PokerTips Blog

Continuation betting is the act of making a bet on the flop in a pot that you raised preflop. You are “continuing” your aggression in the hand by betting on the flop, hence the term ‘continuation bet’. By now, most players are pretty aware of the benefits of continuation betting and do so regularly even on flops that they missed. But it’s tricky for players, myself included, to always know when to continuation bet and when not to continuation bet. There are a few factors you’ll want to consider when making this decision.

1. Number of opponents

I’m much more willing to make a continuation bet versus just one opponent than two. And versus three or more opponents, I’ll almost never make a continuation bet with a hand that didn’t improve on the flop. You’re just spewing away money in that case because there’s a pretty good chance one of your opponents likes their hand on the flop and is going to give you resistance. Against two players, you can still continuation bet sometimes, but you want to cut out a sizable chunk of hands you’d make that play with facing just one opponent when you are facing two. For example, if I raised with Ace-Jack and one player in the blinds called, I would probably make a continuation bet on a flop of like King-Eight-Seven. Against two players, I might just check, especially if there is a flush draw on board as this makes the continuation bet even less likely to work.

2. Flop Texture

There will be plenty of times when your hand misses the flop but the flop is still perfectly suitable for a continuation bet. For example, if you raise with pocket Threes and face just one caller from the blinds, you should totally go for a continuation bet on a “dry” flop of Ten-Seven-Two. Even though that flop missed your hand, there’s such a high probability that it missed your opponent’s hand. Additionally, there are only two overcards on the board instead of three which is nice. You can go ahead and bet your pair with confidence. However, on a flop of like Queen-Jack-Nine with two of one suit, I feel like you’re kinda wasting money making a bet because such a high percentage of your opponent’s likely holdings are going to be interested in continuing with that flop.

When evaluating flop texture, you want to ask yourself, “how likely is it that this flop hit my opponent’s hand?” The drier, the better, assuming you are hoping to just win the pot with a bet on the flop. Some “action” flops like Ace-Ace-Nine are good to continuation bet even if you don’t have an Ace since the flop will dissuade your opponent from trying to do anything cute against you. The more poker you play, the better feel you’ll eventually have for knowing what flops are okay to continuation bet and what flops you should just swallow your pride and check-behind on. In general, I would say players have an overall tendency to continuation bet slightly too much. While it is true that you only need a pot-sized continuation bet to succeed one-third of the time or more in order to justify making the bet, I think continuation betting has become almost a little too standard and to be expected. For this reason, I like to mix in check-raising as a bluff sometimes when I call a raise preflop from the blinds. Basically, a good rule of thumb is that you never have to continuation bet and so don’t do it on flops that seem kinda bad just because you think you’re supposed to.

3. Your table image

It’s important to have some degree of awareness of your image at the table. If your opponents view you as some erratic, loose cannon, they will be less likely to fold to your continuation bets. Generally, continuation betting is more likely to work if your opponents perceive you as tight and solid.

4. Stack sizes

It’s important to observe stack sizes when determining whether or not to continuation bet. Continuation bets tend to work best when the players in the hand have medium sized stacks. By this, I mean stacks in the range of about 20-75 big blinds. Less than this and continuation betting can be a bad idea; you don’t want to make the bet if your standard sizing for it is half of your opponent’s stack. I prefer checking with the plan to fold if the turn does not improve your hand and your opponent bets. All too often, when you continuation bet against a short-stack, they will raise all-in leaving you pot committed to making the call with a hand that is clearly beat.

Players with deeper stacks have more maneuvering room to do things like check-raise on the flop as a bluff or call a bet with something marginal like bottom pair or a gutshot in order to see what happens on subsequent streets.

5. Your opponent’s tendencies

It’s good to know a little something about your opponent before continuation betting against them. Some players literally never fold so there’s no reason to continuation bet on flops that badly missed your hand since they’re probably going to call with whatever two pieces of paper they were dealt. It’s better to deal with these “calling station” type players by just waiting to make a hand against them and then punishing them with large value bet after large value bet.

Savvier, thinking players are, ironically, much easier to continuation bet against. The best player to make a continuation bet against are the ones that are only concerned with their own hand and nothing else whatsoever. Since most hold’em hands miss the flop more frequently than they hit the flop, it’s really easy to slowly siphon chips off of players like these due to their lack of creativity.

6. Bet sizing

One final note is to think about the size of your continuation bet. You want it to be large enough that your opponent will respect it as a “real” bet and not just call or raise you with anything. If the size of your continuation bet is equal to or less than the amount you raised to preflop, you can expect your success rate to be pretty low. Your opponent already called one bet larger than that, so why not call again? You want your continuation bet to be somewhere in the range of 20% larger than the size of your preflop raise up to the size of the pot. If you bet the pot or even more than the pot (which for some reason people basically never do in no-limit strangely enough), you can expect your opponent to fold everything but the hands that they legitimately like. Sometimes these larger-sized continuation bets are nice because they are really polarizing. You are sending a strong signal to your opponent that you like your hand, so if they continue with the hand, you can narrow their range down pretty good to only strong stuff and not a ton of speculative garbage. I would definitely recommend mixing in a full pot-sized continuation bet from time to time, certainly sometimes on flops that didn’t even improve your hand, just to keep your opponents off balance.

An often overlooked skill needed to thrive at the poker table is staying aware of what is happening to you and your emotions in the game. There are a few things you’ll want to be aware of at all times in your poker session:

1. Is the game good? What is a good game one minute can be a bad one the next. This is something you must constantly reassess. One hand might totally change the perception you have of an opponent. Allow this to happen. If the old man with a visor makes a great play, maybe your previous assumption of him as a poor player is incorrect. The work of profiling your opponents is never done. You cannot make up your mind about everyone at the table in the first 30 minutes and spend the next 6 hours operating under those assumptions. New information will unfold. Players’ moods will change. The players themselves will change! Think of your poker game like the tide; it is always changing. Notice when the game has changed for the better. Notice when the game has changed for the worse. Factor all of these observations into your decisions at the table, including your decision to stay or go.

2. Is your mind right? Sitting down to play poker in the right frame of mind is good. Continuing to play after your mind is no longer in the right frame is bad. Continually reassess your mental state in every poker session. How are you feeling right now. Are you in the flow of the game? Is your focus on what is happening immediately before you? Or is your mind wandering? Are your emotions fluctuating? What are you feeling? It is true that your decisions at the poker table will be more profitable when you are focused on the game and holding an objective, rational mind. When your mind begins to drift elsewhere or a negative mood sets in, that may be a good indicator of the conclusion of your session. If you are tired, go home and sleep. If you are sick, go home and rest. Poker is something that should only be done when you are feeling fresh and at your best.

Anytime you reach the final table in a large multi-table tournament, you are sitting in one of the most important poker games in your life. Unfortunately, this fact is lost on many players. For many players, and I used to be one of them, just reaching the final table is seen as the goal. You toil and grind for hours through a tournament filled with emotional highs and lows until finally… you’ve reached the final table! *Exhale!* High fives are given all around. All is well in the world. We can finally relax and have some fun playing poker!

This approach to tournaments is a leak. If anything, tournaments should be approached in the exact opposite fashion. Rather than sweating and pulling your hair out of your head about whether or not you’ll reach the final table, remain mostly disinterested in that stuff. Instead, focus on making the right decisions and on nothing but the other players at your table.

If you are fortunate enough to make the final table, then you can switch into the tense, competitive zone that many of your opponents have just abandoned now that they’ve reached their goal. Making the final table was never reason to exhale in your mind. Playing perfectly at the final table until there are no decisions left for you to be made is your reason to exhale.

The reason final tables are so important is because of the sums of money being played for. The difference between winning a tournament and finishing, say, sixth, can be the difference between being able to absorb an impending mega-downswing versus going broke. It can be the difference between finally moving up and playing higher stakes or continuing to toil at your current stakes while waiting for that “big break”. It can be the difference between driving a Mercedes or driving a Kia. There is so much at stake at final tables that playing with anything less than complete focus and intensity can be a huge financial leak.

For example, let’s take Bill the online poker pro. Bill grinds tournaments nearly every day. A very capable player, Bill has managed to make $40,000 playing poker over the past year. Bill reaches a final table where first place is $45,000. Six players remain in the tournament. Bill is towards the bottom of the pack but still has a comfortable-enough stack of 20 big blinds. Sixth place in the tournament pays $10,000.

The next hour of Bill’s life will be the most important hour of the year in determining his income. Anything can happen for Bill here. He can finish 6th and have an annual income of $50,000 or he could win the tournament and have an annual income of $95,000. And it will all be determined over the course of about the next hour!

Do you see how important final tables can be?

For Bill, it is nothing short of imperative that he remain completely focused on his final table. If he should be the victim of a bad beat or cooler, there’s nothing he could have done about that. “That’s poker,” as they say. But one thing Bill simply cannot afford to do at this final table is commit a mistake. He must play perfectly. Everything beyond that is out of his control.

When playing at a final table, be aware of the magnitude of your decisions on your overall financial picture. A final table is not the place to make speculative all-in calls or four-bet bluff all-in preflop. Early in a tournament, if you want to make a play that you regard as being slightly bonehead, that is somewhat forgivable. After all, you weren’t worth that much in the tournament to begin with. But at a final table, you are worth a lot relative to your original buy-in. Save the speculative, cute plays for another day when it won’t cost you as much if it backfires.

At the final table, you bring nothing short of your solid A-game doing everything you can to preserve your chip stack and build it when the right situations present themselves. Let your opponents be the ones making loose calls out of position preflop, getting into blind-versus-blind battles for huge pots with light holdings, and making overbets all-in when the only hands that are calling you are ones that have them beat.

A final table is the most important hour of your year in terms of poker income. Make it last.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the pro poker player’s paradox which outlined some of the reasons against the idea of trying to make a career out of poker. But lest we become branded eternal pessimists, here are five tips for becoming a pro poker player should anyone choose to ignore our earlier commentary:

Play a Lot… like… A LOT!

If you are going to play poker professionally, you have to treat it like a profession. There are a couple of good reasons to play a high volume as a poker pro. First, it makes upswings and downswings a lot less dramatic. If you’re not playing a particularly large amount of hands per day, a severe downswing can drag on for months and months. If you’re playing a high volume of hands, a severe downswing should only last for a few weeks (perhaps longer if you’re playing tournaments). Conversely, upswings cease to become a distraction if you’re playing a lot of hands. A professional who plays sporadically might start to become over confident during an upswing which can lead to bad spending habits and life choices. A player putting in a high volume will see his big upswings level out sooner and can therefore maintain a more proper mindset for playing poker professionally.

By playing a high volume of hands, you’re much more likely to have a strong understanding of your true win-rate. This understanding can be imperative for knowing how much you need to work on your game and estimating your approximate income. To give you a rough idea of what I mean when I say “high volume”, a decent rule of thumb for multi-table tournament players would be to play 100+ tournaments per week. SNG players should be striving for even more than that. Cash game players (and as a side note: cash games are probably the best thing to play if you want to play professionally) should strive to play 10,000+ hands per week.

Of course, in an effort to play a lot of hands, one should never compromise their optimal amount of simultaneous tables or play for so long in a single day that they begin to make sub-optimal decisions. So if the idea of playing 100+ tournaments or 10,000+ hands in cash games in a single week seems overwhelming to you, you may want to consider working on your game and ability to multi-table while holding down your day job for a while.

Your Bankroll is Your Boss

One of the nice things about playing poker professionally is that you have no boss. A professional poker player only answers to himself. However, I would suggest you view this as not being entirely true. You do have a boss. Your bankroll is your boss. Your bankroll tells you what you can and cannot do. Just like you wouldn’t get very far in a “real job” by disrespecting, ignoring, or mistreating your boss, you won’t get very far as a professional poker player doing those things to your bankroll. If you are good and respectful towards your bankroll, it will let you know when you get a promotion. It is impossible to succeed in the long run as a professional poker player if you do not practice solid bankroll management.

This is not an article on the specifics of bankroll management (such as how many buy-ins or big blinds you should have). If you want that type of information, you can check out our bankroll management article or pick the minds of a few successful pros. Some good ways to reduce variance are to swap action with another trusted, strong player. For example, you can work out an arrangement with another pro where you swap 10% in every tournament that you both register for. It’s a bit harder to make swaps in cash games, but it can still be done. You just need to be swapping with someone you trust completely.

If you’re looking to “take a shot” at a higher buy-in poker tournament or at a higher-stakes cash game level, consider selling action. There are enough online poker databases out there that if you are a winning player, you can sell pieces of your “shot” to other players who can verify for themselves that you are indeed a winner at your current stakes. Just don’t do anything stupid like insist that your backers should let you buy software that will improve your game on their money.

Conversely, buying small bits of action in other players looking to take a shot can be a nice way to reduce variance. Just be sure you’re getting a nice deal prior to investing in another player.

Join or Form a Crew

One of your best assets in the quest to become a professional poker player is having friends who are also playing professionally. Joining or forming a group of friends who are all on a quest to succeed in playing poker for a living is invaluable. You can lean on these individuals to provide input on tricky hands, help calm your emotions when you’re on tilt, and generally make the life of a pro poker player more fun and less isolated. This is probably the best kept secret of becoming a pro poker player. Virtually anyone who has managed to do it successfully is probably part of a strong group of friends that all help each other reach their goals as players.

Hedge Your Bets

This tip is somewhat in direct contrast with our first tip, but consider maintaining other revenue streams outside of poker. This could be done in a variety of ways. One way is to keep a part-time job doing something you enjoy. By working 10-20 hours a week doing work you don’t mind doing, you achieve a few things. First, you keep your poker career in perspective since it is not your sole source of income. Second, an outside job can be a great way to spend time around people, specifically people who are in no way connected to the game of poker. There’s a lot to be said for spending time around non-poker players. Finally, a part-time job allows you to keep something going on your resume. In case poker doesn’t work out, a job will allow you to avoid having a big hole on your resume. You’ll be grateful for this when it comes time to figure out your next step in life.

Following this advice requires a lot of foresight and discipline. When you’re making $30 an hour playing online poker, it can be really, really tough to drag yourself to a job for 10-20 hours a week where you only make $11 an hour. But try to keep your eye on the bigger picture. First of all, you may not be making as much playing poker were it not for the balance the non-poker job adds to your life. Secondly, understand that poker may not be around forever as a viable career choice. There is a lot of value in maintaining talents and interests not related to poker. This way, when the day comes where you admit to yourself that you can’t play poker forever, you’ll have a little something going for you to fall back on.

Along these lines, treat poker like a regular job. This means you work regular hours, take regular days off, and even take extended vacations away from the game. Giving yourself at least one day a week off from poker is imperative though two or even three is recommended. Keep other hobbies and interests going. Have a group of non-poker friends that you hang out with at least one day a week. Join a club or an intramural sports league. You can even do some of your daily grinding in a Starbucks to feel less isolated. Get creative and do whatever it takes to keep other things going in your life outside of poker.

Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle

One of the biggest temptations associated with the life of a pro poker player is to take up the lifestyle of a partier. While there’s plenty to be said for cutting loose and enjoying spurts of living carefree, your life and your mind will deteriorate quickly if every night is a party. When you don’t have an office to show up at the following morning, it can feel like you have carte blanche on drinking and doing drugs at night and waking up whenever you feel like it. You might be able to get away with this lifestyle for a while, but eventually it will catch up with you. Your mind will suffer and as a result, your poker earnings will suffer.

Don’t interpret this as “never drink” or “never try a drug,” just do those things rarely and in moderation. The rest of the time, get daily exercise, plenty of sleep, and spend the time it takes to nourish your body with real, whole foods, not processed crap you throw in a microwave or have delivered. This is probably the most common leak found among poker players. A friend of mine regularly makes fun of how all poker players look like pears: wimpy shoulders and chest, big round, squishy mid-sections, and legs that haven’t experienced the sensation of “running” in years. Don’t become one of those players that sacrifices everything else in their life just to make a living playing poker. In the end, it’s really no living at all.

Poker is a game that evolves on a second-by-second basis. A strategy that works one year might be archaic the next. Successful online grinders can share with you their observations on how optimal strategy in no-limit hold’em games regularly shifts between a loose style of play to a tight style of play, back to a loose style of play, etc. Note that I’m only speaking in generalizations here; just because one believes there’s a market for a tight style of play at the moment doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be appropriate to play with a loose style at one particular table or tournament.

To be a successful poker player that stands the test of time by generating a handsome profit year after year, one must possess a lot of attributes. One of these attributes is the ability to alter playing style in the face of changing game conditions. Several years ago, you could literally print money by playing a loose style of poker at no-limit tables. This is because everyone was playing ABC tag poker which is highly exploitable to anyone willing to think outside the box. Today, there might be more of a market for a tighter style since so many of today’s players are the winners of yesteryear when a loose strategy ruled supreme.

Being able to identify the evolution of your particular game and stakes and adapt to those changes in a profitable manner can be the difference between feast or famine in the poker world. When I hear players boasting about their style of play in a connotation that indicates they self-identify with that style to such an extent that changing it probably won’t enter the equation until it’s too late, I feel sorry for them. Many successful players get a reputation for their ingenious style of play and begin to self-identify with the fame and attention that they’ve received from playing this strategy. A great example of this is Gus Hansen. Years ago, when Hansen was on seemingly every World Poker Tour final table, he played with an incredibly erratic, loose strategy that, at the time, worked miraculously for him. He made millions of dollars with this crazy style of play and garnered a lot of fame as a result. However, Hansen’s opponents gradually started to adapt to his style of play. Once that began to happen, Hansen could have done one of two things:

• Continue playing with his erratic style that earned him millions
• Use his opponents’ perception of how he plays the game to his advantage

The latter such option would call for playing a tighter style that exploits his opponents’ tendency to believe that he is capable of showing up with any two cards. His days of three-betting with 64 would be over (temporarily, at least) in exchange for playing a tighter strategy that seeks to wait for strong hands and hope to get paid off big thanks to his loose image. And when the day comes where all anyone can talk about it is how tight Hansen is, then he can go back to popping it up with his 64s.

Whether or not Hansen made more money by adjusting to the image he generated from WPT TV appearances isn’t something I’m familar with. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I don’t follow the guy enough to know either way. He’s just an interesting example of how one can constantly be making changes to their style of play in accordinance with shifts in the strategies of the masses as well as the perceptions these masses have of your playing style in order to continue making money hand over fist at the table.

But the ability to make these shifts isn’t easy. Most players, top pros even, are unable to detach themselves with the familiar style of play that has made them so much money. There’s a reason Phil Ivey is the most successful all-around player in history: anytime he’s interviewed and asked to describe his style, he never has a cut-and-dry answer. His response is usually something along the lines of, “I just sit down and figure out what the best strategy is once I’m there.” Ivey is always thinking. He never goes on autopilot. That tremendous game-theory mindset of his has made him countless millions of dollars over the years. In that time, he’s been able to watch plenty of his old peers crumble away due to their inability to make the adjustments necessary to continue seizing a handsome portion of the poker economy.

We recently added an introductory Double Hold’em strategy article to our poker strategy section. Double Hold’em is a new poker variant that is available at Party Poker.

In Double Hold’em, players are dealt three cards instead of two. After the flop is dealt, each player remaining in the hand must designate one of their three cards as the “point” card. This card is then placed above the other two cards to form a triangle. The point card can be used in conjunction with each of the other two cards to form two different hold’em hands. In the event of a showdown, you play whichever of your two possible hands gives you the best five card poker hand. As in hold’em, both, one, or none of your hole cards can be played at showdown.

Check out our strategy article for more insight into how to play this interesting new game.

We recently added a strategy article on Ante Up tournaments to our poker strategy section. Ante Up tournaments are gaining in popularity. Blind levels stay fixed for the duration of the tournament while only the antes, which are posted from level one and onward, increase. For example, level one could be 5/5 blinds with a 10 ante. Level two would be 5/5 blinds with a 20 ante, etc. This format dictates some significant changes in strategy which we outlined in the article.

Recently, a member of our poker forums, ‘kid hustlr’, started a thread in our tournament strategy forum seeking feedback on a hand where he was dealt pocket Kings. The hand history posted by ‘kid hustlr’, whose screenname is ‘c-biz-kid’ at this online poker table, is as follows:

Full Tilt Poker Game #20948326493: $75,000 Guarantee (158419291), Table 31 – 20/40 – No Limit Hold’em – 20:34:46 ET – 2010/05/18
Seat 1: moudro (2,180)
Seat 2: Firerang (5,350)
Seat 3: c-biz-kid (3,245)
Seat 4: RBC123123 (3,355)
Seat 5: BegsClutch (2,630)
Seat 6: Pokerccini (4,580)
Seat 7: dwf1029 (11,375)
Seat 8: 77kol0bok77 (2,340)
Seat 9: wmmcl (3,210)
moudro posts the small blind of 20
Firerang posts the big blind of 40
The button is in seat #9
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to c-biz-kid [Kc Kd]
c-biz-kid raises to 120
RBC123123 folds
BegsClutch has 15 seconds left to act
BegsClutch calls 120
Pokerccini folds
dwf1029 calls 120
77kol0bok77 calls 120
wmmcl folds
moudro calls 100
Firerang folds
*** FLOP *** [Th 3s 5h]
moudro has 15 seconds left to act
moudro checks
c-biz-kid checks
BegsClutch checks
dwf1029 bets 240
77kol0bok77 has 15 seconds left to act
77kol0bok77 calls 240
moudro folds
c-biz-kid calls 240
BegsClutch folds
*** TURN *** [Th 3s 5h] [Jd]
c-biz-kid checks
dwf1029 has 15 seconds left to act
dwf1029 checks
77kol0bok77 has 15 seconds left to act
77kol0bok77 bets 440
c-biz-kid calls 440
dwf1029 has 15 seconds left to act
dwf1029 folds
*** RIVER *** [Th 3s 5h Jd] [Td]
c-biz-kid checks
77kol0bok77 has 15 seconds left to act
77kol0bok77 bets 640
c-biz-kid calls 640
*** SHOW DOWN ***
77kol0bok77 shows [Jc Tc] a full house, Tens full of Jacks
c-biz-kid mucks
77kol0bok77 wins the pot (3,520) with a full house, Tens full of Jacks
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 3,520 | Rake 0
Board: [Th 3s 5h Jd Td]
Seat 1: moudro (small blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 2: Firerang (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 3: c-biz-kid mucked [Kc Kd] – two pair, Kings and Tens
Seat 4: RBC123123 didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 5: BegsClutch folded on the Flop
Seat 6: Pokerccini didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 7: dwf1029 folded on the Turn
Seat 8: 77kol0bok77 showed [Jc Tc] and won (3,520) with a full house, Tens full of Jacks
Seat 9: wmmcl (button) didn’t bet (folded)

I think the mistake ‘kid hustlr’ made on this particular hand was calling on the river. Others have suggested that he should have bet the flop or bet the turn, but I really don’t his failure to do either of those things was as big of a mistake as calling on the river was. I’m not writing this to knock kid hustlr’s play; he’s a tremendous player and has been on a tear in 2010 by winning a triple crown and by finishing 4th in the Mini FTOPS Main Event for $52k last weekend. I’m using his hand as an example because I know he’s a good player and a good guy and wouldn’t mind a decision he made at the table being used in a discussion for learning purposes.

