Check-Jamming the Flop

I played a quick ~1100 hand session last night and made a buyin worth of profit. Had a few river suckouts against, but no real cooler hands. According to Sklansky I ran slightly cold, but lack of coolers (with a couple marginal heaters) suggests to me that it was more average than anything.

I'm going to post one hand history that is really a completely standard play for a solid TAG player, but I think it'll help a few readers who are learning the game. I'm including the results, but try not to be results orientated when thinking about the hand.

Villian is a 41/10/5 aggro fish over ~100 hands.

Poker Stars Cash Table

NL Texas Hold'em (0.10/0.25)

Game #15919672934, Table "Vala V" (9 Handed Max.)
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Seat #7 is the button

Seat 1:  UMDane  ($17.20 in chips) Seat 2:  bakalatron  ($24.30 in chips) Seat 3:  loi21  ($29.95 in chips) Seat 4:  DragonSnake1  ($4.15 in chips) Seat 7:  HLDMPLAR  ($28.55 in chips) Seat 8:  Cho.Kon.It  ($24.05 in chips) Seat 9:  Ronfar3  ($25 in chips) Cho.Kon.It posts the small blind $0.10 Ronfar3 posts the big blind $0.25

Preflop:

Ronfar3 has been dealt  [Ac Qc] UMDane folds bakalatron folds loi21 folds DragonSnake1 folds HLDMPLAR raises $0.75 to $1 Cho.Kon.It folds Ronfar3 raises $3 to $4 HLDMPLAR calls $3

The Flop: [Qh 3c Kc]

Ronfar3 checks HLDMPLAR bets $5 Ronfar3: raises $16 to $21 and is all-in HLDMPLAR folds Ronfar3 won $17.25 from pot Ronfar3 doesn't show hand

Hand Summary:

The Final Board: [Qh 3c Kc] Ronfar3 (big blind) won $17.25

First we should talk about the preflop 3-bet. It is folded around to the villian who raises 10% of his hands preflop, on the button. It's unknown how much the villian values position, but probably safe to assume he'll open looser than normal (as he should) to try to steal the blinds. He makes a standard raise, and I 3-bet AQs because I am ahead of the bottom half of his range here. The lesson is that players widen their raising range when in good position, and thus we can 3-bet them lighter in such cases. That said, 3-betting AQs isn't even considered light in this case, however I would have also 3 bet AQo, AJs, KQs, TT+ against this particular villian's button raise.

The flop gives me the nut flush draw, along with middle pair-top kicker and an overcard. A very good flop for my hand, as I'm ahead some of the time, and have so many outs that I have good equity even if the villian has a king. So, why is check-jamming the flop much better than betting out, or check-calling to see if we hit our outs?

The explaination is fairly simple. First and most significantly, checking allows us to induce a bluff from a very aggressive villian. The best part is that even if he bets out and isn't bluffing with a hand like KJ/AK/KQ, we still have lots of equity. Furthermore, we want to get the money in when our equity is strongest, because another club or an ace turn potentially scares the villian away from commiting any more money with a hand like KJ. On the other hand, if the turn blanks and doesn't improve our hand, we have much less equity going to the river.

To finish off the analysis, lets take a look at our equity versus the villian's range on the flop:

Board: Kc Qd 3c
Villian: 25.866 % 77+, ATs+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, ATo+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo
Hero: 74.134 % AcQc

So against his entire range we have huge equity. Lets see what our equity is like against the "worst case" scenario hands, just for kicks:

Board: Kc Qd 3c
Villian: 58.880% QQ+, AKs, KQs, AKo, KQo
Hero: 41.120% AcQc

Even in this case, we have solid equity and absolutely can't fold.