Chan play

this play is designed to take away the positional advantage a player may have over you, gus hansen is one that does this well also johnny chan was the master of it


basically works like this, say the blinds are 50 100, guy from button raises to 300. you call with Ace jack off suit

flop is qj2 rainbow. your hand rates to be the best most of the time here and against this player you notice he raises from late position often.

you check the flop, the opponant bets half the pot you call.

then say the turn is a 7, pretty much a blank here, you lead out with a bet on the turn. this does a few things. it will mean that you are the one controlling the bet size, its going to be really hard for your opponant to raise here, even with ace queen. sometimes he will fold a trash hand he shouldnt have raised with, but if he does have you beat you are the one who is controlling how much the bet will be, why check and let him be the one to decide.

And if he does call, thats no big deal either as its likely to go check check on the river your opponant may be fearing you are going for a check raise on the turn. or is just happy to go to a showdown with his weak queen

This play i wouldnt use against total donks as they are likely to still raise with ace queen or k j or bluff, but against a seemingly good player this will help you keep control of the pot, whilst still keeping the pot relatively small while out of position.

Basically you will be paying him off if he does have a queen, but it will be on your terms, you decide how much, this is really annoying to play against believe me.


sorry if this makes no sense im a bit erratic in my thoughts. lol

Oh also bet scare cards, say the board was JQ2 with two hearts and the king of hearts comes, that has to be a bad card for your opponant, so you bet and he will be hard pressed to even call with ace queen there. if he does have ahand a raises, no big deal, you can safely say your jack isnt any good, and fold conserving your chips

That's a good one.

I wonder, since the idea here is that he believes you're ahead, maybe a bluff on the river would be a good idea.

Anything you have beat is folding on the turn so your hand doesn't have much showdown value. You've also ruled out the possibility of him having a huge hand or he'd probably have raised the turn so whatever he has he's not confident about. Since he has position, there's a chance he just calls the turn with a hand he knows is good to get value out of it on the river, but since you bet into him he's got to figure you've got something that's ready to pay him off and will likely raise in the attempt to win your entire stack.