Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Another great spot to check-raise the turn
Another great spot to check-raise the turn is when you have a strong draw. If everyone is around 80BBs deep and someone raises from middle position, you should usually call with K-Q in the big blind. If the flop comes J-10-3, you can lead, check-raise or check-call. Say you decide to check-call and your opponent bets 4BBs into the 7BB pot. The turn is the 2, giving you a flush draw, open-ended straight draw and overcards. You check and your opponent bets 13BBs into the 15BB pot. This is a great spot to check-raise all-in because even if called, you will usually have around 40-percent equity. Also, your opponent is going to fold a huge amount of the time, fearing you have something like a set and don’t want to see a river because there are many bad rivers for a set.
The hand could be much different if you had 300BBs
The hand could be much different if you had 300BBs instead. When you check-raise the turn then, you will have to raise to around 45BBs, and 52BBs out of your 300BB stack will be in the pot. The problem is that if your opponent pushes, you will barely have the correct odds to call. Making the turn check-raise with stacks this deep forces you to fold your hand or frequently fire a large river bluff. This is clearly not a good way to play the hand. It’s usually best to check-call the turn bet when very deep-stacked. Having a strong draw does not mean you have to shovel money into the pot all the time.