A Poker Player's Confession: I Suck at Post-Flop Play

Well, things have been going well for me. Taking a $50 deposit on pokerstars to $200+ and starting with absolutely zero on Bodog and taking it to nearly $50 has been a great feeling. The last 5k hands on pokerstars has been pretty much break-even though and I have started to analyze my game more, thanks to my recent purchase of Hold Em Manager. What I have come to discover is this: I absolutely suck at post-flop play.

Going over a few hands, I've realized that my current strategy can only take me so far before I start to not profit at all. I suppose being too tight of a player is slightly better than being too loose, but I find it absolutely terrifying to try to loosen up my game.

C-bets? I hate them. If I don't connect, I hate the idea of throwing out money only to have villian play right back at me. Double barrels? Don't even mention that to me. 3-betting? Unless I have AA, KK, QQ, I'm too much of a wimp to do it. (3-betting pre-flop while I hold QQ still makes me reluctant). If I hold top pair top kicker on the flop and I face a raise to my bet, I call and pretty much shut down if I don't improve. I'm sure these tendencies of mine has saved me money in the past, but I just know I'm giving up the best hand too many times and somehow I don't quite have the balls to do something about it. Have any of you experienced this?

I'm certainly glad my pre-flop game is strong, but any monkey can learn a winning pre-flop strategy. I still need to become more positionally aware, but otherwise I feel confident in that aspect of my game. But I feel like most of the money I'm losing out on is post-flop. What sorts of improvements have you guys made to adjust your post-flop play to a winning one?

You know, one thing that really helped my post-flop play in terms of making it easier for me to make aggressive moves like c-bet, check-raise, etc. was finally realizing that there's only about a 30% chance of your opponent catching any part of the flop, assuming he has two unpaired cards. Obviously if he has paired cards the odds are even lower that he connects. So chances are if you're ahead going into the flop, you're going to stay that way on the flop, and you have to use aggression in some form to either tell your opponent(s) that you're strong or at least get information on their holding. This assumes you're OOP, if you're in position, you just get your information a little differently.

Another thing to do is to really study what your opponents do after the flop in pots that you're not involved in. Do they c-bet a lot? Check-raise? What are they capable of showing down?

I hope this helps. I think you're already on the road to improving merely by recognizing potential holes in your game and trying to improve them. Good luck.

I have a confession, too! Not only am I having a REAL bad run---I don't know how to "cut and paste"---

Here are somethings you can, and I think DJ11 has some posts about this as well...

1. If you hate C-betting when you missed, play a playmoney game and make yourself C-bet. It will cost you nothing to do it. write down everytime you c-bet and who often you get your oppoenets to fold. You should begin to see how this is a profitable move. Also don't forget if you bet half the pot, you only have to get your opponent to fold 1/3 to break even. If they fold half the time you will see a profit from it.

The best thing you can do is for a while make your self do what you aren't comfortable doing to get a sense of why it is a good move. I said to play the play money games only because with a small bank roll you might not be comfortable sitting down at a $2nl table, but real money would be best.

Steve has a good suggestion. Some other ideas, just off the top of my head:

Look at the hands where you raised preflop and separate the c-bets/non-cbet hands. You can probably find some where it was checked down and you can see where a c-bet on the flop might have taken the pot then.

Take hands that you might now consider a possible 3-bet and look at how you played them. You can probably find difficult situations that would have been made easier for you had you defined your hand better preflop by 3-betting. And of course if you're not c-betting, then 3-betting has less value anyways because by 3-betting you're taking control, but there's less point taking control if you're not going to do something with it.

Also, what levels are you playing? In general c-betting has less value the lower the stakes as players don't know when to fold anyway, but 3-betting has more value as the players will call with crap. Just gotta know when to fold your 3bet QQ/JJ when an Ace comes on the flop.

Just one small comment. If you bet half the pot as a C-bet, to get them to fold 1/3 of the time breaks even only if they win every time and you lose no more chips. You might catch an Ace for your AK on the turn and then you will also win the pot, so you have to take into account the times you win after your C-bet is called.

Oh, and playing play money games you will get called a lot more often anyway, so if they call a bit less than 1/3 then you probably would still pull a profit at real money.

I was going to recommend exactly what Steveg1976 said. Go to a play money table and play. Play your pre-flop hands just as you would at a real money table. Only, be aggressive post-flop...C-bet at least 50% of the time, raise more often, reraise, and check-raise. You'll be completely surprised how much you will learn and how this will help break you of passive post-flop play.

These are all good suggestions, I wouldnt go for the play $ thing, though because you have idiots that dont fold anything, and you may get some rather confusing results. I would go to a smaller limit table mabye .05/.10 limit and see how it works for you

Pokerstars has .01/.02 tables where the OP could certainly try out some of these suggestions.

In essence, what everyone is trying to say is..... Do it.

Once you do, you'll see why it's a good thing, and that particular hump will be in your rear view mirror.

On to the next hump ---> The constant call.


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What he said! It's sorta like being afraid of heights and climbing uo a 500ft. cliff and getting to the top and looking down-then doing it again and again and again-eventually you are no longer afraid of heights! JUST DO IT! And hope you don't fall off and break a leg!

Alright, although some of the above advice is good, it is a little misleading. Don't just cbet for the sake of cbetting. Make sure you look at villain/board textures before you decide to cbet/check. Here's 2 examples where you shouldn't cbet most of the time.

1.) Say you raise AcKd on the button and a limper in EP calls your raise. The flop comes 789 all hearts and villain checks to you. This flop just hits a limp/calling villain so hard that hes almost never folding here and you should probably just give up barring you hit an A or K on the turn.

2.) An aggressive villain limp calls your raise and you are holding K9. Flop comes K33 all different suits. Villain checks to you and you know that he will make plays postflop with less than premium hands. You don't really want to be cbetting here b/c your hand cant stand a ch/r and it also allows villain to bluff at you on later streets.

Cbetting just because you raised is really not a good idea. You have to consider other variables b4 u blindly just toss out a bet into the middle of a pot.