Poker Strategy - Intermediate Flop Play

Once you hit the flop in poker, you will be in one of four situations:

1. You will be winning but have a beatable hand. You will have top pair, top kicker for example or an overpair (i.e QQ and the board is JT5). You want to jam the pot and knock people out. Thus, you want someone to bet to you and then to raise if you are in early position. If you are in late position and no one has bet, you must bet to knock people out.

2. You will have a boss hand. More than likely, you will have three of a kind or maybe even a full house on the flop. There is no reason to knock people out because you will probably win (unless you have trips and there’s a flush draw out there, then you need to make them pay). In these situations, it’s generally best to wait til the turn to really jam the pot, but jam the pot on the flop if you think a scary draw is out there that will beat you.

3. You will have the second best hand. If you follow my preflop strategy, this is unlikely, but it could happen. An example is if you have AQ and KQ4 is on the board. In this case, treat the hand as a drawing hand or simply fold, unless you really believe that you may have the best hand at the moment (this is unlikely in a larger, multiway pot b/c someone is bound to have the K).

4. You will have a drawing hand. An example is if you have two spades in the whole and there are two on the board. For these hands, you must use outs/pot odds. There is a detailed explanation of this in the shorthand section under ‘flop tips.’

5. You will have nothing. An example would be if you have 66 and flop is AK7. You clearly are beat, just fold at the first bet.

Poker Training Online

This is the basic way to win at limit, longhand. There really aren’t that many tricky situations you will encounter. Just remember, the larger the number of people, the higher the likelihood that someone has the boss hand that is out there on the board, so be careful of that. Don’t get attached to AK if AQQ is on the board b/c someone probably has the queen.