One setup you need to watch out for in poker are situations where you think you are betting your good hand, but in actuality you are bluffing. Now how can that happen, you ask? It’s when you flop what at first glance seems like pretty good hand and bet it - but have to fold if you are raised, and in fact can’t even bet it any more if you are called. So basically if you get called on the flop you are giving up the hand. This happens all the time in No Limit Hold’em, especially in cash games of any significant size.

Suited connectors and trouble hands are both notorious for putting you in this spot. Here is an example:

You are on the button, everybody folds, you make your standard preflop raise, and only the big blind calls. The flop comes:

He checks and you bet about 75% of the pot, your standard continuation bet on the flop. He then comes over the top for a large raise.

It now doesn’t matter whether you have the hand that you have, AK, J10, pocket fives, or any of the other many hands that you would make the same play with in this situation (raise from the button and make a standard continuation bet). You have to abandon the hand. So you weren’t really betting top pair were you? It was just a standard continuation bet-bluff on the flop for all practical purposes.

Now, suppose he just calls. Other than the two remaining nines and the three remaining eights, what card can possibly hit the board that would cause you to do anything other than try to check the hand down and abandon ship for any action except a meek-looking bet on the river? Truth be told, even if an eight or nine hits and he comes out swinging I am not all that thrilled in a cash game with deep stacks - that’s a good way to get broke.

So you see, sometimes you hit the flop and it just doesn’t matter - you play it the same way you would if you missed it. By the way, if you would call the flop check-raise on the flop with this hand please tell me where you will be playing tonight!

Technorati Tags: Poker strategy, Poker, No limit holdem

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under strategy. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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