Limit Hold'em Lessons – Part I – Value betting in limit hold'em

With the World Series of Poker nearing its conclusion, everyone has no-limit hold'em (NLHE) on the brain. Almost all of this year's televised WSOP events are NLHE, and the preponderance of NLHE events at all major tournaments is pushing other forms of tournament poker off the map (a topic addressed in a recent Card Player column by my friend Mark Gregorich). So, I thought I'd discuss NLHE's outcast cousin – limit hold'em.

I have a confession: I love limit hold'em. People often complain that there are too many bad beats in limit hold'em. I love the bad beats. I love defending my big blind with 7-4 offsuit, making a pair of fours, and tilting the guy who just won't release the A-J with which he opened. Because of my tournament score last year, I've made more money playing NLHE than any other game, but limit hold'em is my best game. In this column, I'll try to give you some insights into the finer points of limit hold'em strategy, and maybe along the way you'll see why I enjoy that variant so much.

Limit hold'em is about value betting. A value bet is one that figures to earn money in the long run when it is called. It is the opposite of a bluff. This doesn't mean, however, that when we make a value bet, we want our opponents to call. With cards still to come, we often want our opponents to fold to our value bets, especially in limit hold'em. But we do make more money by having opponents call our value bets than we would by checking and having our opponents check behind us.

Here is an example: You have two aces in a $10-$20 hold'em game and are sure your single opponent has a flush draw. The pot is $150 and there is one card to come. Let's say, to keep things simple, that your opponent has only $20 left in his stack, and if you check, he will check behind you. If you decide to check, you will know if the flush comes in, and will be able to either fold or bet the river accordingly – although, of course, if your opponent misses, he won't pay off the $20 on the river. This enables you to save $20 if the flush comes. If you bet, your opponent will call, so you'll win another $20 when you win, but you'll lose that extra $20 when he hits his flush. So, should you value bet here?

Let's do the math. Assuming you don't have any flush cards in your hand, your opponent is a 35-9 underdog to hit his flush (there are 44 cards left in the deck, nine are flush cards, and 35 are not). We'll call it 4-1 to make it easy. So, by betting, four-fifths of the time you will win $170, and one-fifth of the time you will lose $20. In the long run, you will win $132. By checking, four-fifths of the time you will win $150, and will lose nothing the other one-fifth of the time. In the long run, you will win $120. Betting is worth $12 more – an amount larger than an entire small bet – than checking.

It turns out that whenever you are worth more than 1/n of the pot, where n is the total number of players, you make money by value betting. The most common instance of this is a heads-up pot, where the favorite always makes money by betting. But there are far less obvious examples, as well.

Let's say you have the 9 9 on a flop of 8 7 2. You are up against three opponents, and it turns out that their hands are the A 4, the J 10, and the Q 8. Although you are a favorite over any of your opponents individually, the equity of the four hands on this flop looks like this:

A 4 – 46.8 percent

9 9 – 23.3 percent

J 10 – 9.9 percent

Q 8 – 20.0 percent

You have an overpair to the board, and yet you lose money by betting and getting called by these three opponents, each of whom has a "worse" hand than yours. This is a perfect example of where many limit hold'em players complain about taking a bad beat and that they can never get their overpairs to "hold up." In reality, not only was the overpair an underdog to win this hand, it would've been correct for the overpair to check if he had seen all of his opponents' cards.

In practice, we very rarely check an overpair in limit hold'em, but we can and should hold off on betting marginal made hands on draw-heavy flops, waiting for a safe card on the turn before getting aggressive. Conversely, a hand like the nut-flush draw makes a ton of money by betting and raising the flop and getting multiple callers. The moral of the story is that on the flop, in multiway situations, if God came down and let you pick for your hand either an overpair or the best draw, you should often choose the best draw.

It's important to understand these concepts concerning multiway pots, especially if your typical game is $5-$10 hold'em or lower. There is much money to be made in these games, which often have multiway action, by value betting the best draw on the flop. Similarly, there is much money to be made by betting the best made hand on the turn, at which point the best made hand almost always has the most equity. Finally, there is much money to be made by value betting on the river.

Aside from preflop, where I see atrocious decisions all the time, I think I see the worst limit hold'em mistakes made on the river. Many otherwise good players have a massive leak in their games, in that they fail to bet the river. The biggest mistake bad players make is that they call too much, but if you're a good player and you don't bet often enough with your good hands, the bad players aren't being punished for their bad play!

Here are two examples. Assume your opponent is a loose/passive, bad player:

1. You have Q-Q and raise preflop. You get called by only the button. The flop is king high with a two-flush, and your opponent calls your bet. The turn is a blank, and your opponent calls you again. The river brings the flush card, and your opponent does not give off any tells. What's your play?

2. You raise from the button with A-J and the big blind calls. The flop comes J-J-7 and the big blind check-calls. The turn is an 8, and again the big blind check-calls. The river is a 9, making the board J-J-7-8-9. Again, the big blind checks. What's your play?

Think about your answers to these two problems, and in my next column I'll go into some detail about what I think.

Matt Matros finished third in the 2004 World Poker Tour Championship, and cashed four other times in major tournaments last year. His book, The Making of a Poker Player, is available at www.CardPlayer.com.