Recently I've had some problems vs villains who never 3bets from BB pre and check raises me a TON (~40-45%) on flop vs my 100% Cbet. I have begun thinking about checking back some flops but I find it very hard to balance.

Perhaps floating a ton of the C/R's and raise turn liberally is a better option? Or maybe a third? Any input greatly appreciated.

I think that the hands that turn out to be +EV to check back will tend to balance themselves. Often times if villains refuse to fold flop more than 20% of the time and fail to adjust I'll just start cbetting MPGK+ only. Against someone who is statically xring 50% you can start raising the turn all over the place with a strong range after he checkraises the flop on you. If he doesn't like to cbet his xr's you can 3bet. Another question here is how much is he folding the flop? If he's still folding 30% or more you are getting good odds to fire the bottom of your range as well as the top - its that middle that wants to keep the pot small for now that will benefit. In that case you would be balancing draws, Ahi, marginal pairs, Khi and those hands generally which do not benefit from worse calling or better folding.


If you check back a lot I think it is necessary to check back TPGK+ some frequency of the time, maybe 25%, adjusting for how he reacts on the turn. Pay close attention to his tendencies on the turn after you check it back. Some villains will allow you to play nearly perfectly against them in that spot. Others will fire too often. Still others may want to continue their wayward checkraising habits on the turn, a very expensive proposition.

Versus frequent flop c/r's, an alternate strategy is to re-define your ranges for peels (including high card sd-ables) and 3-bets (to include some rebluffs and free card plays). This also opens up the b/c flop, raise turn line, which should be used more liberally versus your opponent's wider range.

Although I do check back a rare flop against certain opponent types, it wouldn't be my first adjustment to frequent c/r's.

On the flip side, as someone who plays the style you describe, I can tell you that my first adjustment to an opponent who begins to check back anything more than say 10% is to start 3-betting instead, so you also have to consider if you want to encourage that behavior or not.

I'm not saying it's a bad adjustment and in fact I think a lot of weird lines can come in handy if they are capable of throwing your opponent off.

He's exploiting you. As a counter-strategy, polarise your flop-betting range by checking behind almost all your intermediate strength hands. If he adjusts by 3-betting preflop, moderate your checking behind frequency but keep it in positive territory. But anything is better than the status quo.

Thanks for replies.

@Phil

By checking back medium strength hands like low pairs/Ahighs only we're basically saying I'm going to showdown almost always with my marginal hand and with that were playing face up poker allowing the opponent to play perfectly against us at times we do check back flop. Don't you agree?

If you keep your flop value:bluff ratio correct then you'll also have to check behind a lot of weak draws and stuff which will often have to fold to aggression when unimproved. Depends somewhat on your preflop opening range but your range will be wide regardless.

I've been giving this some thought lately and am slightly confused on how to even approach this problem. For example I was thinking for a turn semi bluff and bluff range it would probably be in the ballpark of optimal, or at least difficult to exploit, if the turn range was constructed in a way which made calling with 4th pair no draw break even. That's kind of arbitrary, but my logic behind it would be that it would make all bluff catchers negative ev to call most of the time. So my opponent could only try to exploit me by reraising for value but then he will open himself up to getting 4 bet some of the time - the same calculus could then be applied to 4 bet semibluffing by redefining which target hand group we want to make zero ev to call.

So on the flop could you or would you frame it that way as well. So when you cbet you would want to do it in a way that makes maybe ahi indifferent towards calling? The problem I have with value:bluff ratios is that even on the turn almost no hand is a pure bluff and on the flop almost any hand will have more than 15% equity in huhu oop in a single raised pot getting 5 to 1. Would it be useful to try to construct a range that makes calling with an arbitrary group of hands zero ev, Ahi for instance? Or is there some better or more mathematically correct way of approaching the balance problem?

In my experience, once you start checking back the flop, most opponents will respect your c-bets more, which means you can gradually work more and more bluffs into that part of your range. This is especially true if they are the type to fire turn nearly 100% in that scenario and are generally sd-bound as you can recoup value for the stronger part of your checking-back range with turn raises.

Other than some really basic problems (river bluff spots) I worked to get my mind around the idea of indifference points, I have to admit I haven't ever spent any time trying to discover them. I would think the best way to approach it would be with a program like CR EV so you can take into consideration your opponent's entire range as well as the play of future streets?

