We discussed in our last article about varying your play on the flop. In this article we are going to take a look at some specific examples where you should consider what the flop looks like and whether varying your play would be a good idea here. In Texas Hold’em poker it is wrong to take the creative option too often, you should play a solid game of ABC poker much of the time and leave creative plays for that occasion where you want to change things up to surprise your opponents.
There is no free poker software that can teach you to analysis flops perfectly and you need to use all knowledge of your opponent and your own strength of hand in weighing up what to do. Every situation is different and you should not get downhearted if you keep making mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them. In that respect it is better to make the occasional error providing you keep getting better as a result of them!
For the hand discussions below please assume you have one opponent who called your standard pre-flop raise before the flop was dealt.
Good Flop Texture
Your Hand: Ah-Jh The flop: Jd-6h-2h
Analysis: This is a good flop texture for your hand. Your potential danger hands for an opponent to hold is a pair of Jacks, which is unlikely as there are only two in the entire deck so the odds of one opponent holding both is incredibly small, a pair of Queens, Kings or Aces which are unlikely because your opponent would have re-raised pre-flop. Therefore this flop texture gives us a great chance to be ahead in the hand with 6-6 and 2-2 the only hands that are realistic given the action that have us beaten. We can bet here knowing we are likely to build a pot we are probably going to win unless we get very unlucky. We also have the chance of improving to the nut flush and could win the stack of another flush for example Kh-Qh.
This is an example of good flop texture and this positive texture improves the strength of your hand.
Same Hand, Worse Flop Texture
Your Hand: Ah-Jh The flop: Jd-Qd-Ts
This flop has greatly weakened our AJ hand. We have second pair to the board and also the potential straight with AK and a variety of strong draws with the possibility of our opponent calling with two diamonds. AQ also has us beaten and we are left drawing to the King for our own straight. If this king was the King of diamonds however, we would still be losing to any two diamonds that had hit their flush. There are many more ways for us to lose the hand on a board like this with a bad flop texture for us. The good thing for us is that with a similar hand the flop texture is scary to our opponents as well and our position in the hand becomes a telling factor. If we play to the turn and a low diamond hits, we are going to be facing a potentially difficult decision if our opponent represents he has hit the flush.
This flop is certainly an example of bad flop texture for our hand.
When the flop is dealt analyse the strength of the flop texture in relation to your hand. You can then make the correct key decision on whether this is hand you want to build the pot with or keep it small. It is a key moment in poker.
By Malcolm Clarke
