Poker Strategy With Rep Porter: Betting Scare Cards

Today I want to look at a situation that comes up frequently on the turn; a scare card comes. Let’s first define a scare card as any of the following: an overcard to the board, usually an ace or a king, a card that completes a flush, or a card that completes an obvious straight, like a nine on the J-10-3 flop.

Now let’s consider a specific situation. You are the big blind against a preflop raise to three big blinds from a middle position opponent. You estimate that he is opening about 20 percent of his hands. That range would be something like: all the pairs, all the suited aces, all the suited Broadway cards, A-10 offsuit and better, K-Q offsuit, K-J offsuit, Q-J offsuit, all the suited connectors down to 5-4 suited, J-9 suited, and 10-8 suited.

You call with pocket sevens and effective stacks of 100 big blinds. The flop comes 10-8-3 offsuit, your opponent bets four big blinds, and you call. Let’s say this makes the pot about 4,800 units. Now the ace comes on the turn. You check and your opponent bets about 2,400 now, half the pot and about eight big blinds. What do you do? It is a tough spot. If you call, the pot will be about 9,600. Your opponent could easily bet half the pot on the river. And if you call that, you will have called 7,200, or 24 blinds, into a pot that has swelled to 19,200 by now. It feels like a bad situation. Folding is almost certainly better than calling down. But what about if you had 10-9 suited to start and flopped top pair? Does it feel any better? When you call down and your opponent produces a hand like A-5 suited that he had just made a simple continuation-bet on the flop with, you feel like an idiot. Again, this is a tough spot. It feels right to fold most of your hands that aren’t aces or better in this situation. That means you are folding a lot.

So what makes this line from the preflop aggressor so effective? On the flop, 7-7 plays well enough against the range of hands he might have. But the ace on the turn hits roughly 30 percent more of the hands in the range we estimated. All of a sudden, 7-7 or 10-9 don’t stack up as well against the preflop aggressor’s range. This is true of a very high percentage of the hands that check and call the flop, the exceptions being hands with aces in them and other hands that the big blind has decided to slow play. This is exactly the type of situation that we are looking for to be able to use our chips as weapons to win more chips.

Let’s look at what this means for the preflop aggressor. Obviously, when the ace improves your hand you are betting. You are also betting hands that hit the flop; things like top pair, sets, and overpairs. If you are consistent in your bet sizing, it is reasonable to also add in hands that have draws like J-9 suited, and Q-J. What about adding hands that have missed entirely?

If you are betting half the pot on the turn, you are giving yourself 2:1 on your money if your opponent folds. So you need to win this pot with your bluffs about one time in three to be break even. Any more than that and your bet will be profitable. In a spot like this, where a decent percentage of your range has connected with the flop now, you probably can bet all your hands. Certainly, you should be bluffing with more than half of the hands that have missed the flop. Yes, there will be times when your opponent has slow played his hand and check-raises you. There will be times when your opponent calls you and you have to make a different decision on the river. But if your opponent really has to fold most of their one pair hands, you should be winning in this spot more than half the time. This is a great situation. And if you ever get called and have to show a hand that has missed, you will likely be called more in the future. This adds a lot of value to the hands you are actually betting for value.

Of the scare cards, the ace is the easiest card with which to bet your entire range on the turn. But you should also be betting kings, flush cards, and straight cards with position on the turn as well. With the weaker scare cards, add your bluffs in slowly until you find a level you are comfortable with, but you definitely need to be bluffing at a decent rate in these situations as well. ♠

Rep Porter is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner and is the lead instructor at ThePokerAcademy.com, whose mission is to help poker players achieve better results through better decisions and that is done by teaching poker in a way that makes learning easy and enjoyable with high quality courses taught by professional players.

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