The Value of Check-and-Call

Conventional poker wisdom considers the check-and-call to be a very weak play. If you are ahead in the hand, you should be betting and raising. If you are behind, you should fold – unless you are getting the proper odds to draw. But even then, aggressive tactics like leading out and semi-bluffing are advised over the timid posture of a check-and-call. What I would like to do today is demonstrate that in a typical, low limit Las Vegas hold'em game, the check-and-call after the flop has a very valuable function.

Consider that you've limped in with K-J offsuit, and that the flop has brought the K-8-2. Ignore for now your position and the number of opponents. What should be clear from the flop is that if you are ahead, then you are comfortably ahead. No inferior hand has more than 5 outs against you. If, on the other hand, you are behind, then you are dangerously behind. You have no more than 5 outs to beat any superior holding.

This is, then, a somewhat thin situation for you. If you are ahead and you bet on all streets, you will only make money when up against a slightly inferior King, or against a novice player who will call down with any smaller pair. More likely, everyone will fold and you will win a tiny pot. If you are behind, you stand to lose quite a few bets, depending on how crafty the opponent is about concealing his strength, and how stubborn you are about calling his raises with just a K-J. This is too bad, because when we enter a pot with something like K-J, this flop of K-8-2 is just what we like to see. But on reflection, it has very little upside and a lot of downside when you approach your play with the traditional aggressive strategy.

So now consider playing this flop with the check-and-call approach. Let's consider early position against 2 or 3 opponents. In the scenario where you are behind, an opponent will bet and you will lose a bet on each street. There is usually no sure fire way to avoid losing this money, unless you have a particularly good read on the opponent. Sometimes you will be able to get away from the hand on the turn or river if you feel confident that your opponent is not creative enough to fire three barrels with anything worse than K-J. But consider that with an aggressive approach to the hand, you would have almost certainly been raised and therefore lost more. Check-and-call limits your losses.

If, conversely, you are ahead, then check-and-call can finally start to pay its real dividends. On the K-8-2 flop, when you check-in early position, you are encouraging the player with the 8 to make a play for the pot. And the later the position of the player with the 8, the bolder he will be. If this player bets the flop in late position, he will almost certainly bet the turn also (where you will pretend to be unsure and then call him again). On the river, he will consider just checking it down, but he may also feel that betting a third time is his only way to win, and then you will call a final time. You will win 2.5 big bets post-flop with the check-and-call strategy, as opposed to zero if you had done the betting. If, on the other hand, no one bets the flop and a free card comes off, you can consider betting the turn if the card is small, (thus representing an 8), or checking again if the card is a 9, 10, J or Q, (hoping that the holder of that pair will bet it), and getting paid off the same way.

What I am basically advocating here is a slowplay of top pair, something that poker books tell you never, ever to do. There's too high a risk, say the experts, that the free card you give will end up biting you in the ass. Well, I'm not so sure. Remember that if you are ahead on the K-8-2 flop, your opponents have no more than 5 outs against you. If you have three opponents and they had Q-Q, A-8, and 2-3 respectively, that is still only a total of 12 outs against you, and that is a worst case scenario. Sometimes yes, you will absolutely lose the hand after encouraging the player with A-8 to bet and letting him catch his ace, but there are two things to consider to ease the pain: 1) the times after check-and-call when YOU are behind and YOU catch the five-outer on the turn partially cancel out the times when you are ahead and your opponent catches the five-outer. Secondly and more importantly, you must keep in mind that in the long run, you win more money with check-and-call on that flop than you do with aggressive play. The pain of watching Mr. A-8 win with his turned ace shouldn't deter you from drawing out his 2.5 big bets on all the other occasions when he can't get so lucky. The results of any one hand cannot speak directly to the wisdom of pursuing that strategy in the long term.

Low limit hold'em players cling to the conventional wisdom that aggressive play wins pots. When you flop top pair with a good kicker on a board that contains no obvious draw, let the guy with second pair believe that he is ahead, and he will pay you off all the way to the showdown.