Poker Players Will Bring No Limit Strategy to Your Limit Game

The title of this article is a little deceiving. Really what it should be called is something more like, "Poker players will find any excuse they can to call you in a limit game." The reason the title reads the way it does is because often the rationale I hear at a limit game for wild play is something that I hear a lot in No Limit games.

I can't count the number of times the cards are turned over after the river bet and somebody, almost always the losing player, says something like 'what were you thinking?' It usually comes up out of frustration and is probably a good way to alleviate the steam.

My favorite kind of example happened to a friend of mine recently at a game we were playing. The table was full and we were playing $10/20 limit hold em. My buddy puts a raise in from early position and immediately everyone except one guy close to the bottom folds. I can tell my friend is a little put off because now he's just playing for even money and the table had been giving pretty good action.

The flop comes down K-10-4 rainbow. My buddy bets out, the other guy calls. The turn comes 7h. My buddy bets out. The guy calls. The river is the two of hearts now making three hearts on board. My friend checks, the other guy bets out and my buddy calls. The guy shows down Qh, 3h for the flush. My friend has a set of kings the whole way. He just mucks them. He looks up at the guy and says "good hand." Before the guy can say thank you, some other dude says "what the heck were you thinking?", to the guy with the flush. Oh, he didn't say heck. The guy answers by saying something like that he just figured if the cards came down right he could make some good money.

Now, I'm not sure what he meant exactly. If you are in a hand and the cards come down right for you, you can always make some money. I think he meant something a little different because I kept listening to him talk. He was trying to explain that if the player raising up front has a big hand and he has two crappy cards that kind of work together and the flop comes down in his favor, he could make a lot of money.

There are a few issues with what he was trying to say. First off, after the raise, he was the only caller, so he was only going to get even money. Not the best kind of odds in poker for a garbage hand. The next obvious thing was that it was limit. So, he was limited considerably in what he could win. This sort of plays into the first point. I think he was presenting the No Limit argument that he heard some pro talk about when referring to the opportunity to take a lot of chips off an opponent with a big starting hand when the board comes your way. The problem here is, it isn't no limit. There weren't any other players to boost his pot odds, either existing or implied, and I haven't even mentioned the best part. The flop was nowhere near him.

My friend never said anything except 'good hand.' We both wanted this guy in the game. We wanted to smack the idiot who was trying to give advice at the table. It's been said a million times and I'll say it again, why would you ever want somebody you are playing against to start playing better? Just let it go.

Players in a limit game will always have a justification to call you. Especially the bad ones. They don't care that the odds are bad or the likelihood of them making a hand is slim or even that they need two running perfect cards to make a hand. That's why my friend just checks and calls the river. We had been watching this guy play for a while and we knew he just liked to play. We also knew that any two cards were possible.

It's funny how when asked, those kinds of players can never say, "I just wanted to see all five cards turned over and see if I make a hand." That would be honest and I would accept that answer. Instead, they usually feel the need to express some kind of strategy that almost always demonstrates they don't know what they are doing. I like that too. I would love it if somebody sat down and just explained that they were going to play the game like a slot machine and keep tossing their chips in until the end every time and see if they win. That kind of player would be easy to play against.

Remember, in limit play, the players will have so many creative ways of justifying why they are playing when they shouldn't. All you have to do, is take advantage and know who they are. When they are coming up with all those creative explanations, all they are really saying is, "I like to play." That's OK too. I just don't know why people can't say it. The better you become at reading these players, the better off you will be in the long run and the more money you will take from them as well. When you get really good and the cards flip over at the end, you will never here yourself say, "What the heck were you thinking?" You'll already know the answer.