Advanced Post Flop Strategy
When deconstructing post flop play, flopping big hands in position when the board is untextured is the easiest situation in no limit hold’em you will ever be confronted with. So now let’s make it a little more interesting and take you out of position on the hand. What is the optimal strategy for playing a big hand on an untextured board when you are out of position? Let’s start with a heads up pot where you have A9s and the board is Ah9c3d.
1) You were the pre-flop raiser and you are out of position in a heads up pot against either an aggressive opponent or a passive opponent.
Before we start I want the majority to admit that your instinct here is to check. Come on…you can admit it. I won’t be mad. When I teach my camps and ask what everyone thinks you should do here the majority of the room, and I mean the vast majority, like the check here with the intention to check raise. Why? Because they don’t want to lose their customer here when they have such a huge hand. Ok, so I understand that urge to try to keep your fish on the hook. But check raising here is not a good option at all.
Check raising serves a very particular function in the poker toolbox. It tells the story of a big hand, particularly when you check raise on a board that has no obvious draws. Basically when you check raise in this situation with a big hand you are turning your cards face up and why, when you have a big hand, would you ever want to do that? When you flop a monster you want to maximize your earn on the hand by playing the hand in the way that is most likely to extract money from your opponent and will be the highest equity line of play in the long run. You, logically, will not extract the most money out of a hand if you let your opponent know you have a monster and you will let him know if you check raise.
The first issue with check raising on this board in this situation is that generally when you are the pre-flop raiser you will be continuation betting. In order for your continuation bets to have any meaning at all you must bet with monsters as well. If you check huge hands and bet smaller hands your opponents will figure out pretty quickly that they should be scared of your checks and come after your bets by raising you off the hand. That is a pattern you do not want to develop. By leading out with huge hands your opponents will be confused. Betting the huge hands provide cover for your weak hands and betting the weak hands will generate more action for your big hands. They, to use a botanical metaphor, cross pollinate each other.
Players say to me all the time in this spot, “But Annie, I bet my top two pair and my opponent folded. Shouldn’t I have checked?” I always respond the same way, “Would you be happy if they folded when you bet the KQ on an A93 board? What about 22? What about J8? KT? QJ? I can go on and on.” The point is that for every time that your opponent folds because you continuation bet your huge hand he will fold many times over when you have absolutely nothing. By getting greedy on the big hand and missing the continuation bet you actually reduce the probability that you will take down the pots where you want your opponent to fold because you are weak. And that makes no sense for long term earn. It brings pattern into your play (check big hands, bet smaller ones) and any time you do that you are giving your opponent unnecessary information. By betting out you are being more deceptive in the long run than by checking because when you continuation bet your opponent will not know what you have.
Enough with the game theory, let’s take a look at the actual math. Do you do better in the short run by betting or by check-raising here? Let’s look at two types of hands. But first let’s give the opponent top pair with AQ. In the second let’s look at an opponent with J8. So you flop top two pair or better and your opponent has AQ and you check. The pot has $1K in it and your opponent bets $500 and you now check raise. A smart opponent here will fold and you have now let them off the hook for the hand. It is so odd that you did not continuation bet this hand that when you now check raise the dry board after being the original raiser your opponent will have loud alarm bells going off. So most opponents fold and you win $500. Now, let’s say you continuation bet $500 yourself here. Your opponent knows you lead out no matter what when you are the pre-flop raiser in a heads up pot. So they can’t give you credit for a hand. Because of this most opponents will raise and make it something between $1500 and $2000. Now you have the choice. If your opponent looks pot committed you can move in or you can flat call and decide whether to lead the turn or check and induce another bet when you see how your opponent looks on the turn. Either way you have gotten a minimum of $1500 out of your opponent when he is over a 7 to 1 dog to win the hand. Sounds better than $500 for sure and most of the time you get much more than $1500 out of the guy anyway.
