On the Flop - The Basics
by Unam
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Introduction
In this article- What questions to ask yourself on the flop
- How to evaluate the board
- Aggressive vs. passive play
After you've made it past the pre-flop play and thus the first of four streets, the next decision follows on the flop. How do you continue playing your hand now? Which factors influence your decision and have to be considered? What dangers are looming and how do you avoid make big mistakes? This article deals with these questions.
What Situations can appear on the Flop?
Your situation on the flop is the result of your pre-flop actions. Theoretically, there are four possible scenarios that you can find yourself in:
- non-raised pot in position
- non-raised pot out of position
- raised pot in position
- raised pot out of position
The first situation results from when you limp pre-flop on a full ring table, and no further players except the blinds entered the hand with you, or when you overlimped after several limpers before you. While these situations could be avoided completely, they do take place every now and then. In such a situation, you are in a non-raised pot in position.
If you are sitting in the blinds yourself and don't have a really good hand, then you may have either completed in the small blind, or only checked in the big blind. This time, you are in a non-raised pot out of position.
The highest priority is of course given to play on the flop when aggression has already been shown pre-flop. Not only did someone already signal that he has a relatively strong hand, but the pot has also become a whole lot bigger, and so each decision costs considerably more than in a non-raised pot.
Naturally, there are again two logical scenarios: You are sitting in a raised pot, either in position, or out of position.
In case of a raised pot, you obviously have to differentiate even further: Were you the last aggressor pre-flop and therefore have the initiative? Or did you only call in order to see the flop? In other words who is the one expected to claim the pot via a first bet on the flop (continuation bet)?
If you've internalized the pre-flop play, it should be clear which situation you would prefer: You are sitting in a raised pot, preferably in position, and you are the pre-flop aggressor. You have the possibility to collect the pot even without a hit via a continuation bet, or you are able to immediately bet for value with strong made hands.
Questions on the Flop
Take another look at all the relevant questions for the basic evaluation of the flop play:
- Are you sitting in a raised or non-raised pot?
- Are you in position, or out of position?
- Were you the pre-flop aggressor, or was it your opponent?
- Are you heads-up against one opponent, or in a multi-way pot?
After this basic evaluation, you have to determine which type of situation you have gotten yourself into on the flop. For this, a few specific points are important:
- What hand do you hold?
- Have you hit the board?
- Is the board draw heavy, or is it more or less dry?
- What hand(s) do you put your opponent/s on?
- What kind of opponent/s do you have in the hand?
The question of what hand you hold was already something you deliberated on in your pre-flop play. On the flop you now have to ask yourself: What kind of value does your hand have on this kind of board?
Especially with a marginal hand, you will often find yourself in the situation where you cannot really find out what your hand is worth. Naturally, you are still doing well with aces as an overpair, but with a middle pair, the situation becomes considerably more difficult to evaluate.
In order to better evaluate how strong the hand you are holding actually is it is recommended you once again read the following article: How to Play After the Flop
Of course, you know the difference between draw-heavy and dry boards from previous articles.
Draw-heavy (wet): 6
7 8
Dry: K
9
3
However, you should now not only try to evaluate the board as wet or dry, but instead deliberate if your opponent could actually be holding a draw here.
For such an evaluation, the last two points are interesting:
- What kind of opponent/s are in the hand?
- What hand(s) do you put your opponent/s on?
Based on these points, you now have to evaluate if:
- your opponent has hit the board
- your opponent could be holding a strong/weak draw
- your opponent can separate himself from marginal hands / draws
- you are still ahead
Take a look at the following boards and try to evaluate if you classify the board as dangerous, or rather not. You hold a good made hand and you are given the statistical values VPIP/PFR and AF for your opponents:
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em 11$ Tourney, Big Blind is t40 (10 handed)
Stacks & Reads
UTG (t2000)
UTG+1 (t2000)
UTG+2 (t2000)
MP1 (t2000)
MP2 (t2000)
MP3 (t2000)
CO (t2000)
Button (t2000) (tighter Regular)
Hero (t2000)
BB (t2000)
Preflop: Hero is SB with Q , Q
7 folds, BU bets to 120, Hero raises to 360, 1 fold, BU calls 240
, 5, 8 (2 players)
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em 11$ Tourney, Big Blind is t40 (10 handed)
Stacks & Reads
UTG (t2000) (Callingstation)
UTG+1 (t2000)
UTG+2 (t2000)
MP1 (t2000)
MP2 (t2000)
MP3 (t2000)
CO (t2000)
Button (t2000)
Hero (t2000)
BB (t2000)
Preflop: Hero is SB with Q , Q
UTG calls 40, 7 folds, Hero raises to 200, 1 fold, UTG calls 160
, 5, 8 (2 players)
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em 11$ Tourney, Big Blind is t40 (10 handed)
Stacks & Reads
UTG (t2000)
UTG+1 (t2000)
UTG+2 (t2000)
MP1 (t2000)
MP2 (t2000)
MP3 (t2000)
CO (t2000)
Button (t2000)
Hero (t2000)
BB (t2000) (looser Fish)
Preflop: Hero is SB with Q , Q
8 folds, Hero raises to 160, BB calls 120
, 5, 8 (2 players)
In three different situations, you hit the same board. At first sight, the board looks incredibly dangerous, and you certainly have to classify it as quite wet.
