The flop is one of the decisive rounds of poker in all categories and varieties. It is the moment when the first three community cards are placed in the middle of the table, opening the way for a new round of betting.
For players, this is a decisive moment, as it is the first opportunity to see what chances they have in their hand. Although there are hands that can improve on the turn and river, usually if things don’t look good on the flop, you fold before you lose any more money.
What is the flop?
There are four parts to a poker game: the preflop, the flop, the turn and the river. The preflop is the initial round of betting that takes place before the first community cards are exposed. The first round of betting which is the preflop is usually done blind. It is a critical round, but in reality, it is assumed that a decision will not be made until the first community cards (the flop) are seen, which is the round we are concerned with.
This is why we say that the flop is the key moment in defining the development of the hand. When the community cards are revealed, it’s time to make a decision: either get out of the hand or bet. A decision you will have to make based on your chances of making a good hand with the first community cards, but also on the play of your opponents.
The flop has its own strategies, and although you probably already have some notions of how to deal with this phase of the game, there are some things you really need to take into account if you want to “level up”. Let’s get to it.
Check on the flop: is it advisable?
To talk about checking on the flop we have to understand how the strategy has changed as poker has progressed. Not so long ago, preflop betting was independent of flop betting, meaning that only players who had a hand bet; those who didn’t, didn’t. But then c-bets emerged.
But then came c-bets, continuation bets, as a kind of bluff that allowed you to pretend you had a good hand, or at least good enough to raise the pot preflop. This was the germ of a substantial change in preflop and flop strategy, since continuation betting is now assumed to be the norm rather than the exception. In other words, we have to expect that whoever has a hand is going to bet, but whoever doesn’t is going to bet as well. And that has an impact on the way we understand flop strategy.
However, although this makes sense, it is important to keep in mind that in straightforward or ABC poker, continuation bets are not necessarily mandatory. In ABC poker, the premise is the same as in poker of old: if you have a hand, you bet; if you don’t, you don’t bet.
Continuation bets are meaningless unless they occur as part of a much broader and more sophisticated overall strategy. In other words, if you choose to pretend to have a good hand preflop, it is in order to do something important afterwards.
By all this we mean that checking on the flop is a totally valid thing to do. It seems that a c-bet is the only way to continue our play, but in reality, if we don’t frame that continuation bet within a broader framework, that strategy is meaningless.
And it never hurts to remember that selecting which hands we play is crucial. Creating a favourable scenario for our game is essential; if we are not selective with the hands we play, we will end up compromising our game and we will end up losing. A good hand selection can win you the hand at showdown, even if you don’t manage to connect any hands, so choose your hands wisely.
So, to answer the question directly: checking on the flop is a good option if you don’t have a good preflop hand, but you don’t want to fold. It is also an option if you don’t want to risk a bluff preflop (via a c-bet) if you don’t have anything big.
Check with position (IP) and check without position (OOP)
Let’s see how we can approach the check on the flop using two scenarios: one with position, and one without position.
Example of check IP
Mode: NLO 9 players.
Position: BUTTON.
Stacks:
– UTG: 15.75.
– UTG+1: 3.76.
– MP1: 4.80.
– MP2: 5.40.
– MP3: 2.33.
– CO: 4.93.
– Hero – BTN: 5.32.
– SB: 4.95.
– BB: 5.
Preflop, we have A♣ Kª. In preflop the bet is 0.07. UTG calls at 0.05, UTG+1, MP1, MP2, MP3 and CO fold, Hero raises to 0.25, the blinds check and UTG calls at 0.20. On the flop, with a bet of 0.57 and two players in play, 3♥ 2ª Jª comes out. UTG then checks.
Does it make any sense in this situation to bet on the flop? It’s true that you can see a flush or straight draw, but just think, if you bet, you’ll be fattening the pot foolishly because you don’t have a tied hand. And that’s never a good thing.
Instead of betting and making the pot bigger, we’re better off keeping the pot small and trying to know all five cards. Sometimes we get so caught up in the projects that we don’t think about the fact that we can get into trouble because we don’t have a made hand.
Here you also have to take into account that the suited connectors can help us to vary our game. We repeat: vary your game. It is assumed that we have a game. If you don’t, forget about suited cards.
Example of check OOP
Playing out of position can put you at a disadvantage if you raise the pot preflop and are OOP. The thing to do in these cases is to compensate for that disadvantage with strong cards.
One important thing you need to understand in order to play well on the flop: if you are the preflop raiser and there are players behind you, bluffing is not mandatory, so don’t get your fingers caught. In fact, in this situation it is advisable to check because by raiding you have already shown that you have a strong play. That strength hasn’t changed from preflop to flop, so betting again would be redundant.
Those who see your raise are likely to have cards of the same strength as yours, if not stronger. Checking can protect you and is not perceived as a weak play.
Calldowns: what are they?
When talking about checks out of position, one resource we have to deal with is the calldown. By calldown we mean the fact of recurrently seeing the villain’s bets until we reach the river, which allows us to get more value out of our hand.
If we raise the pot preflop and the villain on the button sees the raise (cold call), and we get to the flop and we are raised, we can re-raise and it may happen that we either discover the villain’s bluff and force him to fold, or that we hit a set. If this happens, paying out is an option to see little on the river; if it is the case of a bluff, we should keep our ear to the ground and let him continue with his bluff, never continue to re-raise his bet.
In other words, if the villain is aggressive and we detect that he tends to bluff, it is better to call until the river and forget about reraising his bets.
Calldowns are a good alternative to facing a villain out of position and isolated. Going all-in with bets would be suicide, so we’ll decide to see what the villain’s bets are little by little.
Out of position play can also occur if we get into a heads-up confrontation. In this case, it is better to use the check-raise strategy that we have already talked about on other occasions in order to keep increasing the pot.
And why check-raise yes and calldown no? Because with a calldown we just see the opponent’s bet, but with a check-raise we raise. If we keep the villain in our hand, we can take advantage of his bets. Letting him bet and forcing a raise is better for holding the villain, as he will think twice before leaving, since he has already bet.
On the other hand, if we bet heads-up on the flop and the villain has nothing, he won’t hesitate to leave. That’s the thing about low limits: once you’ve put money in the pot, there’s almost always a tendency to stay in the hand as long as possible to try to avoid losing money, even if you have nothing. It’s a way of burning the pot to the end. Use that to your advantage.
Want to know everything about a good Texas Hold’em strategy? Then you can’t miss these articles: