Damn, He Check-Raised Me!

I had raised two limpers preflop from late position in a $30-$60 limit-hold'em game while holding the A J. My raise folded the blinds and was called by both limpers. The flop fell 9 7 4, not exactly fulfilling my dreams, but it didn't necessarily mean my hand was no good or that I was looking to give up on this pot.

Both limpers checked to me, I fired $30 forward, and was instantly check-raised by the opening limper. The other limper folded and the action was on me.

It's always a tricky situation when you're check-raised on the flop, particularly when you hold only overcards. Both the options and the variables are many. The correct action to take when check-raised is one of those "it depends" decisions. There are many different strategies you can consider; selecting the correct one depends mostly on the playing style of your opponent, his range of hands in the current situation, and how he will play each of them from here on out.

The check-raiser in this spot was an aggressive opponent who would raise as a bluff and also as a "protection mechanism" if he held a hand with which he wanted to eliminate opponents. He was also smart enough to know that since he was an aggressive player, he didn't need to slow-play his big hands to get action. I couldn't discount the possibility of a set in his range of hands.

So, what am I to do with this guy? I don't want to give up on the pot if my opponent is bluffing! I have six outs if he holds a pair without an ace or jack kicker, and the pot contains 10-and-two-thirds small bets. That said, I'm drawing practically dead if he flopped a set. And drawing dead is getting money in with a zero return on investment. You need a big overlay in other plausible scenarios in order to get your blended bet equation back to positive.

I thought ahead to how the hand would play on the turn. If I three-bet, would he lead the turn to avoid giving me a free card, and if so, would he fold to a raise, giving me an opportunity to take the pot away from him? Would he check-call the turn with a small pair? I wasn't sure. I thought about what he thought of me, feeling he would think I am capable of being tricky, but I also felt that he was not looking to get too deep into a hand without possessing a solid one himself.

I felt there was enough of a chance that he was bluffing or I could outplay him and take the pot away from him to continue on. I three-bet him, unsure of how he would react.

How I felt/read his actions on the flop and the turn would determine what turn play I would choose. If he checked, I might take a free card or I might bet if I acquired a feel that he might fold. If I checked, I might have to call the river to pick off his bluffs, which strengthens the turn-bet play, but I still wouldn't want to make it unless I felt there was a reasonable chance of him folding. If he bet, I was planning on raising the turn as a bluff, feeling he would likely fold a pair of nines or smaller, as well as his bluffs. By getting him to fold his bluffs, I eliminated the scenarios in which I would lose the pot if I just called and lost when he improved his hand to beat my holding. He called my $30 raise.

Bam! The 9 paired the board on the turn. My opponent fired a wager into the pot, representing three nines. I hated the card, not because I thought my opponent had three nines - as I thought it likely that he didn't - but because the dynamics of my equation had changed dramatically. Little in my plausible range included hands that could beat a 9. I could no longer represent a hand that could beat the hand Mr. Check-Raise was representing. Mr. Check-Raise read hands well enough to be highly suspicious if I raised. When your bluff is transparent, it loses most of its value. My hand equation was down to putting in one or two big bets to pick off a bluff, or catching one of six outs if I happened to be drawing live.

With the 9 on the turn, I could no longer get my opponent to fold a hand that beat mine, because he would be too suspicious of a bluff to fold. I tossed my hand into the muck, not feeling the price the pot was laying me was enough to proceed now that the scenario of folding a better hand had been removed.

Sometimes you have to release, even when there's some chance that you may have the best holding. The game's decision-making matrix requires you to blend the positives and negatives at the point of decision. Too many players focus on the positive potential of their situations, without sufficient regard for the negatives. And as I have often said, if you never lay down a winner in this game, you're destined to go broke.

This hand speaks to the complexities of post-flop play, how it changes based on the style of your opponent, and the importance of including what your opponent thinks into your play choices. My play choices would have been different with a passive opponent or one who I thought couldn't read hands well. And effectively varying your play selection based on the dynamics of your opponent and the texture of the board is a major part of what separates the big winners from the also-rans.

Roy Cooke has played winning professional poker since 1972, and has been a Card Player columnist since 1992. He is also a successful Las Vegas real estate broker/salesman. Please see Roy's real estate ad on this page. With his longtime collaborator John Bond, he has written six poker books. Their most recent book - a collection of play-of-hands essays - is available from www.conjelco.com.