Poker player, coach and author Alexander Fitzgerald, together with Topher Goggin, is back with a new book aimed at poker's 'serious amateurs'. Improve Your Poker Now! from D&B Publishing is available now at Amazon.
The following exclusive extract is from the section titled 'The Nuts and Bolts of Postflop Strategy'...
Postflop mastery requires the ability to adapt to countless situations. Our goal is to provide a series of ideas to help you handle the most common spots you’ll find. Let’s start with some general concepts.
Always have a purpose
Thoughtless autopilot is a recipe for disaster at the poker table. For an obvious idea, you’d be amazed how many players ignore it. Don’t be one of them.
Monitor yourself the next time you play. Suppose we tapped on your shoulder and asked, “Why did you bet that flop?” Would you immediately have an answer? Or would you have to think back in hopes of working out a justification?
Don’t feel bad if your self-assessment is harsh. It happens to everyone. Just not as often to good players.
If you play online, try narrating your own play out loud. Literally talk to yourself. (You might want to close the door first so your roommates or family don’t start plotting your demise.) Describe what you are doing and why. “I’m going to bet a little more than half-pot because my opponent misses this flop a lot, and that will be enough to fold out his big cards.”
The first time you try this, you’ll be amazed the discipline it requires. But you’ll also be stunned how many times you’ll catch an autopilot play that you shouldn’t actually make.
Consider your opponents’ high cards
When trying to decide how to attack an adversary’s range, train your thinking on high-card hands. Especially ace-high. These are the “big cards” that make up the “B” of our PB&J from range analysis.
A disproportionate amount of our foes’ range will be made up of these types of hands. Our job is to judge how likely those cards are to have connected with the board, and how those hands might respond to various actions we might take. High-card combinations will be at the heart of our analysis in nearly every hand.
Postflop checklist
We know our actions need to have a purpose, but what exactly does that mean? And how do we determine what that purpose should be?
Our suggestion for now is to use a checklist. Learning new habits requires conscious thought at first. Soon enough you will reach a level of unconscious competence where the process becomes automatic. Until then, train yourself to run through these points each time the action is on you:
- Always be betting
- Determine if a bet would be for value or a bluff
- If betting for value, ask if worse hands will call
- If bluffing, ask if the “right” hands will fold
- If a bet won’t work, then check
Always be betting
Your default plan should always be to take aggressive actions. Always consider betting before you think about checking. Contemplate raising before calling. The aggressive choice will not always be the correct answer, but it should always be on your radar.
Determine if a bet would be for value or a bluff
This gets to the heart of having a purpose. Before you put a chip in the pot, you should know whether you want that bet to be called. Based upon your own hand strength, determine how you would want your opponent to respond.
If betting for value, will worse hands call?
If you are trying to get value from a hand, the $64,000 question is “What worse hands will call?” It seems so simple, but many times people forget. Suppose you river a low flush. Before you toss a pot-sized bet into the middle, make sure it isn’t the type of bet that only a higher flush will call. If it is, that bet can’t win you money. All of the hands you beat will just fold, so you’ll win the same amount of money by checking back. All of the hands that call will beat you, costing you the extra bet.
Before betting for value, ask yourself if hands you need to call exist and are in your opponent’s range. Sometimes that will depend on the size of the bet. If no size works, a value bet is not your friend.
If bluffing, will the right hands fold?
This is the counterpoint to the previous idea. It only makes sense to bluff if the hands we want to fold will actually do so.
For a river bluff, folding out better hands is the only thing that matters. If only worse hands will fold, a bet has no upside.
On earlier streets, we will often bet in spots where we don’t mind if certain “worse” hands fold. This concept is sometimes called “cleaning up” or “cashing out” our equity.
If a bet won’t work, then check
Betting is always Plan A. But sometimes you’ll run the checklist and come up empty-handed. Very few worse hands are calling. Better (or dangerous) hands won’t fold. That’s the time to check and kick the can down the road. The situation could change, maybe for the better. Save your chips and see what happens next.
