Pre-flop Playing

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Pre-flop playing

As you’ve learned from our pre-flop strategy article, to have a sound strategy is crucial to be a successful poker player. By now you have got a solid idea: what hands to play before the flop. However, poker isn’t a game of pre-flop only. It is relatively easy to learn pre-flop play whereas it’s getting different when it comes to post-flop.

If you don’t have a solid strategy for playing after the flop has been dealt, you are almost guaranteed to loose money! Though, your pre-flop game works closely with your post-flop one. If you are a great pre-flop, you’ll have less problems later. However, this article will be about how to play and learn to think properly, what is more important. After reading this article, you should have a better idea on how to play the flop.

Imagine! You are raising pre-flop. Someone calls and the flop is dealt. What are you going to do now? How will you react? Answer will depend just on you.

C-Betting

C-Bet or continuation bet is a specific bet type that the pre-flop aggressor makes. To make it more clear, just the player who raises pre-flop and then makes a bet on the flop makes a C-BET. The pre-flop aggressor continues his actions and tries either to get you to fold or to pay him off.

Making C-Bets

Decide whether to make a C-Bet or not? So, there are quite a few factors you need to take into account then. If you don’t want to, you’ll often end up in a big pot with a too weak hand. Alternatively, you’ll finish folding or calling with hands that are too weak or too strong. However, you can avoid all those if reading and analysing the board correctly.

First of all, when deciding on whether to c-bet on a particular board, you have to read through the board and analyse its texture. online poker for Mac has got two general flop types: wet flops and dry flops.

Wet Flops

Wet flops aren’t quite good for C-Betting in general. Even if you possess a decent hand such as top pair with a weak kicker. There are the flop types which will get a huge check-raise by draw hands and bluffs. It’s also not advisable to play big pots with your mediocre hands. Unless you have a strong hand, avoid making c-bets on boards like this. They are also easier to hit, so your opponent is more likely to have some kind of a hand and may call you more often.

An example of a wet flop: 5h6h2c or TsJs6x

Dry Flops

Dry flops are really great for C-Betting even in case you have a very weak hand or pure air! These types of boards are quite hard to hit. They will often be a part of your range giving hard time to you opponents. Dry flops also does not feature many draws and won’t get check-raised often. If you face a check-raise on these boards from a solid player, you can generally give up with your weak holdings.

An example of a dry flop: Kh4d9s or Qs2c7d

Reacting To C-Bets

Reading boards when deciding on C-Betting, you also have to read and analyse them when facing a bet. Read and understood the earlier paragraphs? Then the following will be obvious. When the flop is dry, you can make way more in comparison with the wet flop. The same logic applies, dry boards are harder to hit for your opponents and they are way likely to c-bet them, as it’s also harder for you to hit!

This isn’t all, though. Another article will be devoted to learning of floating as the type of the play on the flop.