A Hand at No Limit Holdem part two

Also by merely calling down in this way then you are giving your opponent every chance to overtake you if they have a hand like A-Q or K-Q for instance. But the most destructive situation is when you are out flopped and are behind from the get go. Opponents who are aware of this betting pattern can cruelly exploit this by simply betting out strong poker hands and value betting more against you.

By raising the flop with the J-10 then our hero not only finds out where he stands in the hand but he also saves a lot of money in the hand as well. Take the situation where the big blind led out with an $18 bet on the flop and our hero raised to $80 instead of calling. To many players, this may seem like an overly aggressive action with such a marginal hand but that is exactly the point of the raise.

I see players get sucked into losing their entire stacks in situations like these and it is so pointless. Now after you have raised to $80 on a broken board like this, any opponent who remains in the hand from that moment on has a hand that can likely beat top pair with a ten kicker. You can simply check the turn behind if they called your flop raise and checked the turn or fold your hand if they re-raised on the flop or called and then bet the turn. But look at the difference in the amount of money that is expended after you have raised on the flop.

As long as you can get away from your hand after your opponent either calls your flop raise or re-raises then this pot has only cost you $92. That is bad enough but far better than merely calling the hand down and losing $206! But imagine the carnage that could ensue if instead of the harmless 2c arriving on the river, you hit a ten or worse still….a jack!

This is where you are at serious risk of losing your entire buy-in and the cause of this was not finding out where you stood on the flop and letting your opponent dictate the betting.

But raising the flop lets you win the pot in numerous other ways as well. It could make your opponent even fold the best hand if they have a poker hand like K-J for instance. It will almost certainly win you the pot when your opponent is holding junk and folds but do not despair at this and think that you have missed an opportunity to extract extra money by raising them off the hand.

The fact remains that it is a better poker play to raise with a marginal hand on the flop than it is to simply call down to the river in a game like no limit hold’em where calling down to the river with a second best hand can get very expensive in this form of poker. But also, calling down tells you absolutely nothing about the relative strength of your opponents hand. Are they trying to bet you off the pot? Or are they betting out with a strong hand in the same way that Doyle Brunson advocates in Super System.

It is also worth mentioning that Super System is perhaps the most widely read poker book on the planet and especially the no limit section that Doyle wrote so I would imagine that there are an awful lot of players both live and online who are emulating Doyle’s words in that book and it is getting the same way now with the Harrington on hold’em series.

But raising in this situation lets you find out when your opponent is deadly serious about their hand and knowing this will prevent you from being stacked in many situations that will crop up both in live poker games and online games because with regards to this particular concept then there is no difference in where you are playing poker.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”
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