Now let’s say your opponent has a stone cold bluff. If you check you will almost always get a check back from a passive opponent when you were the original leader. An aggressive opponent will almost always bet and now when you check raise will fold. So you will get about $500 from the aggressive opponent if you check to them and nothing from the passive opponent (who you have now given a free card to). But what if you just continuation bet half the pot? Now you bet out $500. The passive opponent always folds so that works out the same. But the aggressive opponent will sometimes call to bluff the turn and will sometimes raise right there to attack the continuation bet. When the opponent calls the $500 on the flop you can check the turn to them and let them follow through with the bluff, extracting at least another $1K from them. When they raise they will make it a minimum of $1500 usually. So, when your aggressive opponent does decide to bluff, you tend to get 3 times as much money out of them than when you just check to them to let them bluff. What this means is that when you bet out your aggressive opponent can fold 2/3 of the time and call to bluff or raise to bluff 1/3 of the time and you will break even to the play where you check to them to induce the bluff on the flop.
Now, an aggressive opponent will tend to make this kind of play at least close to a third of the time so you know you are at least close to break even on the lead out against a bluff (if not better depending on the opponent). But combine this with the fact that when your opponent does hit the board you are hugely equity up on the lead and it seems obvious against the range of hands that your opponent holds you must lead out.
And, just to emphasize the added kicker and to drive home the point, let’s not forget that you need to lead these big hands when you are the original raiser in order to provide cover for all the weaker continuation bets you will be making after the flop. By leading half the pot post flop in heads up situations where you were the pre-flop raiser and making these leads no matter what you hit you will confuse your opponents because the continuation bet will provide no new information to them. It will make you more difficult to play against than if you start to make cagey checks with your big hands.
2) Your opponent was the pre-flop raiser and he/she is aggressive.
Now, let’s say you have the same A9s on the A93 board (no suits). You called a raise before the flop with this hand and you are out of position against an aggressive opponent (I am assuming, since this is a marginal hand at best, that you were in the blind against a late position raise). Against an aggressive opponent you have two choices: You can check to the raiser or you can make a weak lead (against a super aggressive opponent who likes to go after weak leads). If you check to the aggressive raiser the key is not to check raise. The aggressive raiser is also going to be continuation betting a wide variety of hands and unless you actually catch them holding something big a check raise will end the pot right there and you will get no more money out of them. Instead, check, let them continuation bet, and then call. If you check raise you will only get that $500 or so that they continuation bet. By check calling you are getting that same $500 but now you can extract more money on the turn. How you extract the money on the turn depends on your feel of your opponent. You can check to the player if you feel they are high probability to take a second barrel at the pot or you can lead out small (half the pot) if you feel that one of two things if true: 1) Your opponent is likely to check if you check to them or 2) Your opponent is likely to read the lead as weak and will call or raise.
If you believe your opponent is likely to check if you check on the turn you must bet for several reasons. The first is that you don’t want to give a free card since your opponent may not be drawing dead to your hand. This is particularly true when your opponent holds a hand he is likely to call with but not bet with (like AJ for example). If your opponent would have called a bet but not bet the hand itself you have made a threefold mistake. First, and most obvious, you have earned zero when you could have earned half the pot. Second, you have allowed a hand that might be drawing live to your hand to draw and pay nothing for the privilege. And third, and most important, you have allowed a player who was willing to make a big mathematical error make no error at all. If your opponent is willing to call half the pot, taking 3 to 1, when he is a much bigger dog than that (with AJ he would be over 15 to 1 with one card to come) then let him by all means. Don’t allow an opponent who is willing to do bad math do good math, ever. That is the biggest disaster that can happen in this game.
If your opponent is likely to read the lead on the turn as weak, as an aggressive opponent will, you must also bet. After checking and calling the flop when there are no obvious draws many players will then lead the turn small when they want to bluff. Because of this there is a group of players who will read the lead on the turn as weak and will go after it. They will go after the bet in one of two ways. They will either flat call on the turn and wait to take the pot away on the river or they will go ahead and raise right there on the turn (this is the much more common play). Either way, the play is at least as profitable as checking to the aggressor and letting them bet the turn for you. Unless your opponent holds a big hand themselves then checking and raising the turn will only win you what your opponent bets ( here about $1K). But if you lead out you might get a call to bluff or a call to get more information, either of which get you the same $1K, or you might get a raise from your opponent in which case you pick up another $2K at least extra.
