1. Have Jim the jackal beaten and force Dumbo to fold his Q-J (even though it has you beat with a pair of queens, Dumbo will be afraid you have a king in your hand). This is an example of winning a pot through aggressive play. The beautiful thing about this scenario is that you were really just making a raise to gain information about the strength of your hand, but as a by-product you forced the best hand to fold!

2. Have Jim the jackal beaten and force Dumbo to fold his A-10, a hand he might have played for $5 trying to hit an inside straight, and lo and behold, the play saves you a fortune when your third jack comes off on the next card, because it would have given Dumbo an ace-high straight (10-J-Q-K-A)!

3. Find out that Dumbo has you beaten when he reraises the pot behind you, making it $15 to go. Now you can call $5 more on the outside chance that a jack will hit the board or that Dumbo is sitting on a big draw like

and will check it on the next two streets if he misses his hand. But if he bets again or if Jim calls the $15 total on the flop, you will have to fold. At least you will know that you are beaten at this point in the hand, and you can avoid calling the next two $10 bets.
4. Find out that you are beaten because all three of your opponents called your $10 bet on the flop, and it’s just too unreasonable to think that your pair of jacks is the best hand after they all call a bet and a raise. (All three would have to be on either a smaller pair than jacks, or a straight draw, or the flush draw, and this is pretty unlikely.) betting site

5. Eliminate all the other opponents in the hand, but find that Jim does have you beat. In this case, you will probably wind up losing some extra bets to Jim because he’s a jackal! This is an example of what I mentioned earlier—of how jackals don’t lose as much as their wild play would seem to indicate, because they get paid off big-time when they actually do make a strong hand. But you will have ample opportunity to get those bets back from Jim later on, in another hand!

You can now see why raising Jim’s bet here on the flop may win the pot for you, or at least give you the additional information that says your hand is beaten. Of your three options, raising is best, folding is second best, and calling is the worst! Your raise on the flop will set up the way you play your hand on the next two rounds of betting, and it may bluff out a better hand.

• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part6 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part5 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part4 (0)

Of course, the jack sometimes hits right away, and sometimes you would have won the pot because your opponents have Q-10 and (Obviously the jackal has this hand!) But
regardless of the outcome, you made the right move by folding. Sometimes people drive themselves crazy by second-guessing their plays. The next thing you know they're staying in pots trying to hit the shots that are 22 to 1 against them, and virtually giving their money away! Sometimes poker will drive you batty or, in poker terms, put you on "tilt."
If you can keep your emotions in check when bad luck smacks you hard—if you can avoid letting a bad break in one hand affect the way you play your next hand—you will have an excellent chance to become a winning poker player. But if you find that you can't get the last hand out of your mind, and you're vulnerable to tilt, you will probably find it impossible to win over the long haul. In the long run, I'd rather invest my money in a "good" player who never goes on tilt than in a "very good" player who is vulnerable to going on tilt.

Jerry checks, and Jim bets out $5. A lot of us would be tempted to think, "OK, I'm probably beaten in this hand because I cannot beat someone who has a K or a Q in his hand and I'm facing three opponents in this pot. But I'm not convinced yet that I'm beat, so I'll just call the $5." In fact, a "mouse" might even fold his hand at this point! But this is the wrong way to look at it. Yes, you probably are beaten, but for an extra $5 (raising instead of calling) you can gain a lot of information, and because of your raise you might even win this pot. Assuming that you do make the correct raise, making it $10 to go, you might:

• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part7 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part5 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part4 (0)

Does he have a drawing hand that you can beat or a hand like A-Q (a pair of aces; remember the flop is A-10-4) that beats you? Did the flush card or a king or queen hit the board on the turn? (Note, by the way, that even though a jack on the turn would appear to be a great card for you, because it would give you three jacks, it could also present some danger, if it is the jack of diamonds, or if someone had K-Q and has now made his straight.) If so, then can you beat anything anymore? Perhaps a "blank" card (a harmless card that helps neither a straight draw nor a flush draw) like the f+\ comes off and Jerry checks his drawing hand to you. Why has he checked? Because your raise on the flop scared him off from betting the (3- (W so, then your raise on the flop has accomplished its mission!) If he does bet here after a "blank," then you must watch the way he makes the bet (look for body language that might show confidence or fear) and make your best decision.

On fourth street (after the fourth up card is dealt), if something in your head (intuition or instinct) tells you that Jerry is bluffing, then call. If you feel that he has a real hand, then fold. Trust your instincts and you will find that they keep improving as you continue to play Hold'em.

You will also find that your ability to read others will get better as you gain experience, especially if you work specifically on watching how people bet their hands. One of the best times to do this is when you have folded your own hand and so no longer have to concentrate on your own tactical considerations: you can focus entirely on studying your opponents (and the outcome!) for information that will come in handy later.
The Flop Is

Jerry bets out $5, and Jim raises it to $10 to go. In this case there is no flush draw, and it's hard to imagine that both of your opponents have a straight draw with a hand like Q-J, Q-10, or J-10. Although one of your opponents might have a hand like that, what does the other one have? Almost certainly the other opponent has a pair of kings or a pair of aces, because people holding high-rank cards like that tend to stay in hands. In this case, the two overcards on the flop make folding your hand an easy choice. This is one of the worst possible flops for a pair of jacks, especially in a three-bet pot where your opponents probably hold A-something or K-Q, K-J, or K-10.

"But wait a minute," you might ask; "if my opponent can get lucky by hitting the ace he was drawing to on the flop, why can't I get lucky and hit a jack on the turn or the river?" If one of your opponents does have a pair of aces or kings, then you can win only by hitting a jack (don't even factor in the extremely unlikely chance of hitting two perfect cards in a row to make a straight); and because there are only two jacks left in the deck, the odds against that happening are about 22 to 1 on the next card. Just say to yourself, "OK, I've played this hand perfectly so far, so even though I've waited a long time for a pair of jacks, it's time to fold them. Next time I have a big hand, I hope I have a better flop to it." Then simply fold your hand and forget about the outcome of that one. (But again, see what the outcome tells you about Jerry or Jim.)

• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part7 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part6 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part4 (0)

Clearly a raise is in order here. You raise because you probably have the best hand at this point, but your hand is vulnerable to overcards, and you want to try to drive out (force the player to fold) a hand like Q-K that can hit a queen or a king on either of the next two cards, and thus beat you. Your raise may also drive out someone with 5-5, who would otherwise call for the relatively cheap $5 and perhaps end up beating you because he hit a five on the next card or caught a six and then a three to make a straight. In other words, right now your raise is all about "protecting" your hand from losing by driving out opponents who, though trailing at the moment, have reasonable chances to beat you on the turn or river, if you let them stay in the hand. Your raise makes it too expensive for players facing weak draws to stay in the hand.
The Flop Has Gome Down [V]~LB

Jerry bets out and Jim calls. Now what do you do? A raise at this point is a great idea. Clearly, you cannot fold right here, because the pot is fairly large and you may still have the best hand. As long as you're going to play, you might as well raise it and find out if you have the best hand. You already know that you probably have Jim beat, because he's a jackal who always raises when he has any kind of hand and he didn't raise Jerry's $5 bet.
Assuming that you do raise, if Jerry reraises you here, he probably has you beat, but it's not a certainty: he could have a hand like a pair-and-a-flush draw, such as [\]~[!9> or a straight-and-a-flush draw with a hand like [V] "[?♦]• You should call his reraise on the flop, since it is only $5 more to you, and you want to see what he does after the next card is turned. If Jerry then bets out after the next card, where the limits are now doubled (he can bet $10 now and on the last round of betting), then it is time for a decision. You have to analyze what kind of hand Jerry is likely to have.

• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part7 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part6 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part5 (0)

This is the principle I'm trying to illustrate, the principle of betting or raising on the flop, when you have a top ten hand, to find out if yours is the best hand. In this case I was representing an ace with my bet, and fortunately no one had an ace or a nine. If someone had raised me on this hand after I'd bet my 8-8 on the flop, then I most likely would have had to fold my hand, but the $300 bet was going to give me some valuable information, or a better chance of winning the pot (if it drove out someone who held something like K-Q and who might have caught that king or queen on the turn or the river), or, as wound up happening here, the whole pot.
Although I won the battle in this hand, I ended up losing the war in this particular tournament, going on to finish in twentieth place in a field of 100. Unfortunately for me on this day, poker tournaments usually conclude by paying only one table per hundred players, and here it was only the final table of nine players who "cashed."

Examples
Now let's take a look at the examples I've promised, situations that will teach you how to play your top ten hands after the flop. Seven assumptions will apply to the four examples that follow:

1. You're playing a $5-$10 online'game at UltimateBet.com.
2. You have J-J, also known as pocket jacks.
3. Jim (a jackal) raises before the flop in the first position (the first player to act after the blinds, usually referred to as "under the gun").
4. You reraise, making it three bets ($15) with your J-J in the third position.
5. Dumbo (an elephant) calls on the button.
6. Jerry (unclear profile) calls in the big blind.
7. Jim (the jackal) calls your raise.

The Flop Gomes Down 5H3-L9

Jerry checks and Jim bets out $5. This is a very good flop for you, because there are no "overcards" (Q-K-A) to your pair of jacks (an overcard creates a reasonable possibility of a pair for someone who entered the pot with two big cards in his hand), and therefore there is an excellent chance that you still have the best hand.

• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part7 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part6 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part5 (0)

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!

• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part7 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part6 (0)
• Playing The Flop For Hold Em Poker – The Power Of The Raise Part5 (0)