Passive listening

	While most players tend toward overly aggressive play, some will check and call much more often than they raise or fold

Over the course of the last few articles we’ve discussed the basics of checking and calling as strategies for winning poker. Hopefully you will have realised there are often times when it pays far bigger dividends to contest a pot passively if you decide to contest it at all. This month, we dig even deeper into the canon of passive play and tackle some of the trickiest problems you’re likely to encounter if you’re on the receiving end of this passive play.

While most players tend toward overly aggressive play, some check and call much more often than they raise or fold. This is especially common in no-limit games. It can be common in fixed-limit games too, especially when players are gambling at higher betting limits than they are used to or are playing at limits that are too big for their bankroll to manage.

These players are easy to beat. In fact, if you can’t beat an opponent who checks and calls too often, you’ll have a hard time beating anybody. An opponent who frequently checks and calls can hurt you in one tactical area only; he can parry your ability to bluff. You won’t be able to bluff successfully against players who call most of the time and you shouldn’t even try. Against a habitual caller who doesn’t like to raise, bet your good hands and check all others. If your opponent bets, raise with your good hands and fold everything else. You shouldn’t bluff habitual callers, because they’ll call your bets. Even semibluffing by betting a flush draw on the flop won’t succeed like it will against good players. A semi-bluff ’s value stems from the fact you have two ways to win. You might complete your hand on the turn or the river and you can also win if your opponent folds when you bet. But, if your opponent calls most of your bets, your only way to win is to show down the best hand. The key to beating this kind of player is to play solid and straightforward poker; bet good hands, fold bad ones and check when you have a draw. It’s boring, uncreative and not all that much fun – but it’s about winning at poker.

Double Trouble

There’s one caveat worth considering: let’s say you’re in a game with one player that calls all the time and a group of other players who can be aggressive when the situation calls for it; but are willing to release their cards to a bet when their hands aren’t strong. The caller often prevents you from bluffing any other opponents who are in the pot with you. If you are facing three opponents and one of them is a calling station, you can’t bluff or even semibluff when he is in the pot. His willingness to check and call protects all your other opponents against your more creative manoeuvres. But he can protect you as well. Against savvy opponents who know this person always calls, you can count on the fact that their bets are indicative of real hands – not bluffs. So let the caller do the dirty work for you. Think of him as the canary in a coal mine, and use his presence to alert you to the hand strength of bets by smart opponents who understand his playing tendencies as well as you do.

It’s always a good idea to know the playing styles of your opponents. Some players seldom check-raise, and when they do, you can rest assured they have a very strong hand. When this kind of player check-raises, just fold unless you have a very big hand – in which case you should re-raise. When you’re re-raised in a tournament and neither you nor your opponent is short-stacked, you should consider releasing one pair, regardless of how strong it once seemed. Most players are certainly not going to check-raise with one pair, especially if their raise puts them all-in.

If you don’t have a particularly good read on your opponent you will lose a lot more of these confrontations than you will win. If you’ve got enough chips to compete, you’ll probably find a better opportunity to put your tournament life at risk than in a situation where you call and put yourself all-in with one pair. If your opponent raised before the flop and now checks into an unsuited board of J-7-3, it looks like he’s setting up a check-raise. After all, there’s no draw for him to be afraid of, and even if he raised with a pair of 10s all he needs to dodge is a hand with a Jack in it. Most opponents who raise before the flop will come out betting in this situation and unless you know this player’s style almost as well as he does, you might be better off checking behind him.

Hell-raising

If he raised before the flop and the flop is something like A-Q-10, his check might mean he raised with a pair of 9s or Jacks and the overcards frighten him. Or, it may mean he has flopped a huge hand, like a set or a straight, and is now slowing down in the hope of someone else doing his betting for him.

As a general rule, most players that raise before the flop come out betting on the flop most of the time. When the guy who raised before the flop checks, it’s a red flag and I tend to be wary of it. Unless I know his playing style, I’ll probably give him some leeway in this situation. I’ll also be doubly eager to see the hand he turns over at the showdown, so I can compare his hand with his betting pattern and be better equipped to deal with him next time an analogous situation pops up.

Okay, here’s another caveat worth considering: if I have a very good hand, I’m going to make it three bets when my opponent check-raises. Then, I’m going to scrutinise his play right up to – and including – the showdown. Why? I want to see how he handles the pressure of being re-raised. If I have a great hand – one that’s nearly unbeatable – then I might just check in order to lure others into a pot I’ll probably win.

The short answer is: you can’t always tell. In fact, one of the advantages of checking and calling is that it cloaks the strength of your hand. While a check and a call signifies a drawing hand much more frequently than it does a big made hand that’s trying to lure opponents in to a bigger pot, there are some clues you can use to unravel this mystery. When you see two suited cards on the board – or sequenced cards indicative of a completed straight or a straight draw – anyone checking and calling is probably on a draw. This is almost always the case when a caller checks the flop; then checks again if the turn card provides no help. If it’s checked twice to you, a bet might win the pot right there. If you’re called, a bet will usually take the pot on the river whenever the last card is a blank too.

An exception occurs when your opponent calls with second or third pair and makes two pair on the river. Now he has a well-hidden hand and the river card – which looked to you like a complete blank – gives him two pair. You’ll bet, he’ll raise, and based on your assessment of his playing style and the size of the pot, you’ll either call or fold. Either way, you lose! The only silver lining in this cloud is that your opponent was very lucky since there were only three cards that would give him two pair and he was more than a 14/1 underdog to pair his kicker on the river. Luck may have favoured the brave here, but if he keeps calling into odds that large, he’s going to lose a lot of money in the long run.

There is one final caveat for you to consider: when you’re playing online in short-handed games, there’s much more aggression and lots more bluffing at points in the hand where you’d seldom run into a bluff in nine or ten-handed games. A seemingly blank card can hit the river in a six-handed game that’s heads-up at that point. When you bet and your opponent raises, it doesn’t necessarily mean he got lucky and caught a 14/1 shot. More than likely it’s simply a desperation bluff. The only way you’ll know with any degree of certainty is to use your downtime between hands to take good, detailed and meticulous notes on your opponents’ playing styles.

When you see an opponent bluff-raise on the river when an apparent blank card falls, make a mental note of it. The next time you’re involved in a pot with him, you’ll have a much better idea of what his bets and raises might mean – and what you should do about it.