Images courtesy of the World Poker Tour
Today, we’ll talk about a very important topic, which is what you should do when you raise and miss a flop in Texas Hold’em.
Missing is not fun, but the fact of the matter is, you’re going to miss a lot – far more than you’re going to hit.
You’ll only flop a pair about 29% of the time. Of course, sometimes you’ll also flop draws and backdoors that you can play aggressively, but at other times, your best course of action will be to give up.
When deciding how to proceed, there are five main ideas to consider:
- Who has the advantage
- Your position at the table
- Effective stack depth
- Opponent’s tendencies
- Number of players in the pot
These five core concepts will heavily impact how you should proceed when you miss a flop, so let’s address them one by one.
#1 Who Has the Advantage?
The first thing to figure out is who has the range and the nut advantage in a given scenario.
The range advantage means that your entire range is ahead of your opponent’s. The nut advantage indicates that we have more super-strong hands in our overall range.
Say you raise from an early position, meaning that you’re likely holding a strong pair or a broadway-type hand. The opponent calls in the big blind, and the flop comes A-K-Q.
In this instance, we have both the range and the nut advantage, as we have all the sets, two-pair hands, and straights. However, if the flop were to come 9-6-6, while we still maintain the range advantage, we have almost no sixes in our range, so the nut advantage shifts toward the opponent.
What this boils down to is this: if you have a range advantage that gives you at least 55% equity against your opponent’s entire range, you should bet frequently. When this is not the case, you should check more often with medium-strength hands and really bad hands.
Additionally, when you have more nutted hands in your range, you should also bet more often, as you don’t have to worry nearly as much about your opponent raising.
#2 Positional Considerations
The simple rule of thumb is that you should check way more often when you are out of position. In the GTO world, it is common to bet frequently and use a small sizing when you are in position.
You can apply this logic to out-of-position as well, provided your opponent is straightforward and will fold to a lot of small bets unless they have a pair or a good draw.
However, against a solid player who will float the flop with overcards and backdoor draws and make your life difficult on the turn, you should be doing a lot more checking out of position.
#3 Effective Stack Depth
You have to be aware of stack sizes of everyone involved in the pot. Generally speaking, as stacks get shallower, it becomes more costly to lose a continuation bet, as it represents a larger percentage of your stack.
If you open to 2.5 big blinds from a 100bb stack and then fire a 2.5bb continuation bet, when your opponent raises and you have to fold, you only lose 5% of your stack. If, however, you started with just 20bb, the loss represents 25% of your stack.
This means that you have to be much more cautious when playing with shallow stacks, especially in a tournament where you are incentivized not to go broke as the time passes. Your strategy may change somewhat depending on the tournament structure, of course, as hyper turbo tournaments force you to act sooner than those with slow structures.
Once stacks get shallow, your weak draws also lose a lot of their value, which is why you shouldn’t be playing many small pairs or low suited connectors to begin with.
As stacks get shallower, you should be checking more, especially against players who don’t like to fold often.
#4 Your Opponent’s Tendencies
We’ve already touched on this topic somewhat, but your opponents’ tendencies play a big role in how you decide to play when you miss a flop.
If you’re facing maniacs or calling stations, you should bluff way less often.
Stick to ABC poker, bet with good hands, and, when you miss, check and be fine with losing a tiny pot. This is perfectly fine, especially if you can win a ton when you make strong hands.
Against overly tight opponents who want to have close to the nuts before putting money into the pot, you can increase your c-bet frequency as they’ll be over-folding and not defending nearly enough against small bet sizes.
That said, when this type of opponent calls or raises, you need to be extra careful, as their range will be stronger than that of most players.
#5 Number of Players in the Pot
Finally, when playing multiway pots, you must bluff way less often. You are facing a bunch of hands, and, in that scenario, someone is likely to flop something good. If that’s not you, then it’s probably someone else.
You should bet with a very polarized range of made hands and draws, and even then, you should be doing a lot of checking, especially when you are early to act.
For example, you raise from an early position and five players call in position. If the flop comes T-7-3, you should be checking with your entire range, even with pocket aces. Your opponents will have sets some portion of the time, and they’ll also know that, when you bet into them, you’ll have a strong range, which will allow them to fold with their weaker hands and deny you value.
In general, if you completely miss a flop facing multiple opponents, giving up will often be the best option.
