Lessons · 7 of 10 · 7 min read

Postflop: value, draws and giving up

Sort every flop you see into one of three buckets:

  • Value: top pair with a good kicker or better. Bet. You want money going in while you're ahead.
  • Draws: flush draws and open-ended straight draws. These play well as semi-bluffs: betting can win the pot now, and you have real outs when called.
  • Everything else: middle pairs want small pots (check, call sparingly), and air usually gives up. Don't bluff just because it's your turn.

As the preflop raiser you'll often make a continuation bet on favorable flops, but the buckets outrank the habit. The deeper skill is thinking about the opponent's whole range of possible hands rather than one guess. The Postflop trainer is built around that.