kid hustlr’s river call on this particular hand was very thin. The only thing he was really going to beat was a busted heart draw. I think it’s pretty rare that you’ll see a player bet all three streets for value-sized bets on a busted draw. In this particular hand, the ten was a very bad river card for kid hustlr. As forum member ‘killcrazy’ pointed out, “with so many guys seeing the flop, i think a ten is in play an obscene amount of the time.”

kid hustlr’s river call was one that a lot of online poker players make, myself included. It seems that when you call a flop bet and a turn bet with a showdown-able hand, you almost always get lulled into calling the river bet as well. However, there’s a lot of money to be made (or saved, rather) by staying sharp when facing a third-barrel from an opponent on the river. In this particular example, even when one of the worst possible cards hit the river, kid hustlr still called. I don’t think anyone could have faulted kid hustlr for calling on the river if a complete brick had hit, like, say, the six of diamonds. It would be pretty hard to put your opponent on exactly a set or exactly Jack-Ten, so a call in that scenario would probably be okay. However, when the ten hit the river, there became a much wider range of hands that you’re now losing to.

In general, I find it pretty uncommon for players to fire bets on all three streets, including when in position after a scare card comes on the river, and not have a very strong hand. Usually players tense up and check behind when a scare card comes off. The fact that kid hustlr’s opponent fired a value-sized bet when another Ten came on the river suggests that he almost certainly had a Ten or a set. In a sense, it was actually a good river card for kid hustlr since it increased his likelihood of saving money with his second-best hand rather than paying off without hesitation like he would have if the river were the six of diamonds.

Keep the ‘thin river fold’ concept in mind in your future sessions. Don’t fall into the trap that almost all players have of paying off on the river with their showdown-able hand. Evaluate every river bet you face in a vacuum. Don’t just put the money in the pot because that’s what you did on the last dozen river bets you faced with a showdown-able hand. Sometimes you can throw it away on the river and save money. The key is knowing which spots are best for this play.

Most competent players know their opponent who called on the flop and turn is only going to fold on the river if they missed their draw. For this reason, their river bet is very rarely a bluff.

As players start to make this adjustment, there will eventually become a market for making river bluffs with more regularity. But for the time being, you can assume your opponents will a.) usually call the river if they called the flop and turn (unless they have a busted draw) and b.) almost always have a strong hand when they bet the river, especially if a scare card hits.

The third best starting hand in hold’em, pocket Queens, can present some tricky decisions at the table. Like any poker hand, the best way to play Queens depends on the situation. Most poker players will tell you that when you’re discussing poker strategy you want to avoid using words like “always” or “never”. So keep that in mind when reading the advice in this article. This is just general advice. Food for thought, if you will. One should always think for themselves at the poker table, so read this strategy advice as a critical thinker.

There are several things that determine how to play a pair of Queens. The most important things are stack size, your opponents, and position. Let’s talk about each of these variables individually and how they could affect your decision making when holding a pair of queens.

Stack Size

A novice poker player might ask an experienced player, “how to I play a pair of Queens?” I can almost guarantee you the first thing you’ll hear from the experienced player is, “well, for starters, it depends on your stack size.”

If you’re in a tournament with 15 big blinds or less, I recommend shoving all-in preflop with your hand regardless of position. With anything less than 30 blinds, you’re virtually never going to fold Queens preflop. With a stack in the 20-30 big blind range, I recommend making a standard raise and re-raising all-in if you get the chance.

The deeper your stack is, the trickier it is to play pocket Queens and the more you need to focus on other factors such as position and your opponents. We’ll get to those in a moment.

With stacks around 50-100 big blinds, your decisions become kind of tricky. Re-raising preflop looks very strong since you’re committing quite a lot of your stack. Because of this, you can start to consider “just” calling a raise preflop with pocket Queens. However, this is not the type of hand that plays particularly well in a multi-way pot. Ideally, you’ll be facing just one opponent when playing this hand. The danger of flat-calling a preflop raise is that it could lead to a few other players coming along to the flop.

