Balancing your hand range 3: Take it to the river

In the previous piece in this series, we looked at how to balance your hand range by mixing up your starting hands and occasionally taking an unorthodox line on the flop. Now we can move on to the turn and river.

Turn and river balancing is rarely discussed, which is strange given that these two streets are a lot of fun and where the most money enters the pot. Balancing the range with which you play certain hands on the turn and river is one of the most critical aspects of competing against other good thinking players, particularly in six-max cash games.

Let's compare and contrast two winning opponents at $2/$4 no-limit hold'em. The first one is a reasonable LAG player sitting two to your right. On the turn of an Ac-6s-7s-3s board, he check-raises your Ah-Qs. You know he tends to check-raise all flush draws on the flop and is incapable of making thin value bets with the middle of his range on the river, but is capable of huge bluffs. After logically thinking this through, you should almost always call his check-raise and re-evaluate on the river, usually calling any bet as he doesn’t have the flush (he didn’t check-raise the flop, remember?). Plus from what you know about him he is unlikely to be value-shoving light. That means it must be a bluff, right?

In another pot against a different LAG player, whom many view as an aggressive fish, the problem you have is that he is capable of check-raising a slow-played two pair, a flush, complete air and assorted draws. You’ve also seen that he is capable of value-shoving a hand as weak as 6-3 offsuit on the river as well as shoving as a total bluff. Which player do you think has the bigger win rate?

Having a range of hands with which you can carry out an action is really important against tough players. Say a tight-aggressive fish three-bets another good TAG player preflop and then checks behind on an Ax-7h-8h board. The good player has called with 8-8 and knows from previous experience that the bad TAG is checking down to get to showdown cheaply; hence he probably has Q-Q/K-K/J-J (or a super unlikely A-A). So on the turn the good TAG makes a substantial bet to set up a further river barrel, knowing that the fish’s unbalanced range means he can be exploited.

Regaining balance

Once you have decided that your opponents are tough and observant enough to warrant it, balancing your range for various actions across all streets will make you a far tougher six-max cash player. Your opponents will have a tough time reading you and this will force them into more mistakes, allowing you to push them around more often. Just remember to think deeply before every decision, as attempting to actively balance your play will take your game to a completely different level.