The situation: You have a hand you are not committed with (one pair usually), little chance to improve, facing a flop raise/check raise, and you call to “see what they do on the turn,” planning to fold to further aggression. I see a lot of posts lately that have this reoccurring situation, and Hero doesn’t know what to do on the turn.

Ok here’s the deal. I think some of you might have some concepts confused from NLHTAP. There’s a part in there about calling a flop bet to see what people do on the turn. Often, you can call a flop bet in an unraised pot with a hand as weak as TPNK, or in a raised pot with a hand as weak as an underpair (TT on a Jxx board for example). Why? Because your opponent will be hard pressed to put more money in with worse hands, so you can either be sure you are beaten if they bet the turn or you can bluff him off a better hand if the situation is right and they check to you.

What you CAN’T do is call flop raises/check raises to “see what they do on the turn” or “because of pot odds”. Guess what: they’re going to bet the turn. I know some people will probably respond with hand examples where this wasn’t the case, but I can guarantee you that those are the exception and not the rule. If you call flop raises or check raises, it’s because you a) believe you have the best hand and are planning on putting more money in on later streets, or b) you have a draw and are being offered direct pot odds, and don’t believe you have enough fold equity to warrant shoving over the top of a raise.

In the case of the first situation however, calling is often less optimal than raising. Why? Say for example you have AA on a 237r board and you believe your opponent’s range is mostly made up of worse one pair hands. There are a lot of turn cards that will force your opponent to shut down based on your range; putting more money in on the flop will likely be easier for him than putting more money in on the turn. Or, say your opponent’s range is made up of mostly drawing hands, like on a 4JTcc board and facing an aggressive opponent. You can’t just call and let them draw cheaply or push you off the hand later.

Another reason why calling sucks: You give up initiative and the opportunity to get information if OOP, and all of your turn options suck if IP and your opponent checks. Say you are in position and get check raised on a 37Tr board. You call with KK to see what your opponent does on the turn. The turn is a 9, putting a flush draw out there and he checks. What are you going to do? Bet/fold? Check behind and be forced to call on all rivers? Or say you call, turn is a 2, and he leads. Now what? You knew he was likely to bet the turn. The turn didn’t change anything unless he just hit a set of deuces (highly unlikely). If you are folding on this turn, that means you played incorrectly on the flop based on your opponent’s range. If you played correctly on the flop based on your opponent’s range, then you should be calling the turn. Or, say you have KK on a T64r board and get raised on the flop. You call and c/f the turn when it doesn’t change anything, OR you call and keep putting more money in without a real plan of what you’re going to do (think ranges and make your decision on the flop).

The lesson here is that you can’t call flop raises/check raises “to see what my opponent will do on the turn” if you plan on folding to further aggression. They often will show further aggression and you are just throwing money away if this is your plan. The effect is even more intensified when you are OOP because you are giving up initiative and the opportunity to get information. Bottom line is this: when facing a flop raise or check raise, you have to make your decision right then and there as to how you’re going to play the rest of the hand. Otherwise you’re just burning money and this is a huge leak.

Comments/Arguments/Thoughts appreciated.

This really sums up what I have been thinking about quite a few posts I have read on the forums lately............... Call and reevaluate/reassess the turn is a phrase used way to often IMO........... I mean you have JJ and get check raised by a semi-decent aggressive player on a 259 rainbow board, what turn card do you want to see apart from a J? (4.5% of the time btw) Make the decision and play the hand accordingly, move on to the next hand.

In my experience and in the poker books and articles I have read, the flop play is basically the most important part of the hand, by the time you are seeing the turn and rivers you should have some idea what you put your opponent on or at least some idea of what you action play is in response to the bets you are likely to be facing.

What is the point of calling a half pot raise on the flop and then folding to the same half pot bet on the turn when the turn card bricks out?

I'm the ones who posted this kind of hands, very nice.

Just something I thought: a lot of the advice I heard was in the fold/shove line. I think that even tough you have to make you decision there, if you think you have the best hand sometimes it's better to call down than to 4bet.

In the example suppose you have QQ in the 259 rainbow board, semi decent villain cr. I think that if you 4bet you will fold all but sets (sometimes JJ and TT but villain dependant), while when you call down he may keep firing with 56s.