How would you want to select the indifference points though. You could set it for villains Ahi's or his Khi's or his 4th or even 3rd pairs. It seems intuitively to me that 4th pair would be closest to an overall equilibrium point where it would be difficult to exploit either way. He could start folding a lot of marginal hands but then it would be pretty obvious what he's doing from all the bet folding. He couldn't really exploit you too much by reraising either. Do you think targeting 4th pair on the turn for indifference on most boards makes sense, how can you properly think about this problem? I guess I really don't have much of a frame of reference to start from on this.

I guess part of what I was saying is if I were going to try to solve the problem myself, I would install CR EV and try to find the ranges where my EV = 0 versus my opponet's range on common board textures. You could then convert this to a ratio by counting the combos of bluffs and then comparing against the number of value combos.

In other words, I don't think the idea that targeting 4th pair (or any other specific hand type) is the correct way to approach the problem. It dependss a lot on the way you're going to construct your own ranges, the specific board texture and potential runouts as well as your perception of the villain's range and behaviors. You also have to take into consideration the play of future streets. I don't think there's an easy way to do this math manually or even in a spreadsheet. And all of this is assuming a consistent line of action up to the decision point, as fluctuations in pot size will change everything.

In game, I think you can kind of feel this stuff out as you go, adjusting your bluffing frequencies according to your opponent's reactions and the notes you develop on his tendencies for specific textures. Simiilarly, you will develop a perception of what works best in general against the population at your site(s) & stake(s), so you can develop a default ratio through game experience rather than hard math.

I do find your question interesting and am curious to see Phil's reply.

Edit: For an example of how to find the indifference point for a simple river decision, search for the Bryce Paradis post on Game Theory. Basically, it's the size of the bet in relation to the pot size that dictates the correct frequency.

Thanks, I'm going to look at Bryce's post in a second. I am actually already using cardrunners EV and I've tried a couple of those calculations. Thanks for your reply because I think that was the one thing I was missing, the pot size. So what you're saying is that the villains hand (I say hand because it bounds the range beneath which all hands become negative EV, so in that sense, any indifference point targets a specific hand) that is being targeted for indifference should correlate with the pot size. But otoh your (optimal) bluffing frequency should also be correlated to the pot size, so if you target a certain hand group for indifference in one pot then targeting them in a different pot would mean bluffing at a frequency thats directly related to the differences in the two pot sizes. So the targeted hand or hand group wouldn't have to change.

My purpose in trying to figure this out is so that I can know about where to revert to if I don't really know what my opponent is doing. Getting good at it would also provide a nice mental benchmark, so if you saw a villain calling with Ahi in a certain spot you would know exactly how to exploit that by excluding certain hands in your range from bluffing that would otherwise be in it or vice versa with a foldy opponent.

Okay, I think I was reading too much into it instead of taking what you said at face value. Since you don't expect to see people folding pairs very often, it seems like bottom pair with the worst kicker still in their range would form an okay baseline looking at it in a very abstract sense.

I would say the idea that you can exploit population tendencies even when you don't know your specific opponent well enough to exploiit their specific playing style is worth thinking more about.

- he doesn't look like to be overplaying as he isn't 3betting preflop.
- if he would 3bet preflop, and you miss the flop, it would be the same as he doesn't 3bet and then cr's the flop and you missed, so I don't see a problem. Some adjust to non-3betting BBs by not c-betting as much.
- to c-ch is a play done mostly against overaggressive players, especially when they cr too much and even then it's okay to cbet just that one can do better by not cbetting when one would need to fold otherwise (the same as not open-raising/folding preflop vs. constant 3bettor) and then if he bets it most automatically on the turn, it's time to start trapping him with calling hand and then see how often he bets the river also - then it's possible to bluff also but vs. his range as no 3bet it's less good - and then fold at river if he just bets the turn with specific hands and/or bluffs, and when he starts to adjust and not bluff the turn, then one can fold more hands on the turn as well as bet more hands on the flop, where he aditionally might be then also cr:ing less, so one can then cbet more or less weaker hands, and finally he might end up playing more or less optimally and then one grinds him out as usual.

@MKarne

So basically we have to focus on villains cbet turn/river strategy after c/r flop. Makes sense. Thanks muppet & judge as well. Its a crucial and very tricky spot in lhe imo.

OP: buy Phil's book. Besides other high quality content in there, you will also find a chapter on checking back flops.