After the Flop

Here we are going to talk about basic strategies for playing after the flop. This is going to get a bit technical, so make sure you have read and are familiar with basic pre-flop strategies, the concept of position, and starting hand strength before you continue.

Continuation Betting or Cbetting

Whenever a player raises pre-flop and then wants to continue to show strength, whether they hit something or not, they will bet again on the flop, this is called a continuation bet, or Cbet for short. In recent years this has become quite a common strategy amongst poker players, and there are two different approaches to Cbetting

Quality – Players who Cbet for quality tend to be solid, medium-to-tight players and Cbet when they have hit something on the flop, otherwise they normally check.

Quantity – Players who Cbet for quantity make Cbets quite often, sometimes as a value bet when they make a hand, and other times when they miss completely and use the Cbet as a bluff.

Cbetting Strategy against Different Players

Unlike the majority of players who just stick to one strategy, a good player will be varying his strategy depending on his opponent. The general principle behind c-betting strategy is simple.

Instead of deciding that you are either a quality or quantity Cbettor and sticking with that, it's far better to utilize both strategies depending on what kind of players you are playing against. However, the general rule is pretty easy to understand.

When you are the one making the Cbet, Cbet for quantity against tight players who fold a lot, and a quality Cbet strategy against loose players who call too often.

When you are on the other end and facing a Cbet, if the player is a Cbettor for quantity then play more hands, if they Cbet for quality, fold with anything but the strongest of hands.

Players who make a lot of Cbets for quantity are quite vulnerable to weaker hands, semi-bluffs, floats, and raises, and we should play a few more hands than we normally would, as half the time they are betting with nothing.

Opponent Statistics

In order to utilize and defend against Cbets effectively, we need to know our opponents and what kinds of players they are. We can do that the most easily by using poker software that uses a HUD system. In the HUD, the important information you should know is:

CbetFlop% – The percentage of times the player Cbets when they have the chance.

FoldToCbetFlop% – The percentage of times a player folds when they are faced with a Cbet.

Aggressive and Passive Strategies

After you have a good read on what kinds of players your opponents are, you can decide whether to play passively or aggressively. You might commonly hear other players say that winning poker is aggressive poker, but that is not always the case. Before you commit any of your stack to a hand, you should know if you are going to play it passively or aggressively.

Here is an example where you can see how to determine your strategy:

Stacks are all at 100bb. Luke is the CO and gets a 5s 6s. The table folds to Luke, and he raises 3bb, Vader is BU and he calls the raise. The blinds then fold.

The flop comes Kh 3h 2s. Luke decides to check. Why?

Luke looked at the HUD stats for Vader, and saw this:

• VPIP (Voluntarily Puts Money In Pot percentage) = 78
• PFR (Pre-flop Raise percentage) = 5
• AF(Aggression Factor) = 0.4
• FtCbet (Fold to Cbet percentage) = 0

With that kind of board, it seems pretty natural to try to use a Cbet here to drive Vader out of the hand, but look at his percentage of folds to Cbets, it's zero. He simply does not fold on the flop whatsoever. And since he plays so many hands, he is pretty likely to be a big fish and a bad player. Since Luke's hand is pretty weak, despite the inside straight draw, it just doesn't make any sense for him to commit more money to the pot, when Vader is just not going to fold. This is why reading your opponents is vital to playing winning poker.

Check-Raising and Donk Betting

These are two other indicators of your opponents' playing style, and can be useful for determining your strategy.

The first is a Donk Bet, which is when a player who called a pre-flop raise then bets after the flop, before the raiser has a chance to place a Cbet. The percentage of times a player does this when they have the opportunity is reflected in the DonkBetFlop% stat. Players who rarely Donk Bet are quite tight, and should be dealt with passively.

The other is the Check-Raise, which is when a player checks after the flop, and then raises a Cbet made by the player in later position. This is the CheckRaiseFlop stat. Players who check-raise often are aggressive, and you should rarely Cbet into them.

Example 1:

Stacks are at 100bb. Luke is BU, and Vader is BB with the following stats:

• VPIP = 18
• PFR = 15
• DonkBetFlop = 4

Luke gets Qd 9d, the table folds to him, and he then raises 3bb. SB folds and Vader calls.

The flop is Kc Td 5s. Vader Donk Bets half the pot, and Luke folds.

Example 2:

Stacks still at 100bb, Luke is still BU and Vader is BB. However, this time, the stats for this particular Vader are:

• VPIP = 38
• PFR = 15
• DonkBetFlop = 82

Luke again gets Qd 9d, the table folds to him, and he raises 3bb and Vader at BB is the only caller.

Same flop as before, Kc Td 5s. Vader again Donk Bets half the pot, but this time Luke raises double the pot size.

So what is different between the first hand and the second? It's all about the stats. In the first hand, Vader is a tight player with a low VPIP and a very low Donk Bet percentage. When he comes out firing a Donk Bet, he has probably made a hand like trips and it is pretty unlikely that continuing to play here will end up profitable for Luke.

On the other hand, the second Vader has an incredibly high Donk Bet percentage of 82%, which means that 4 out of 5 times he has the chance, he Donk Bets. However, statistically you make a hand on the flop about one-third of the time, meaning that 2 out of every 3 Donk Bets by this Vader are with nothing. Luke decides to be aggressive and go with a semi-bluff raise in the hopes that Vader will fold, or that he can build a hand with his backdoor flush draw or inside straight draw.

Multi-Way Flops

All the examples in this particular article apply to heads-up situations on the flop. Most of the hands you play will be like this, but sometimes you will have multiple limpers or callers, and end up with three or more players after the flop. We will discuss play for multi-way pots another time.