Top 10 Tips to Playing Postflop After Calling a Raise
8 minutes
Last Updated: October 1, 2024
How often during a poker session do you find yourself calling a preflop raise, seeing a flop, and not being quite sure what the best play is?
Since this scenario occurs frequently in poker, it is very important to know how to deal with the different outcomes that can result from calling a preflop raise.
One of the world's most renowned poker players and coaches, Jonathan Little, brings us his top ten tips to playing the flop after you call preflop.
These ten tips are designed to crush aggressive opponents and dominate everyone in most No Limit Texas Hold’em games you may find yourself in, and they work against anyone!
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#1 – Defend a Lot Against Small Bets
In today’s NLH games, you will face a lot of tiny flop bets. When this is the case, you should be calling quite often as you need to realize very little equity to make the call profitable.
Many poker players don’t adapt their continuing ranges to their opponents’ bet sizes, and this is a massive leak that can be easily exploited.
If you are facing a small bet, you will often need only 15% or 20% equity in the hand to continue, and nearly any poker hand will have that much equity against an opener’s range on most boards.
For example, if you face a 2bb bet into a pot of 7.5bb, you should be sticking around with any pair, overcards, any draw, and even a backdoor flush draw with a single overcard.
Conversely, when you face a big flop bet, you can get away with folding a lot more of your hands, as you now need a lot more equity to call profitably.
Remember that if you fold too much on the flop against small bets, you can be easily exploited by opponents who bet their entire range for a small size and simply win too often.
#2 – Call Wider in Position
The power of position can never be understated in poker, and you should always be looking to play more from in position than out of position.
When facing flop bets, your decisions should be heavily impacted by your position in relation to the original raiser.
When you are in position, you should seldom be folding a pair or any kind of draw, even against a slightly bigger flop bet.
On the other hand, if you are out of position and find yourself facing the same bet, you can start folding some of your weaker draws and single-pair hands.
The ability to navigate to the showdown and control the size of the pot means you get to win the pot more often than if you were out of position.
#3 – Fold OOP When You Don’t Have Equity
If you find yourself out of position and having completely missed the flop, you should fold your cards even against a small bet.
However, keep in mind that having a backdoor flush draw and one overcard is not “nothing” and that you should still continue with this kind of hand against a small bet.
The kind of hands you should be looking to fold are hands like J♠6♠ on A♣9♦4♥, where you have absolutely no connection with the flop.
Even facing a 1bb bet, you should let go of these cards, as you don’t have position or equity, which means it’s time to throw in the towel and move on to the next hand.
#4 – Develop a Flop Raising Range
One play that you almost never see from some players is a raise after facing a flop bet as the preflop caller.
If you want to play good poker, you need to raise the flop some of the time in this situation, depending on the board texture and bet sizing.
You should be looking to raise on boards that favor your range as the preflop caller while never raising on boards that heavily favor the opponent’s range.
For example, 7♠5♦4♦ is a good board for the preflop caller, while A♣K♦J♥ is a board that favors the original raiser’s range.
On the first board, you should be looking to develop a raising range that will be made up of your strongest hands, like straights, sets, and two pair, as well as some flush draw and straight draw combos.
Look to raise more against smaller bet sizes that tend to represent a wider range of hands instead of big bets that generally represent a polarized range made up of strong hands and bluffs.
#5 – Check/Raise a Polarized Range
The check/raise is one of the most powerful plays in poker and one that you should learn how to apply in the scenario where you call a preflop raise out of position.
For example, you will often find yourself calling a raise in the big blind and playing the hand from out of position. In this situation, the check/raise will come in very handy.
You want to remember tip #4 in terms of the boards you can apply the check/raise in, and you should look to do so with a polarized range of hands.
A polarized range comprises your best value hands and a combination of very strong bluffs and a few weaker bluffs that still have some equity.
You should not be check/raising with middling hands such as one pair or weak two pair, as these hands are not strong enough to check/raise for value, but are great calling candidates.
By building a solid check/raising range, you will keep your opponents guessing and make it very hard for them to play well against you.
#6 – Slow Play for Protection
Previous tips talked about raising with your best hands, but there is also some value to slow-playing such hands in certain scenarios.
Slow playing means just calling with your strongest hands instead of raising, which is done to protect your calling range.
If you always raise with your strongest hands, your opponents will know that you have a middling hand when you call the flop bet, and they will continue to bombard on further streets.
For that reason, you should slow play some of your best hands, especially on boards that are not too draw-heavy or in situations where you block a lot of premium hands.
If you have a hand that’s very hard to outdraw, you should not be afraid to slow play and make life even more difficult for your opponents.
You should especially slow play often when the stacks are shallow, and it is easy to get all the chips into the pot, even if you just call the flop.
#7 – Do Not Slow Play All Your Draws
Just like you don’t want to raise all your strongest hands, you don’t want to raise all your draws either, as you still want to have some of those hands in your calling range as well.
The kinds of draws you want to just call the flop bet with are draws that have solid equity, but could not sustain facing another raise on the flop.
A hand like a weak flush draw or an open-ended straight draw is a good candidate to just call with at shallower stacks. They are not great hands to get all the chips with on the flop, but they also have quite a bit of equity.
Just calling with these hands allows you to have some strong holdings when the draws complete on the turn, and gives you a chance to realize your equity without getting pushed off your hand.
#8 – Give Up Your Weak Hands on Turns and Rivers
We talked about wanting to call a wide range on the flop against a small bet, but that does not mean you want to take that entire range all the way to the showdown.
Instead, you will want to fold the bottom part of your range each time you face a new bet. The bigger the bet, the more of your range you can call.
Hands like bottom pair and weak draws become much worse on the turn if they don’t improve, and facing another bet means it’s time to give these up.
Remember that you called the flop bet because you only needed to win 15% or 20% of the time, and this is simply not one of those times with your particular hand.
If you keep folding the bottom part of your range with every bet you face, you will reach the showdown with an ideal range of hands that plays well against your opponent’s range.
#9 – Don’t Overplay in Multi-Way Pots
Playing a heads-up pot and playing against multiple opponents is not the same, and you should always beware of this.
Hands that are almost always good in heads-up pots, such as top pair and top kicker, become much weaker when multiple opponents are interested in the pot.
Similarly, weak draws, such as smaller flush draws, become extremely bad in multi-way pots, where another player often has a superior flush draw.
When playing against multiple opponents, you should be looking to continue only with very strong holdings like sets, straights, and flushes, and draws to the nuts, such as the nut flush draw or an open-ended straight draw with two overcards.
#10 – Be Mindful of Your Opponents’ Tendencies
Being mindful of your opponents’ strategies and tendencies can be all the difference between dominating your games and barely hanging around.
While playing an optimal strategy will get you far, adjusting to and exploiting other players’ tendencies will make you a true crusher.
Make sure to observe your opponents and learn which ones of them are very tight, very aggressive, risk-averse, and more.
By knowing the kinds of ranges they play in different scenarios and their betting tendencies, you can make exploits that have nothing to do with GTO poker.
The weaker the player is, the more you can adjust your strategy and deviate from what’s optimal to what works against that particular player.