When your flop bet is raised

In this lesson

• Continue with enough of your range that check-raises do not win automatically.
• Prefer draws and hands with equity over thin made hands when you continue.
• Treat minimum defence as a soft guide, not a rule.
• Fold more against players who check-raise only with strong hands.

Read first: Which hands bet and which check · Advice, not a lock: every lesson opens.

Concepts used: Check-raising, MDF and alpha

The price of a check-raise

Button against big blind, pot 5.5 bb. You bet a third of the pot, about 1.8 bb, and the big blind raises to 6.35 bb, half the pot after its call. You now pay 4.55 bb into a pot of 5.5 + 1.8 + 6.35 = 13.65 bb: you need 4.55 / (13.65 + 4.55) = 25% equity to call, if no more money goes in.

From the raiser's side, the check-raise risks 6.35 bb to win the 7.3 bb already there. As a pure bluff it needs 6.35 / (7.3 + 6.35), about 46.5% folds: that is its alpha, and 1 minus it, about 53.5%, is the share of your betting range that must continue so a bluff-raise does not print money.

Which hands continue

Minimum defence is a soft guide, not a rule. In Rail's solves of the button against the big blind, the button continues against a check-raise more often than that minimum: much of its betting range is pairs and draws with real equity against the raise.

• Continue: strong made hands, top pairs, overpairs, and draws with good equity: flush draws, open-enders, gutshots with overcards.
• Mixed: weaker pairs with backdoor draws, and the hands that block the raiser's strongest combinations.
• Fold: the air that bet as a bluff and has nothing left, no pair and no draw.

Prefer hands with equity over thin made hands. A middle pair with no draw has few good turn cards and faces more bets; a flush draw has many.

Against real players

Many players check-raise the flop almost only with strong hands. Against them, minimum defence is far too much: fold your weak pairs and continue with hands that can beat a strong range or draw to the nuts. Against players who check-raise often with draws and air, keep your pairs.

In Rail's flop tree the check-raise is the last raise of the street, so the drills ask one question: call or fold.

The drills come from Rail's flop library, combo for combo. Your own hands on flops the library did not solve are read from the nearest solved flop by hand category, and the analysis marks them as mapped.

Rules of thumb

• Price the call: the raise to call over the pot after your call.
• Continue with equity: draws and pairs with good outs before thin made hands.
• Fold the air that bet as a bluff.
• Treat minimum defence as a soft guide.

When they break

• Against players who check-raise only strong hands, fold more than the guide says.
• With deeper stacks, implied odds favour draws and hurt one-pair hands.

Example hands

Practice

The lesson is mastered when every exercise below that Rail can grade is passed. Missed items come back later as review cards.