However, the question you have to ask yourself now is how often your opponent really holds a draw here. If you take a look at the board, you will realize that it actually only has two possible draws, of which one of them is rather harmless:
The flush draw is quite obvious. However, a dangerous straight draw would only be present if your opponent held 23 on this board. Hands like 6x or 7x, except for 67, don't have more than a gutshot draw, and thus 4 outs.
In example 1, you are in a 3-bet pot. Your opponent is very tight, his range here can be roughly estimated on middle to high pairs and Broadways. Suited connectors are rather improbable, and this opponent will next to never hold 23o/s. As you have the Q yourself, the hand with the most drawing potential is A K. The board is therefore not as dangerous as it might actually seem.
However, in examples 2 and 3, the situation looks different. Both players cannot really be evaluated, and you can hardly tell what the calling station in example 2 is playing limp/call with, and what the very loose big blind in example 3 is calling your SB open-raise with. In this case, this is a very dangerous board, as you cannot even exclude hands such as 23s. Very dangerous hands such as, for instance, A 6 or 5 7, which would all have many outs against you, are definitely within the ranges of these opponents.
Of course 67 is also in the range of our opponent, but if he truly has this hand it is simply a setup - and something you're powerless to do something against. Since he has a very large range in this spot, this specific case becomes secondary. As always you need to try to get the maximum value from your opponent's full range. This is why you only think about how your hand performs against his entire range.
As you can see, it always depends on the opponent/s how "dangerous" a board actually is. The question is crucial for you, as you have to decide if you want to go for maximum protection or not.
Working out a Plan
After you've evaluated your hand strength, and considered where you might stand with your hand – based on the board as well as your opponent – it is now of the highest importance to work out a plan.
This plan should include deliberations of what you want to achieve in this pot, and most of all, how you want to achieve this.
Certainly, this plan has to take into account that two more streets will follow. The decisions you make on the flop definitely have their impact on the play on the turn and river.
How to implement a plan is one side of the coin. However, what plan could you have? What are the approaches behind this plan?
To get to the bottom of this topic, we will at first explain 8 terms. Some of them overlap with each other and are relatively similar.
We will differ between two kinds of "plans":
- The aggressive plan
- The passive plan
First of all, take a look at the 4 most important terms for aggressive play:
- Value
- Protection
- Bluff
- Semi-bluff
In order to get a better picture of what is meant with these terms check out the No-Limit articles on betting types where the terms a defined in more detail.
Value and protection go hand in hand - in this case you consider yourself to be ahead and want to extract value. At the same time, you don't want to give away free cards, or let your opponent draw cheaply.
With bluffs and semi-bluffs, you want to profit from your fold equity, in the specific case of a semi-bluff you even have further outs to improve to a strong hand.
The logical consequence is clear: You bet! And even more importantly, you also know why.
What makes this so important?
Unfortunately, your opponents don't always do what you expect from them. If you bet your strong hands, you want to be paid off. When you bet your weak hands and because you are looking to get some fold equity, you want your opponent to find a fold.
The second flop play article "On the flop - when to play Aggressively" will give you several examples of how to play when you are confronted with calls or even raises.
To start off, some keywords here as well:
- Way ahead / way behind
- Pot control
- Bluff induce
- Passive draw play
Pot control is the basic idea of keeping the pot small and controlling it. This works best for you in position.
Bluff induce describes a passive play you make which has the intention of generating a bluff bet on one of the following streets. Here you have to of course keep in mind that you should not be playing like this on dangerous or drawy boards, as you don't want to give out free cards. You also need to be holding a reasonable hand with showdown value, and assume that your opponent is holding a weaker hand than yours.
'Way ahead / way behind' describes a situation in which you are either far ahead, or far behind. You don't have to be afraid of obvious draws, since your opponent either has very few outs against you, or you are nearly drawing dead to your opponent. So the aggressive logic of protection loses importance, and you have the ability to give out free cards. As you might have noticed by now, the play 'way ahead / way behind' is a combination of both pot control as well as bluff induce.
With passive check/calling, you keep the pot small and will receive another bluff bet from weaker hands. This way, you win the most from weaker hands, and lose the least against stronger hands.
Meanwhile, the passive draw play should be self-evident. While you play your draw aggressively with a semi-bluff, you play it passively in this case and hope for a hit on the following street.
Review
You have now learned the basic ideas behind the flop play, and have seen that it is important to work out a plan for the hand. Whether an aggressive or a passive plan is the better choice depends on your position, your opponent, the board, and, of course, your hand.
In the next two articles, you will learn how such plans look, and how you can work them out on your own in the future.
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