Folding late in limit hold'em

Poker Variants / Marcus Bateman / 29 December 2010 / Leave a Comment

This is one of the single key weaknesses in bad limit players games - how they respond to the late street betting. Although folding too much or too little can be a big flaw, typically failing to understand how the late streets play out can very quickly adds up to huge sums of money being lost in limit hold'em.

The first and most important of all points about limit hold'em if you are new to it is that most hands that get to the river will go to showdown. If you are used to no limit or pot limit games, where very few hands get to showdown, this can seem like a very unnatural act - as you have to start calling very frequently with hands that you fold in a blink in big bet games.

This is simply because the price laid to you at the end of limit games is nearly always extremely attractive - particularly in action or multi-way pots. As you are forced to bet specific amounts, you can very rarely lay the eye watering prices possible in big bet games, as the pot is already swelled to quite a large size by the previous action. This means that it is very rarely correct to fold in such a game with most hands of basically any strength, as the price being offered makes folding a huge mistake against all but the most predictable players.

You have to be right very rarely when being offered prices like five to one or better in a game like poker where most players frequently bluff, and for the most part limit hold'em is a game where most hands that have any part of the flop will stick around until the very end. This is the core reason why tighter starting hand requirements are needed in limit hold'em, and also why players making the transition from no limit hold'em make big mistakes on the late streets by folding too much (this is typically reversed the other way around as well, with limit players calling far too many rivers in the big bet games when they first start out).

This all being said, limit hold'em is as much about saving bets as it is about extracting extra ones, and in some situations it is crucial that you are able to fold hands late on against the right players at the right times. Some player types basically never bluff in poker, and to them it does not really matter if you are being laid an attractive price - they always have it and you are simply throwing money away. Against most players though, limit hold'em is a world where for the most part you should be getting to the end of the hand if you have any kind of piece of the flop, and folding too often on the river becomes a huge mistake.

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