Articles

Limit Holdem Game Strategy: On the turn and river.

28 Jul, 2008

strategy Because of the betting structure in limit holdem, decisions about whether you will continue to play in a hand, are in many ways, considerably easier as you do not have to try and second guess how much your opponent will bet or raise as this is a known factor.

 

 

So as I mentioned in part 1 your decisions are based on more simple pot odds.

 

However, on the turn and river the bet size is doubled so these bets become extremely important in both maximising your profit and minimising your losses.

 

Your success in limit is based essentially on how many big bets per hour you can consistently win. Unlike in no limit holdem where the swings can be much bigger and you can win (and lose!) monster pots, everything you have in front of you, on the turn of a card, in limit this does not happen.


Because of the doubling in bet size on the turn and river these are the times when you must start getting your raises and bets in, if you haven't done so already!.

If your hand is particularly strong and you have trap checked the flop, for example, and the result was no action, unlike in no limit where you may wish to trap again, and give them another free card to improve, you must start to do your own betting in limit by the turn, as this game is all about maximising on your hand with the big bets.

 

You cannot get a player to bluff or bet their whole stack at the end for the instant killer move, in limit, you have to bleed bets out of your opponents constantly and this is best done when you can win twice as much! So apply especial pressure and aggression on the last 2 streets to maximise your profits.

 

Another important difference between no limit and limit is betting on the river.

There are lot of winning hands that, though reasonably strong, we may often decide to check at the end in a no limit game due to the fact that if we face a big re-raise we can't really call. This is obviously not such a concern in limit and so value betting should be done more often.

 

Quite often in no limit we will check what we suspect might be a winning hand just due to the fact that there are quite lot of players in the hand and we don't want to face a big raise. In limit, this is in fact, a very good time to bet.

 

You may face a raise but you may get multiple callers and this then goes from an average pot to a very sizeable one.

 

Though it seems like you are wasting a big bet unnecessarily if you lose the pot, with callers this is the right move as most often when you think you have probably won the pot, you usually have and because you have multiple returns on your money, it makes it a financially viable move.