Poker Articles

You Have Three Choices…

Isn't it silly how absurdly simple this game really is when you break it down? Every time it's your turn you have to make a decision, but even if you randomly decide what to do, you'll still be right 1/3 of the time! Bet/Raise, Call/Check, or Fold.

Something I want you to start doing immediately (and myself to do more often), is when it is your turn, ask yourself, "what is the best possible play that I can make right now?" Now, the only way to really answer this question is to dig into the whys. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to know why you are taking a line through a hand. You should not be raising simply because you think you're supposed to raise, or because you have top pair, or because you haven't raised in a while. You should not be checking on the flop simply because you're supposed to check to the raiser. All the actions that I just stated are often the correct play in the situation, but you must alter your thinking about the game to be dynamic to the situation and opponents rather than static to the hand.

I'll give you an example from a hand that I played recently that seems like a pretty straightforward hand, but I will break down my thought process and reasoning on every street, hopefully giving you a template that you can work from.

The game was 2-4 NL Hold'em 6-max online. I was in middle position, 2nd to act preflop. Effective stacks in this hand are around the table max of $400. UTG folds, I have QT offsuit and raise to $14, cutoff and button are both unknowns to me and call, and both blinds fold. I'm not going to get into the thought process pre-flop, but in general raising is better than calling and I don't want to fold this hand.

The flop comes T73 rainbow. Good news: we flopped top pair. We're first and we're not open folding, ever. Bet or check? If we bet, we are not getting a better hand to fold, but we may get value from a worse hand such as JT-T8, 89, a smaller pocket pair, or whatever other random hand that the opponents decide to call with. We will get raised by some hands that beat us but not all, but we are not going to get raised by hands that we beat very often (89 and JT being the only two that really come to mind, but I doubt they're raising very often in this spot). Betting sounds like a good option.

Are there any benefits in checking? Well, we might get a worse hand to bluff at the pot that we wouldn't get value from otherwise, but other than that I don't see any other benefit. We should have the best hand at this point and don't want a free card. By checking, we're giving free cards to hands that we beat that would have either folded or called our bet and this pot is three-way, so there's plenty of cards on the turn that would cost us the pot. We bet $40 into the $48 pot, and get called by both opponents. Immediately think about what these calls mean and adjust your ranges for them in your mind.

The turn is a 7. So, we have two opponents that haven't expressed any strength yet, but they are still not going away and this pot is getting big fast. The middle card on the board just paired and this is obviously not a good card for us. I believe their range is pretty similar, including T8-AT, A7, 97-67, 89, or some random pocket pair. Do we bet or check? Why?

Benefits of betting: Possible value from 89, Tx, or random pocket pair, however it's unlikely that these hands are going to call in my opinion. We get reverse value (meaning we lose money we don't necessarily need to lose) from the hands that call us but wouldn't necessarily bet the turn. Also, we are not going to be able to get much separation between hands that beat us and hands we beat by betting here. In other words, if we bet and get called, we do not gain any information about where we stand in this hand.

Benefits of checking: keeps the pot size under control, we get to see what two opponents do before we have to act again, we are not afraid of giving a free card (because we're not going broke if our opponents get there), and we want a free card ourselves because we are no longer confident in the strength of our hand.

Checking is significantly better in my opinion. We check, they both check.

River is a king. Betting: Are we getting called by a worse hand? No. Period. No hand that we beat is calling us at this point. Anything that calls us is either chopping with us or beating us. Are we folding a better hand? Possibly… we might get a hand like T8-TQ to fold and win an additional half of the pot, but this is only a small percentage of the time. So we can't bet for value, and we can't really bet as a bluff, so we check.

I wrote an article a while back called "Value-Check Town" where I discussed how to get value out of hands that are not going to get called by worse but can be good bluff catchers. This is a better way to get value on this hand than by betting. We are going to get them to put money in the pot with worse hands more often by checking and calling rather than by betting out. Now, we haven't decided if we're calling or not yet, but this is something to be thinking about at this point. We check, planning on deciding what to do based on our opponents action. The cutoff villain bets $129 into the $168 pot, the other guy folds, and it's our turn. We're not raising, so now we have to decide whether we're having the best hand or not.

Some more information: on the turn when it checked around, the UTG player checked behind us rather quickly. So, based on the information that we have, what can we reasonably put the opponent on that beats us? AT, KT, and that's about it. Any other hand that beats us probably bets the turn but definitely does not quickly check. Furthermore, we can deduce that the villain is not going to bet AT or any other ten for that matter, so all we're really worried about is KT. So, our bluff detector is going off big-time, and we decide to call. The opponent shows us J8 and we scoop the pot.

This is a really simple hand and really unglamorous, but this hand could have been played in many different ways, especially on the river. Most people fold the river thinking that "I'm chopping at best." But, by taking our time and making key decisions at key spots, we not only won the pot, but won the maximum that we could have on this hand.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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About the Author:

Bryan Devonshire is a rising star on the professional circuit. Since he took second place in the first event of the 2006 World Series of Poker, he has cashed in four major tournaments, including a first place finish at the Commerce Casino. Bryan is also a featured blogger on PokerPages.com.