Flop Play in Poker, Poker Flop Strategy

Flop play in poker, your poker flop strategy will largely determine how the hand in the poker game goes from there; here are some factors to take into account. Since you already know 5 of the 7 cards to be dealt (71, 5 % of them), you have to decide whether you want to stay in the game, and if you do, how you’re going to play. Basically every hand takes a new direction once the flop is dealt. Factors to take into account on the flop are flop texture, hand strength, and how your opponent’s play. It’s the community cards that make a hand really exciting, that’s where it really comes down to players poker skills. Assessing all available information perfectly or correctly enough is a skill that can be honed all through your life, but reading a poker school like this one can be a good starting point for building a winning poker strategy.

I obviously can’t prepare you for all situations that can occur on the flop in a poker game, so I’ll try to run through a couple of basic cases based on what options of flop play you have.

Bet at The Flop In Poker, Or Check?

As a raiser in the first stage of this game, preflop play in poker, you are in control postflop. You can decide whether to continuation bet at the flop in poker, or check. Continuation betting (contbetting for short) strategy has either of the following two goals. One is to bet for value (so this is rather a form of value betting), the other is to make your opponent fold what could be the best hand. By value betting you’re also protecting what you think is the best hand at that point. Contbetting is an effective way of winning the pot with the worst hand in poker cash games, and that’s exactly what makes raising in position preflop so profitable. By betting on the flop after raising preflop, you will win the pot regardless of your actual hand because most of the time your opponent’s hand will miss on the flop too. Rather than checking and play passively, you’ll win a lot of the time by betting with the worst hand, and since your opponents will get used to your frequent contbets, when you do hit, they’ll be more inclined to pay you off. If you only contbet when you had a hand, you’d do it pretty rarely, and your whole poker strategy would be too transparent. You wouldn’t get any action when you had a big hand, and your opponents would steal every pot where neither of you had a hand. To sum up, by continuation betting with the right frequency, you will steal a lot of small pots, and create an image that helps you win the most when you have a big hand to play. It’s worth contbetting in roughly 70 % of the cases, so I will rather go through the exceptions to the rule. Against two or more opponents with no hand, don’t contbet. Even when you have a medium strength hand that is unlikely to lose by showdown if ahead on the flop, you shouldn’t contbet if only stronger hands would call. Example: you have QJ on a KJ3 flop, all of different suits (rainbow flop). Here you don’t want to build a pot (why would you with second pair), but it’s not the case where the only way you can win is by making your opponent fold either. If your opponent calls on this flop, he will show up with a K far too often, and when he folds, your bet was pointless, because your hand would have been good at showdown anyway. Don’t contbet without a hand against poker players who call all the time (calling stations), or against players who check/raise a lot. Don’t contbet on flops like AQK with middle pair, or on connected flops like QT9 with a hand that has no equity at all, because your opponent(s) will very often have a hand that has some relation to flops like these (some kind of pair+draw most of the time). Don’t contbet against short stacked poker players already committed to the pot.

Out of position, you will find players who don’t play their position and tend to check back flops when you don’t continuation bet, giving you a free turncard. It’s the type of player who calls all the time, but never bets or raises (there’s quite a lot of these players). If you know that your opponent in position is of this type, don’t contbet without a hand.

By now it should be clear when checking rather than contbetting is justified after raising preflop. Checking doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on the hand. In some cases you will outdraw your opponent on later streets, and sometimes a tiny pair or even ace high is enough at showdown to win the hand. By not contbetting you might also end up folding the best hand though, because some poker players will open on the turn if you check on the flop. This is all the more reason to contbet, whenever it is possible. It’s all part of a sound game plan to know when to fold, even when there’s a chance that you have the best hand.

The Poker Flop Bet Sizing Strategy

The poker flop bet sizing strategy is an important aspect of continuation betting. There’s no need to bet close to pot on a dry board without a hand, because you won’t get much more folds by betting big, and you will build a much bigger pot. You will save a lot of money by contbetting somewhere between 2/3-3/4 of the pot depending on how wet the flop is. Every dollar above 3/4 of the pot will be burnt because you usually won’t have a hand so the goal of contbetting is stealing the pot right away, and betting full pot won’t achieve that goal more often than betting 3/4 pot. Betting full pot only, when you have a big hand, is a too transparent strategy. There are some special cases when you do have to bet pot, but it’s rarely the optimal play. By contbetting smaller you will have a lot more options on later streets (playing for stacks with a big hand or giving up relatively cheaply).

Options On Poker Flop Play

After calling preflop in position, you will have a lot of options on poker flop play. If you figure out how to respond to your opponent’s actions, calling preflop raises can be quite profitable. Your positional advantage means you will have a lot more information to consider like the preflop raiser’s action on the flop, his playing style, flop texture and how much it hit your hand. Depending on these factors, you will often have an opportunity to win the pot in position. In most of these cases, you will win by bluffing or semi-bluffing, a topic I will get back to in the chapter on poker bluff strategy. If you have any equity during the hand, you will have a much better chance of capitalizing on it in position than out of position. You can control the size of the pot, and if you want to play for stacks, you don’t need to be tricky, all you have to do is bet all the way. Balanced with occasional bluffs, your bets in position will be paid off when you have a big hand. Sometimes you will have a bluff catcher type hand that is good enough to call some bets. There’s no point in raising with such hands, because only better hands would call, and by calling you might encourage an aggressive player to keep bluffing or betting with the worst hand. For example, you have KJ in position, flop comes KQ7, opponent contbets, you call. Turn is a 5, he bets, you call. River is a 2, he checks and you check too. By raising on any street in this example you make your opponent fold his bluffs and worse hands, and lose more when you’re beat. In some games, thinking on a higher level, you may consider valuebetting your KJ on the river here, but for that to be profitable you have to be sure that your opponent might call your bet with a weaker hand. When you have a really strong hand, and there’s a possible flush draw on board, you might as well raise to a contbet. Not because you want to protect your hand against a flush draw, but because by raising your opponent may think that it’s you who’s on a flush draw, and he may be willing to put more money in with the worst hand. In case your opponent has a flush draw, he will also commit more chips to the pot with a lower equity than yours. Another reason why you should consider raising with strong hands on boards with a flush draw is if the third card of the same suit hits on the turn, it’s a bad card for you most of the time, either because it scares your opponent or because he will have a flush and you will lose the hand. Even worse than that, your opponent might bluff you out of the pot, and you will have to fold with no showdown. Some very aggressive players can be called down with second pair type hands too. In position, it’s also much easier to realize when it’s time to fold. There are tons of situations when there’s no point in bluffing, so you just fold to a bet, but you can often punish weakness by betting to a missed contbet. For example you call with T9s, and the flop comes AQ8. You obviously fold to a contbet, but bet if the preflop raiser checks to you.

Conclusion On Flop Play Poker Strategy

If you stick to the flop play poker strategy outlined so far, you should rarely play out of position as a preflop caller. You should keep this to a minimum as a beginner. If you have a very strong hand, you’d better reraise preflop. In some cases of course, you have no choice but call a raise out of position. In these hands, never bluff but play your hand according to its strength. Check/raising on the flop represents tremendous strength, but there’s not much else to do because apart from some special cases donk betting (betting into the preflop raiser) will simply make your opponent fold the worst hand right away. When you check and the preflop raiser contbets, you will have to raise most of the time because he won’t bet again on the turn often enough if you start trapping by just calling. If you just call on the flop and then your attempt at check/raising the turn falls through when your opponent checks back, you usually won’t be able to make up for your value-loss on the river. All these considerations pretty much determine how you can play your strong hands out of position, since apart from the occasional alternative play, check/raising is the obvious strategy. This move leaves your opponent with an easy decision, because he can just fold when he doesn’t have a hand. It just goes to show why so many hands are useless out of position. Against some players of course, you can check/raise on the turn or on the river, but these plays are strictly player-dependent and shouldn’t be part of your general game plan. One of your options out of position is donk betting. This means betting into the player who raised preflop, rather than checking to him and see what he does. Depending on their size, donk bets can be used to induce bluffs, or to win pots right away with weak pairs or draws. With donk betting draws, you can make sure you have the right pot odds to hit, since it’s you who sets the price in this case. Whatever the reason for donk betting however, you will always have to consider some serious drawbacks, so unless you have a sophisticated plan on how to use this play against a particular poker player, I don’t recommend it.

