Check-Raising Poker Strategy
There are lots of moves in texas holdem that are opponent specific designed to combat certain types of players. A check-raise is the perfect to exploit loose aggressive players who bet into a lot of pots and open on un-raised boards.
A typical check-raise should be about 2 to 3 times the initial raise.
Generally speaking, I’m not too much of a fan of check-raising boards early in the hand because it gives too much information away about the strength of your hand. For example, if you check-raise an opponent on the flop of a A-6-J board, then it’s pretty obvious that you’re holding the almighty Ace or even trips. On the other hand, by c-betting out of position you’re giving yourself a looser range of hands and are able to bluff different streets later on e.g. I regularly raise with marginal hands like 910o from the cut off but this time I raise with AQs. If the board brings Q-Q-8 then I can c-bet my trips or check/call to represent a weaker hand. The advantage of doing this is that you’re going to get a lot of players betting for thin value e.g. any 8, overcards, pocket pairs or Ax.
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Check Raising for Value
Check-raising for value is great when you have the nuts. This is something I recommend doing against passive players and calling stations (against regulars and decent players your check-raise will cause them to fold too often). You can massively build up the size of pots by putting in two raises on a single street instead of one. This extracts maximum value from your big hands by making the pot as big as possible. I also think check-raising is a good idea when you are out of position having flopped the nuts and have multi-opponents/limpers in the pot.
Let’s say that you’re playing $1/$2 and that you have flopped a set with 77 on Q-7-A on the BB. There are 3 other opponents in the pot. If you open-raise the board $4 then and everyone calls with top-pair/mid-pair type hands then you will have increased the size of the pot by $16. However, if you check, someone raises behind you and then you re-raise the board to $10, then you can increase the size of the pot by $40 if everyone calls. Thus, by check-raising you have managed to triple the size of the pot from one single street.
There are a number of dangers and risks to check-raising. You need to be confident that your opponent won’t check behind you which would give him/her a free card. Normally when you have a big hand you want to play it hard and fast and extract as much value as possible. Betting out of position when you’re first to act in the hand with TPTK is much better than slow-playing it and giving drawing opponents a chance to pick up some extra equity on the turn.
Finally, I think check-raising with a semi-bluff is a great move to add to your arsenal. By check-raising with a decent-ish hand you can steal more pots and make a few better hands fold. If you have QJ on a 8-9-9 type board, then by re-raising you can fold Ax/Kx type hands and fold other drawing hands by representing the 9. If you get called, you still have plenty of outs with two overcards and a gut shot straight draw (10 outs in total = 21% of winning the pot).
Conditions for Check-Raising
The best opponents you check-raise are loose-aggressive opponents who pounce and steal pots when you’ve shown weakness by checking. These guys will regularly be stealing the flop with suited connectors or overcards that have missed the board. If you’re using a poker hud, than something like 30/16 with a high AG (aggression) stat would be the ideal opponent to check-raise.
Stack sizes can also become important in post-flop play. A deep stack opponent with 100BBs will have a much easier time folding to a check-raise after the flop then a short-stack opponent who is all but pot-committed. This means that I will be more inclined to slow-play deep stack LAGs and float their bluffs or light raises, rather than play thick and fast and re-raise them at the first instance.