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I don't want to be teaching you just plain old boring game theory without also showing you how to take into account your opponents' moves, tendencies, and expressions. Poker is a lot more about reading your opponents than it is about how to play pocket eights against four opponents! If you do learn how to read someone, then everything will fall into place as you read this book. But if you don't know how to read someone (or think you don't), don't despair: reading people is also a skill that can be learned.

Now that I've shown you some of the power of the raise on the flop, I'm going to walk you through some examples that will help you learn how to play hands after the flop. But before I introduce these examples, I think it will be useful to tell a little story about a hand that I played at Foxwoods Casino (in Connecticut) in late 2001 during a $2,500-buy-in "World Poker Finals" Hold'em event. We were playing $300-$600 limit Hold'em when the following hand came up. I sat in the big blind, and three people called the $300 bet before the flop. Because I held 8-8, I raised, making it two bets, or $600, to go. My three opponents all called my raise, and the flop then came down A-9-5.1 bet out $300, and everyone folded! This was terrific news for me, since most of the time in a big-buy-in poker event someone would have an ace in this situation. Four people times $600 each equals $2,400. I won $2,400 because I'd made the right bet on the flop and the right raise before the flop! If I hadn't bet on the flop, but had just checked, I probably would have lost this pot.

A lot of world-class players wouldn't have raised before the flop on this hand, and therefore would have missed out on the extra $900 that I got the others to put into this pot before the flop. Some other strong players wouldn't have bet on the flop either, figuring that someone had to have an ace! I assumed or gambled (hoped) that my opponents had cards like K-10, Q-J, or 5HS, and for a $300 bet on the flop I earned $2,400.

If I had simply checked on the flop, rather than betting, then someone else might have tried to bluff, and I would have had a tough call, since I couldn't beat a pair of nines or aces. If I had checked and everyone had checked behind me, and then a king, queen, jack, or ten had come off on the turn, then I would probably have been beaten and would not have wanted to call a bet! Through playing this hand properly and making the bet on the flop, I won a pot that many players would not have won. Andy Glazer says this is a "Smith Barney pot," in the sense that I got my money the old-fashioned way: I earrrnnned it!

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• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part7 (0)
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