The only problem with this is when the turn comes an A and the river K, but I think it's worth the risk.

gl

Good OP

Nah, I'm not singling anyone out, lots of people post these types of situations. I found I was giving the same advice over and over again, so perhaps a thread was in order.

Exactly. Your decision to call is because you think you have the best hand, but 4-bet shoving will fold all the hands that will keep betting into you. You call because you plan on putting more money in, not because you wanna see if he'll still bet.

Sometimes a Call, then call all in line is nice if you want to keep all his bluffs/semi bluffs in his range. but this line is not so good at passive tables.

Edit: Added to my poker bible, Wish I read this post about a few months ago, would have saved me lotsa money.

GP I Vi.

Bump and I nominate for addition to the master sticky.

ty, I vi ii V7, I find this very insightful!

Yeah OP, great post.

One thing I am TRYING to force myself to do on every flop is ask myself the question "How big do I want this pot to get?" and then plan strategy from there.

The answer with a single pair is usually "not very big - preferably 15-20 BBs". If I bet the flop, I'm going to be folding a lot to foes who c/r or flat call/bet turn. It's not going to be fun, but it will stop me spewing away chips with mediocre hands.

Most of the time its a hand that will stand one decent sized bet or two half-pot bets and I'll be planning to mix it up between:
a) check flop, bet turn
b) bet flop, check turn
c) probe bet flop and turn

Does this make sense? Or is plan c) just pure spew? Thoughts?

This is something I think about all the time. I've made some nitty folds just for reasons I can't even explain, especially out of position. It just 'feels' like it's not worth it to go forward with the hand.

However, how do you determine if your hand is good? If you raise AA in early position and a solid tag calls you on the button. Board is T62 2 hearts and you don't have the Ah. You make your cbet and get raised. What kind of thought process goes through your mind before you make a decision to either raise for value or to punish draws, or call if you think you have the best hand and let him keep bluffing, or fold if you think you're beat?

What I do depends greatly on board texture. If it's a really dry board and he's someone who has a low fold to cbet% and high AF, I'll probably just let him bet himself to death or maybe a check raise on the turn. If the board is ugly I'm either slightly ahead of his draws or way behind his made hands right? I'm most likely giving up here. Is this the 'standard' way to determine if you want to continue with your big pairs?

l vi, I am going back to this PSA a lot lately. I am still thinking: what are exceptions to this "rule"?

Take this hand for example:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...l-tilt-493950/

If we 3b, we essentially cannot get called by worse. Hence I don't like 3b absent reads. However, a fold seams "weak." We are in those 1 in 3 spots where we hit with our AK. Furthermore, the c/r is really small, and the board is quite dry. So, say, we call. But then, what do we do when the villain bets a blank turn big time? We realize it may take 200BB to find out if TPTK is good (Of course, one question might be if the situation is different 100BB deep.) And the way I read the PSA: well, but what else but a big bet could have happened on the turn? Nothing, the flop call is a leak!

What makes me uneasy about folding the flop, though, is that, if I always fold here, it's super-exploitable. Villains can just run me over with bluffs (even more, those bluffs aren't particularly expensive).

Keep in mind I'm a micro-grinder (25NL). Am I overly concerned that villains are playing back? Or is part of the lesson of this PSA that I need to decide on the flop whether villain is bluffing (in which case I'll have to resort to calling down)? Or am I misinterpreting this PSA entirely?

Any comments would be appreciated.

People are not playing back at you. You need to keep in mind what people's ranges are (meaning, when they c/r with top pair, they don't consider it playing back). The tl;dr of the PSA is this: Calling raises and check raises with hands unlikely to improve and planning on folding to further aggression is a leak because most people fire the turn with 100% of their flop raise/check raise range. If you have a specific read that contradicts this, then go with your read.

Some aggro opponents on certain boards will refuse to double barrel with bluffs but it is very read-dependent. I wouldn't follow this as a steadfast rule, though. Sometimes even with value hands you know opponent will bet a second barrel so you can c/r and commit him with something he thinks he has the odds with. Good OP, but very very read-dependent.

Very insightful. Lots of good advice. A+

This is the key. The argument isn't "fold or shove". It's "don't call planning to fold to another bet".

For example, there are times when it is correct to call the checkraise and then shove over a turn bet. But since you're not planning on just folding to another bet, the PSA doesn't apply.