Responding to people who like to check/raise bluff on the flop

by mersenneary

In my future of poker article, I've argued that we're far from equilibrium play in terms of how often people contest the pot against a continuation bet out of position. Accordingly, players who do this frequently and are good thinking opponents can give a cautious hero fits about how to correctly adapt. When are you supposed to float? When are you supposed to 3-bet bluff? When are you supposed to trap with your good hands and when are you supposed to raise with them? When are you just supposed to give up? It's time to deal with those questions. Let's talk about adjustments by street.

Preflop

The more of these articles you read, the more you'll start to notice similar themes. Against an aggressive 3bettor, we can adjust by tightening up our opening range, widening our 3bet calling range, or widening our 4betting range. I'm always an advocate of doing some of all three, and forcing our opponents to adapt well away from their current frequencies, as people are generally poor at playing something other than their default strategy, and most will barely adjust at all, leading to big gains. Against an aggressive flop check/raiser, we similarly have four options to help out - having tighter preflop hand selection, c-betting less frequently with our hands that can't stand up to check/raises, calling check/raises wider, and re-raising the flop wider. Again, I think making all four adjustments is best.

That means adjusting against a player with a high check/raise bluff frequency starts preflop. This frequency decreases the value of opening marginal hands. It helps us on the flop to have a stronger range to battle with. Experiment with limping hands like 96o, T5s, or T8o to see if your opponent plays different in limped pots - as HUSNG.com coach Cog Dissonance and many others have learned, people often play surprisingly awful in limped pots, so it can make sense to carve out some of your middling range and use it to limp instead of range. At the least, though, the high check/raise frequency should make you less likely to open hands like J3o, T4o, and 52s, but keep in mind that other frequencies - like a low BB VPIP - may mean that we should be raising those hands anyway.

Postflop

Clearly, there's enough to say here to write a whole book about it. Let's focus on identifying three of the most important questions and answering the basics of why they matter so much.

Question 1: If I 3-bet the flop, can my opponent comfortably jam over the raise given stack sizes?

For example, let's take a K72r flop, a prototypical one to check/raise bluff. Let's say there was a raise to t60 preflop, a continuation bet of t60, and the big blind raised to t150. Our options are very different based on whether the effective stack size at the start of the hand was t800 or t1500. Against a flop 3-bet to t260, the big blind's life is pretty easy with a value hand with t800 at the start of the hand - he can just stick the rest in if he decides not to trap and just call. Now, imagine the big blind's life with KT and effective stack size of 1500 - it's too deep to 4-bet jam and get much value from worse hands, and surely 4bet/folding is never an option, so if we raise, we're committing to get it in. The best option with KT is almost definitely to flat, keep the button's air in, and bluffcatch the rest of the way. Most decent players will understand that, and not often 4-bet this flop without the very top of their value range, and some air.

That dramatically changes some of your decisions in position. For example, the two hands people are often most confused about what to do with in position in this situation are bottom pair and ace high. When you're deeper, the above presents a very attractive, but somewhat counter-intuitive option - 3-bet the flop! This small extra investment of 110 chips folds out the big blind's air the majority of the time, and very often lets you see a free river card when your flop 3bet is called, as you'll generally get checked to on the turn.

Just in general, if your opponent can't comfortably 4-bet with most of their value hands, that drastically increases the value from 3-betting, whether it be with A4, Q2, or a more total air hand with some backdoor draws (if you can only 3bet sometimes with air, you might as well pick the air that can eventually make something), like 98s or 68s.

Question 2: How often do I expect my opponent to follow up on the turn with his bluff hands?

On dry boards, this is the most important question to ask in determining whether to 3-bet bluff or float to contest against a wide check/raiser. There are plenty of players who understand the profitability of check/raising, but simply don't have the stones to barrel off after the button indicates he actually has something worthy of continuing. This is a symptom of a very common affliction for poker players - the "I have to get it in good" syndrome. This syndrome permeates all aspects of the game, and while many of these players won't bother check/raising light often, against the ones who do, floating is an extremely attractive option. Indicate that you have something, and the turn goes very straightforwardly - put out a bet when checked to (no need to go too big!) and fold out the air in his range.

Again, we can make connections to other aspects of the game. It's often better to 3bet the flop as a bluff instead of float against an opponent who continues with a balanced range with a good amount of bluffs on the turn. Similarly, when deciding whether to check/raise or check/call out of position with Ax/Kx/bottom pair type hands, we talked about how your opponent's double barrel frequency in position makes a big difference in how often you can just check/call with those holdings out of position.

Many opponents have learned the power of check/raising the flop, but completely fail to make one of the most important adjustments against players who stop raising and c-betting so much - attack the weakness hard on the turn and river (see "An Example of Overbetting in Practice"). If the big blind is check/raising wide, the button is surely c-betting all of his value hands, and the flop checking behind range is quite weak. It's important to identify how much your opponent is taking advantage of this. If not much at all, start going for delayed c-bets more often. If your opponent isn't going to make your life difficult with big turn and river bets like I'd recommend, have fun checking behind middle pair on drawy boards and calling down the normal sized bets, rather than c-bet/folding or c-bet/calling and folding on most turn continuations.

As alluded to, there are so many more concepts with regard to this dynamic that we could spend a long time talking about - the depth of complexity in different board textures and what each player represents, the adjustment of c-bet sizings and shoving over turn bets from opponents who raise and double barrel too frequently...but let's leave those for the comments. For now, this should help thinking about the basics of adjusting to people who can't stop check/raising against your frequent continuation bets.