Now, to be sure, sometimes your opponent will fold on the turn to a bet when they would have bet the hand if you had checked. That is why you need to know your opponent well. If you feel that your opponent is likely to only take the safe bluff of betting if checked to but will not make a play if you lead the turn then you need to check to that guy. You should only bet if you feel your opponent is unlikely to take a stab at the turn or you feel your opponent is someone who likes to go after weak leads. If either of those is the case then betting out is the more profitable play.
The same logic holds true for choosing whether or not to lead out half the pot on the flop in the first place. It is unnatural for a player to lead into a preflop raiser. How many times have you heard someone say at a poker table, “I check to the raiser.”? I am sure the answer is a lot. That is because that is the natural flow of the game. So when a player leads into a raiser it sends off a bunch of alarm bells. And to savvy, aggressive opponents those bells a ringing weak. If you know your opponent to be both aggressive and savvy who can lead out small into them and let them read you as weak. If they flat call the bet check the turn to allow them to follow through with their play. Then check raise them when they bet. If they raise you on the flop you can either flat call and decide what to do on the turn using the concepts laid out above or you can just go ahead and reraise right there, a particularly good play if your opponent is pot committed.
3) Your opponent was the preflop raiser and he/she is passive.
Against a passive opponent we don’t have nearly as many options as against an aggressive opponent. This is because the passive opponent is much less likely to bluff so all of the plays to induce bluffs above go out the window. First, you cannot lead into a passive opponent because they will not come after the bet even if they read it as weak. Unless they actually flop something then leading into the passive pre-flop raiser here will lose your action and that is not our goal with top two pair on an untextured board. You just can’t depend on your opponent to be holding a hand here so you must check.
The good news if that even the most passive of players will usually bet when checked to in a heads up pot when they were the original raiser. It takes very little poker expertise to continuation bet in position in a heads up pot so the vast majority of the time a check induces a bet from even the most passive of opponents. When your opponent bets you must flat all and not check raise because you do not want to turn your cards face up and cause your passive opponent to fold.
So once you flat call the flop this is where your options really become much more limited than against an aggressive opponent. Aggressive opponents will take the second barrel at the pot so checking to them is a very good option. But a passive opponent will only bet with a very strong hand so if you check the turn a check is the most likely response for your passive opponent. For all the reasons already laid out a check is a disaster here, particularly against a passive player because the gap between hands they will bet and hands they will call with is much greater than in an aggressive player. A passive player will call with many Aces but is likely to check nearly all of them when checked to whereas the aggressive opponent will bet the weaker hands in order to pick the pot up right there. Because of this a check to the passive player is out of the question.
So that leaves only lead the turn. You must allow the passive player to put money in the pot getting the worst of it when he is willing to do so. In order to insure this you must bet. Betting gains a lot against a hand willing to call a bet. At the same time betting loses very little against a bluff when the player holding the bluff is passive. The passive player will not take a second stab at the turn anyway so checking gains nothing against that hand. When you bet the passive player will fold as well. Either way it doesn’t matter. You can’t get blood out of a stone, or more money out of a passive player holding a bluff on the turn, no matter how you play it.
It is against the real hands that the lead really is the big equity up play. Checking might well get you zero when the passive player checks back but betting will get you a call at least and will avoid the free card scenario at the same time.
So against both the passive and aggressive players the check on the flop is almost always right, unless you against a super savvy and aggressive opponent who attacks the weak lead. If you do check then you should not check raise the flop and risk losing your action. Instead you should flat call. On the turn your play depends on what kind of opponent you are against. Against many aggressive opponents you can check and induce the second bluff. Against super aggressive and more savvy opponents you can weak lead the turn if you feel your opponent will attack the small bet there. And against a passive opponent you must lead as well to avoid the check behind you since the passive opponent will not take the second bluff at the pot.
Next time: How to play out of position on an untextured board when you flop a big hand out of position in a multiway pot.
Keep up the good work ! Thanks from Ontario, Canada