Check Raising

The check raise is a very important tool for a poker player to have in their arsenal. In this article I want to discuss various candidate hands for check raising and the reasons behind the move in the first place.

So why do we check raise? The main reason that check raising is an essential tool for a poker player to have is to protect yourself when you check. If your opponents know you can raise after having checked, then your opponents have to fear you making their life a bit of a misery. If you never check raise, then your opponents know they can control the pot as they see fit, either by taking free cards or by dictating the cost of the turn card themselves by their own choice of bet sizing. They can bet knowing the worst you can do to them is call. If our opponents fear us check raising, they will check back a little more often and end up giving us some free cards that we might not have otherwise seen which could win us the pot.

So, check raising is essential, so what hands should we do it with and when?

The obvious candidate is our monster hands that have a big chance of getting paid by a worse hand. Say we peel the big blind with 4c 5c and the flop comes A-2-3. We check, our opponent bets and now we raise to get maximum value and build a nice big pot against our opponent when he has Ax or even a set.

But if we only check raise our nutted hands then we will be very predictable to our opponents. We need to check raise bluff with various hands on various boards. Choosing what hands to bluff and how often is quite tricky.

I seldom bluff with no equity. I need to have a live read on my opponent to make that kind of play. So online I want to choose hands that have a way of improving when I get called. It is also important to note that our check raise has to make sense. The flop needs to be able to hit our range strongly in order for us to have check raise bluff hands. If we check raise on an A-A-2 board after defending the big blind then our opponent will quite likely call us down as we aren’t representing many legitimate hands as we would probably just check call Ax hands on the rare occasions we have them.

Let’s say we are on the big blind, the button raises and we call with Ks 2s. If our plan is to play fit or fold, our opponent can mercilessly continuation bet us and we will often fold the best hand. So what kind of boards can we check raise with this hand?

An interesting flop to check raise might be Ad 9s 2c. A check raise here has a lot of merit. We can make our opponent fold all of his non set pairs as well as a lot of hands that have some equity to outdraw our pair like Jd Td type hands. We also have decent prospects to improve. We have 5 immediate outs to improve to two pair or trips but we can also turn a flush draw on any spade turn card. On this board we could also check raise A-9 A-2 2-2 and 9-9 hands, which we could flat call from the big blind pre flop, so our check raise does have credibility to be a strong hand.

If we take the same pre flop situation, but instead we have 8c 9s and the flop comes Kc6s5h. This is a great spot to check raise. Our gut shot isn’t quite strong enough to call a continuation bet, we need some fold equity in order to make the hand work for us. We have 4 nut outs, and 6 outs to second pair that might also be good. Our opponent has a big scope to fold a better hand like A high hands, missed Broadway cards or small pairs which would be a big win for us.

Other options for a check raise bluff would be a hand like a flush draw or a straight draw. I’ve heard many people say it is obvious that they have a draw when they check raise on a board like 6d7d2c, but I do not think that is the case. As long as you mix up your game, check raising with nutted hands and a variety of bluff hands then your play is far from obvious.

To keep your opponents guessing further we can also occasionally raise with top pair type hands. The important thing to ask when raising with a non nut value hand is “can a worse hand call?” Let’s say we have a hand like A-J and the flop is Jh 10h 2c. In this case there are many worse hands that can call you. Q-J, K-J and lots of draws can continue against you when you check raise this flop. The problem with check raising this hand comes when we have ended up building a big pot on unfavourable turn and river cards and we have to navigate our hand to showdown out of position. Let’s say in this example the turn is another heart, we need to have a plan. Are we betting out or are we check calling or check folding? If we check call, what are we doing on various river cards? If we bet out, what are we doing if we get raised? These plans are easier to make when you have information about your opponent, but having default plans in place before we even sit down at the table helps us make well thought out decisions in the heat of the moment. In this example, if I check raised top pair top kicker and the turn came the 4h, I would probably check to try and control the size of the pot and turn my hand into a bluff catcher against single heart hands or a hand like K-Q. We can even win when our opponent bets top pair worse kicker, as they may be protecting their hand from a 4th heart landing on the river.

These are just a few examples of hands that we can check raise. In order to keep our opponents guessing we need to be able to check raise with a variety of different hands. If we only ever check raised the nuts or a flush draw then we are too predictable (and can only ever have the nuts on flops that don’t have a possible flush draw on board) so we need to be able to check raise a variety of hands to be unpredictable. We also have to be careful not to check raise every one of these options every single time as we would end up bluffing far too often meaning our opponent can call us down very lightly.