Bet-Fold

Bet-folding is something I wished I had learned much sooner in my poker career. The idea is simple: you bet with the intention of folding to a raise. This is a great line that can be used to protect a vulnerable hand against draws. Do this with bluffs, semi-bluffs and even good pairs. The significance of this line lies in charging draws, extracting value from worse hands and letting you know when you’re behind.

Suppose you open-raise to $3.50 with Ad 9d from Middle Position and Cut-Off calls.
The flop is 9s 4s 8d. You bet 3/4-pot and he calls.
The turn is a Qh and you bet 2/3-pot. He raises and you?

Fold. The turn is a tough spot because your hand is too good to check-fold. On a flop with this many draws, A9 is likely good against most of his range. So you either check-call or bet-fold. Check-calling is a viable option, but you risk giving a free card on a draw-heavy board with a vulnerable hand, and it allows your opponent to put you a hand. This will encourage him to bluff the river more, which is something you don’t want him to do with a marginal holding in a spot where he can easily have stronger hands than yours. Betting allows you to avoid most of these complications.

Betting allows you to charge draws and extract value from 9x or 8x. If Your Opponent has two pair or better, he’ll raise most of the time to try to stack you. There are too many draws for him to be slow-playing. Against a raise, you can be sure your hand is no longer good and you can comfortably fold. There will be situations when you’d rather check behind with your good pair.

Let’s say you’re in position with Js Jh.
Your Opponent is an aggressive player who is willing to get it in light. The board is 9s 8h 4d 7d.
He checks to you. Should you check or fire the second barrel?

Bet. Although it sucks to get check-raised on this turn, you are likely behind if that happens. The best scenario you wish for is that Your Opponent has TT, T9, or a pair with diamonds. Combine those holdings with made hands such as two pair or better, and you’re crushed. Nevertheless, it‘s a spot where you should bet because Your Opponent has a lot of hands that will check-call a turn bet. Hands such as TT, T9, or a pair with a draw will check-call much more often than check-raise because they don’t need to protect their hands.

Against a tricky, good opponent, I would check behind often here because I wouldn’t know his check-raising range. Once I can determine whether he’s check-shoving this spot with draws, I will have no problem bet-calling. However, the majority of players won’t check-raise this turn often and thus, you should bet-fold with JJ. An interesting question is whether you bet-fold with AA in this spot. The answer is yes, you should. Unless you have a read that your opponent slow-plays pre-flop with big pocket pairs and goes crazy with them post-flop, bet-folding AA is best.

If you are worried about being exploited because you are bet-folding AA here, don’t. AA isn’t the top of your turn betting range. You can easily have two pair, sets and straights in your range. Of course, if you feel your opponent is check-raising the turn a lot against you, then it’s an easy bet-call on future hands. However, with the way players construct their turn check-raising range, I wouldn’t lose sleep if I bet-folded AA on the turn.

Posted by Joel on May 14 2010. Filed under Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry