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3.1 Flop Analysis
Betting after the flop is a very complicated activity. There are so many different scenarios that you have to adapt your decisions to the situation you are in. Although it is not possible to give you a black and white action for each scenario possible, we can lay out some guidelines and examples to help you make decisions.
The start of the decision process is to look at what has just been dealt on the flop. After the Flop has been dealt then you and your opponents have seen 5 out of the 7 cards that go towards making your final hands.
Carefully analyse the 3 community cards that are on the table, and these are the kind of questions you should be asking yourself:
1. How does the flop help my hand?
We’ve discussed above what we are looking for on the flop with each of the different categories of starting hands, has the Flop come up with what we want?
2. Has the Flop helped my Opponent?
We’ve discussed trying put our opponents on a type of hand by watching his actions and betting patterns, so is it likely that the flop has helped our opponent based on what hands we think he might hold?
3. What Draws are on the Flop?
Is there a Flush possibility on the flop? ie: if there is 3 cards of the same suit on the flop then someone could have hit a Flush, if there are 2 cards of the same suit on the flop then someone could have a Flush draw.
Straight possibilities – are all the flop cards close together to give the chance of a straight?
Whenever you think your opponent is on a draw (ie: he needs another card to complete his hand) then you must make him pay to see more cards, it is very bad strategy to let him have a free card. The only situation where you would maybe do this is if you have an even stronger hand than you think your opponent is drawing to and you want your opponent to hit his hand so that you can extract more money from him.
4. Is there a board pair on the flop
Be very wary of a flop which pairs the board, eg: A 8 A, this kind of flop opens up a lot of possibilities of strong hands such as three of a kind, or a full house or even four of a kind on rare occasions.
Often other players are also just as wary of this kind of flop, so the first person to bet into a pot like this, quite often forces everyone to fold and takes the pot, so by all means have an attempt to take the pot, but if you are raised or your opponents indicates any kind of strength get out of there, unless you have a hand that can compete!
5. Are you in front?
So after considering all of the above, you can decide whether you are in the lead after the flop, if you think you are then you should make your opponents pay to see more cards, don’t give them free cards for them to hit a hand which could overtake you.
CONTINUE TO NEXT SECTION - 3.2