According to my basic poker strategy, you should rarely play 3bet pots. That said when you do reraise preflop, play aggressively postflop too. If you don’t 3bet too often, you can almost always continuation bet on the flop. The reason for this is that by contbetting after reraising preflop you’re representing a big pocket pair, so your opponent will be less likely to call or raise than in single raised pots. When you do get called or raised, don’t be stubborn – unless you have a strong hand – just give up on the hand (e.g. you have AK and the flop comes Q93). But since you 3bet with a tight range, you will likely bet for value on the flop a lot of the time. Another reason why most opponents fold more in 3bet pots is that the pot on the flop is bigger (18-25 big blinds) than in single raised pots (6-9 big blinds), so the contbet is much bigger too. Curious players who want to see every flop will be less inclined to call without top pair or so, and that makes contbetting with unimproved AK profitable too. When your opponent calls with top pair, you’re obviously not too happy with AK, but you love his call with overpairs, because you win most of your profit with big pocket pairs from weaker top pairs.

Most of your made hands have to be protected and bet for value, so don’t even think about slowplaying them. The average weak poker player remains passive without a very strong hand, so you should never expect him to do the betting himself. It’s always on you to play for highest value put in as much money in the pot with the winning hand as possible. When you play a strong hand at the flop (top pair top kicker, set, twopair, straight, flush), all you have to focus on is maximizing your hands value. The first step is to bet the flop. Most weak players call a lot but rarely bet themselves, so you will get loads of calls, but if you check, a weak player will check too most of the time. There are hands that are not strong enough for three streets of value betting, but you should always bet the flop with these hands too, and consider checking either on the turn or on the river in poker instead.

You should play draws aggressively most of the time, especially in position, because by raising on the flop not only will you see the river cheaply if you don’t hit on the turn in poker, but you will also get a lot of folds on the flop, and that is a perfect result as well with a draw. Another advantage of raising with a draw is that in the rare cases when your opponent calls and you hit on further streets, you will have an opportunity to win a much bigger pot. Sometimes you will play for stacks on the flop, when your opponent reraises to your raise or shoves all in. That’s OK too with a big draw with 12 or even more outs. Considering how often your poker opponent folds to your raise and the fact that you will have great equity even if all your money goes in on the flop, playing your big draws passively is a mistake in most cases. When there’s a small chance that you can win the hand on the flop by raising (e.g. with two or more other players seeing the flop), pot odds may justify just calling. Another classic example is the ace high flop where your opponent is very likely to have an A, and all you’ve got is a naked flush draw. Putting in your whole stack here is rarely a good play. By choosing the starting hands that you play carefully, you shouldn’t have a low flush draw too often, but when you do, and you don’t have any overcards, calling in position is fine at the flop. Hands like flush draw + 1 overcard (12 outs), and various combinations of multi-draws (pair + flush draw, straight draw + flush draw, two overcards + flush draw) must be played aggressively by raising. You can consider check/raising out of position too. If your opponent checks to you, play these like a strong made hand and bet hard.

Poker Tips

• If you don’t contbet JTs on A96, fold it preflop!
• Always contbet against one opponent, if you have no chance of winning at showdown!
• With strong hands to play always value bet, value bet, value bet.
• As the preflop raiser, you have the initiative on the flop, use that to your advantage!

Now that you have learned more about the right flop play and poker strategy on the flop; sign up to play poker and get your 110 % first deposit bonus plus a ticket to our New Depositor $500 Freeroll.

Good luck at the poker tables!

Team Chocolate Poker