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nariman44's picture
Best way to adjust a frequent check raiser?

I have not found a comprehensive study on this matter yet:

"What is the best adjustment to a light check raiser?"

1- Some people say C-bet less, check back your Ace high and bottom pair hands with small showdown, but what if he leads the turn and barrels the river every time we check back the flop?

2- Some people (coach Barewire) say, 3bet jam over their check raise with flush and straight draws and even two over cards like KQ on T93 flop. However, this is a high variance game and I think I lose my edge by just semi bluff shoving on a draw (%36 equity) or two over cards (%25 equity).

Do you think narrowing down my button pre flop raise could be an option? I mean, I open raise with hands that flop well like broadways and C-bet the flop once I hit to induce a check raise bluff and only limp with Ace rag and K rag and samll pocket pairs. Since these hands do not flop well and we do not plan to c-bet and plan to literally give up on the flop if we do not hit. Therefore, why raise with hands that flop so bad?

ain't it better to limp with them?

 

Please help me with this issue. I have thought about it a lot.

 

Respectfully,

Reece528's picture
Don't only check back your

Don't only check back your ace high and bottom pair type hands since it sounds like you don't really want to call 2 barrels with these hands. Include some stronger hands like top pair or good middle pairs into your check back range so Villain will basically be shooting in the dark when he barrels.
If he's extremely aggressive, you could try to set him up by, for example, calling down with a low top pair on a flush/draw heavy board where "top pair would always jam over a checkraise" -- just be prepared to call turn and river barrels if you do that.
If you have a lower PFR, you'll have more hands which connect favorably with flops on average (e.g. how often is a 2/3/4 good for top/middle pair?). This means you will have more hands which can withstand a checkraise and which you can therefore cbet with.
Some people react very differently to limps than to preflop raises. Perhaps your Villain will be happy to let you limp and stab. If he aggressively raises limps, you can still do some limping and include some limp to trap hands and hands which can call a 3x. 
 
Hope that helped :)


Zyntherius's picture
The OP could easily be my

The OP could easily be my post. I face that problem a lot when I move up.
The answers I found from other regs for battling frequent check raisers (regardless of their effectiveness) include:
- "check back value hands that can not stand a check raise" (The bad downside to this is that if you check back 78s on a Q 8 4 board with a flush draw, every time you check back you give away equity and there are also a lot of ugly turn and river cards you're gonna have to make a herocall on vs these guys)
- Whenever you do flop a hand as the PFR, bet an amount that looks weakish so you do not eliminate check raises as an option. And when you do get check raised, do not shove over it but take very passive lines. I only grind low stakes for now, and one of the edges that I find are that someones bet size is super transparant. The bad fish commit themselves with a large cbet so check raising them would be suicide in some spots. On the other hand when you don't flop a hand as the pfr, but it seems unlikely that the flop connected with his calling range, you can bet bigger than you usually do so that you force villain to make a massive mistake if his check raise gets played back at.
For example most of these guys check raise a half pot cbet from 120 chips to 340 on dry boards. So that it leaves them with a playable stack size if you continue vs their check raise. On the same dry boards, if you cbet your air on the bigger side, a check raise would make them commit themselves which is a lot less attractive. You only leave them the option to float and hope you don't fire on the turn. I never read this advice on a forum or so but that is what I do in general
- "narrow your pre flop raising range so that it leans more towards value". However, this is cash game 6max advice. I think if you do that in husngs you will simply get runover
- decrease the size of your pre flop raise and cbets. This does apply to husngs. You lose less every time you cbet the smallest size that you can get away with

Turbo's picture
This is very broad

This is very broad question.
It depend a lot on villain's tendencies. No two players play the same. No two check-raisers are the same. How often they barrel the turn, river? How they handle flop 3-bets? What is their check-raising range?
But my general philosophy is this: Almost never go into the shell. By playing tight and waiting for good hands, you are giving up too many chips when folding preflop, giving free cards, folding marginal hands.
I would start thinking more about 3-betting flop - which flops and gameflow dynamics are good for this type of play.