If you do decide to re-raise, the size of your bet matters a lot. With this stack size, if a player opens to 2.5 big blinds and you re-raise to 9 big blinds, your hand is going to look very strong. So while you’ll probably succeed in isolating the action to just one opponent, you’re unlikely to get much action from hands you have dominated. Most players will fold hands like Ace-Queen or Ten-Ten in the face of such a big re-raise. For this reason, consider re-raising fairly small, perhaps just to 5 big blinds. This will have the effect of dissuading others from calling while keeping the original raiser on the hook.

At stacks of 100 big blinds and beyond (cash games or early tournament levels), how you play Queens preflop depends so much on your opponents and your position at the table as well as the action that has already taken place in the hand. When the stacks are this deep, you can generally get away more with three- or four-betting preflop without it being obvious to your opponents that you have a strong hand. After all, some players three-bet with very marginal holdings when the stacks are this deep so use this to your advantage and don’t slowplay unless the table is just really tight.

Your Opponents

Playing Queens with 20 big blinds or less is pretty straightforward. With larger stacks, the table dynamic becomes very important. Let’s say you have 50 big blinds and a player has raised to 3 big blinds. At tables where there are a lot of loose-aggressive players, I might consider just flat-calling this raise hoping I get the chance to four-bet all-in. At very tight tables, flat-calling is also appealing but for a different reason. At a very tight table, I’m not as concerned that any other players will call the raise, so the notion of ‘re-raising to isolate’ is not as relevant.

Another key thing to observe regarding your opponents is their stack sizes. One of the few times I might ever be tempted to limp into the pot with pocket Queens is when there are a few players yet to act who have stacks of 15 big blinds or less. If you don’t think these players have a read on you, they might view your limp as dead money and shove all-in with a wider range of hands as a result.

With a hand like pocket Queens, it becomes very important to know the preflop aggression tendencies of your opponents. There won’t be many instances where you’ll fold Queens preflop, but in the instances where you might, knowing how aggressive your opponents are is very important. For example, let’s say you and everyone at the table has 40 big blinds. You raise in middle position to 2.7 big blinds. Another player re-raises to 7 big blinds. The player in the big blind re-raises all-in. Should you call or fold? I think the answer depends a lot on how aggressive the other two players have been. If they’ve both been playing tight, you can give serious consideration to a fold. If they’ve both been fairly active, I think you have to call and hope you don’t see Aces or Kings. It’s all situational which is why observing your opponents is so important.

Position

Your position at the table can have a big impact how you play pocket Queens. For example, in a situation where I might generally consider flat-calling a raise, my position can help influence this decision. So let’s assume that, because of circumstances other than my position, I am inclined to flat-call a raise. If an early-position player raises and I’m on the button, I would be more likely to flat-call than if I was in mid-position. The reason for this goes back to pocket Queens’ diminishing value in a multi-way pot. When I’m on the button, there are only two players I have to worry about making it a multi-way pot. From middle position, there are still 4-6 players who could decide to also call the raise which therefore makes re-raising seem more appealing.

Final Thoughts

What “line” you take with pocket Queens just varies so much from situation to situation. For instance, say I’m in a tournament where everyone at the table has about 40 big blinds. A very savvy, strong player in middle position raises to 3 big blinds. I look down at Queens in the big blind. Against a player like this, I know that he knows I’m not going to re-raise with a very wide range. So re-raising effectively kills my action. Knowing this, I might just flat-call. Suppose the flop is non-threatening to me, Jack-Eight-Six. I know that this player knows I probably wouldn’t check-raise him unless I had a strong hand, so because of that, I might lead out at the flop hoping it looks like I’m just trying to buy the pot which would induce him to raise with a lot of hands I have beat.

It’s hard to go over very specific situations in a strategy article like this. Like how do you play Queens with 80 big blinds when the ultra-tight under-the-gun player makes it 3 big blinds and a player who re-raises 17% of hands makes it 9 big blinds from the button and you’re in the small blind? If you want to cover really specific situations like this, I hope you consider making a thread in our poker forums where I’m sure we could have a fun discussion. The trickier the hand, the more likely it is you’ll hear some differing opinions on how to play it. But as far as general situations go, I hope this article was of some assistance!