoker.com, you know that I strongly believe that typical players do not bluff enough in live no-limit hold’em. This allows us to have a very solid approach of consistently bet-folding for value, as our opponents call down far too much and will rarely raise us unless we are beat.

Obviously every situation is different and occasionally you will run into players that will put you into difficult spots when they bluff, but one of the most reliable patterns you can pick up on is the fact that most players are incapable of recognizing that they should turn their medium-strength hands into bluffs. What I mean by medium-strength hands is usually something like top pair that has showdown value. 

Let us take a look at a hand that a subscriber posted recently in the CrushLivePoker.com strategy forums. The game was $2-$5 and the effective stacks were $1,300. The history we have on the villain is that we have recently gotten the best of him in pots and he may be out to get us. From under the gun. we raise to $20 with A Q. The villain calls to our immediate left and both of the blinds call. The flop comes out A Q 10 giving us top two pair. It gets checked to us, and we bet $60. The villain calls and both the blinds fold. The turn is the 6 and we now bet $130. The villain calls again. The river is the 4. What is the best play?

The player that posted this hand was not sure exactly what to do because he thought that his opponent might have made a backdoor flush. Of course, this is certainly possible, as A X makes sense. But, he could also have A-K, A-J, or any other ace-little suited too. With the pot at $460, we could easily bet about $250-$300 to get looked up by one of these hands (or possibly larger) and never ever have to worry about folding if we are raised. You see, if a player has A-J, A-K or, say, A 6, he has top pair. You will almost never see someone turn that hand into a bluff at the end by raising, trying to represent the backdoor flush. Instead, on occasion, you may see a guy raise with J 9 when they miss their straight draw, because they have no showdown value. But in this particular hand, it is very unlikely that the villain would have a missed straight draw, as his hand is way more ace-heavy because of the flop action and his relative position, with two people left to act behind him. He also called a large turn bet. Because he has an ace so often and he will not bluff with top pair, the pot is actually protected from being bluffed at, making it a very trivial bet-fold at the end. 

You cannot miss value here. In other articles, I have talked about how check-calling the river in no-limit is generally bad with a few exceptions, and it would be a disaster here to check and have a hand like a single-paired ace, which would call a bet, check back. In fact, you could easily make the case here that if you check only better than A-Q would bet, making a call incorrect. But that doesn’t mean that the right play is to check-fold. The correct play is to bet. Aces and other worse hands will call us, but he will check back the river if we check. And only better hands will raise at the end, hands like A X, J 9, or K-J, making it an easy fold. 

The poster, of course, got scared at the end and checked the river to have his opponent check A-K offsuit behind him, pretty much the worst case scenario. There is literally a zero percent chance that the villain would ever have turned A-K into a bluff there.
 
A few weeks ago, I played an interesting hand on Poker Night In America that also proves this point. In this spot, however, the villain was Alec Torelli, a world class nosebleed no-limit player. The game was $25-$50 and Torelli, who had a $10,000 effective stack, raised to $175. Thomas Connuli called next to act, as did Matt Glantz in the cutoff. I closed the action and just called with 8 8 in the big blind. The flop came out 8 6 3, giving me top set. I decided to check, as did Torelli and Connuli, then Glantz bet $450. I decided to just call, not wanting to overplay my hand, and Torelli overcalled. Immediately I thought this was a little bit peculiar, as I figured Torelli would bet the nut flush draw most of the time. So I surmised that he might be playing a non-spade overpair a little bit safe or had a hand like Ax K or Ax Q that he did not want to get raised off of or he was slow playing something big. The turn brought out the A and I checked once again. This time, Torelli and Glantz both checked.  The river was the 10 and, with about $2,100 in the pot, I bet out $1,200 for value. Torelli thought about it for a bit and raised to $4,600. Glantz quickly folded and the action got back to me. 

Besides the fact that people rarely raise as a bluff on the river, the key to this hand was actually the offsuit ace on the turn. You see, I just did not think that Torelli would turn a hand like A-K with a spade into a bluff—exactly what we have been talking about in this article. If the turn was a blank and the river was a ten, it is possible that he might have tried to raise as a bluff, representing the fact that he had sandbagged the nuts. But with the ace coming on the turn, he most likely would have run into top pair, so there would be no reason to raise. I also thought that the only way he could raise as a bluff is if he had at least the ace of spades blocker, because if he did not, I could have the nut flush and the bluff would be suicide. Coupled with the fact that I thought he would bet the A with some frequency on the flop and that he would rarely, if ever, turn the A into a bluff on the river made this a relatively easy laydown for me. In fact, when this hand appears on TV sometime in 2016, you will hear me ask him, “are you turning the ace of spades into a bluff?,” as that basically was the only hand that I could beat at that point. Later on, I learned from the livestream that Torelli indeed had flopped the nuts with A 9, so I was very happy with the fact that I lost the absolute minimum in the hand. ♠

Follow Bart for daily strategy tips on Twitter @CrushLivePoker and @BartHanson. Check out his poker training site exclusively made for live cash game play at CrushLivePoker.com where he produces weekly podcasts and live training videos.