The flop is the postflop round in which a community card appears. We are talking about the first street that allows to elucidate with which community cards each player can tie the best hand, and what happens here will be a direct consequence of the preflop game.
Let’s see the optimal strategies and cash game poker tips to play well the flop in a real money poker game.
Cash game poker tips: how to play the flop
One of the strategic pillars of your cash game poker strategy in the flop is the check. The check on the flop has been developing as poker has matured. Let’s put it in perspective.
Until not too long ago, preflop play had little or nothing to do with the flop. Those who had a hand bet; those who didn’t, didn’t bet. But that all changed when continuation bets became popular.
A c-bet can be understood as a kind of bluff that allows you to show that you have a good hand or a potentially good project to raise the pot preflop. But the thing is that with a c-bet you can have mediocre cards and still bet. Isn’t that suicide? Actually, it’s not. It can go wrong, but discarding your hand when the community cards have not come out is worse.
C-bets are not mandatory, especially in ABC poker, which is based on betting per hand. Whoever has a hand, bets; whoever doesn’t, discards.
So, is checking on the flop an option? It still is. One of the best poker cash game tips if you have a bad preflop hand is check on the flop, especially if you want to stay in the game. It’s a waste to discard your cards when you don’t even know which one is going to come up on the flop.
It is best to bet on a c-bet that keeps you in the game and allows you to manipulate the perception of you and your game. If done right, and the c-bet is understood as a single move that is part of a much larger overall strategy, then it can work out well. As you can see, the poker strategy for cash games on the flop depends on your preflop hand.
Top poker cash game strategies you should try
As is often the case in poker, position is everything. This means that a check flop IP and a check flop OOP will give a different result. In the checks out of position we have to take into account the calldown. By calldown we mean the fact of recurrently watching the villain’s bets until the river to increase the value of our hand.
If it happens that we raise the pot preflop and we get a cold call, and then on the flop the villain raises and we go for a re-raise, then we will uncover a huge bluff and push him to fold.
But the opposite can happen, and we can be made to lose money against a set we have not seen. If you find yourself in a situation like this, you can pay to see a little on the river, and if it is a bluff, let him keep playing to increase the pot and stay confident. Moral of the story: re-raising a bet from a villain who may be bluffing can play a dirty trick.
So, what do we do if the villain is bluffing and tends to play aggressively?
- We will never re-raise his bets at the drop of a hat. How? Calling until the river, and not a premature re-raise.
- Never go straight ahead with the bets. If we want to see the villain’s bets little by little, we will resort to calldowns, as long as we are out of position.
- Be careful with heads-up confrontations. Check-raise is usually the best option to increase the pot. Remember that in a heads up you are more interested in raising the pot than in seeing the opponent’s bet, so we renounce to calldowns here.
Keep in mind that if we are heads up on the flop and the villain has nothing, then we will take the lead. When playing with low limits, you usually tend to stay as long as possible in the hand, and will only leave when you get caught. Although staying in the hand may seem like a good idea to avoid losing money, if you x-ray the game the result is the same.
Cash games are a type of game where the concept of “cumulative play” is particularly important, that is to say, every action taken and every decision made on previous streets is reflected in the following ones. As we told you before, any poker cash game strategy on the flop will depend on your preflop hand, so you must be consequent.
The Texas Hold’em cash game strategy in the turn is especially complex and uneven if you play in position or out of position, so it is advisable to approach the flop game in a way that we do not lose money because of an absurd mistake.
It goes without saying that passing on the turn is not going to be an option, we already tell you that, because the only thing you will achieve is to look like a weak player, and the target of the rest will be you, something that does not suit you. Therefore, give a practical approach to your game on the flop to directly discard a check on the turn.
Do you want play better and get the best poker strategy for cash games? Read the other articles dedicated to cash games!
