Playing the Flop in Limit Hold'em

When the flop is dealt, you have already seen most of the cards you will get. The turn and river can always change things, but if the flop doesn’t help you or give you that “oh great!” feeling, don’t hesitate to drop your hand. A part of making money at this game is dropping your weak hands before they cost you.

Bluffing

In low limit games, bluffing won’t do a lot of good on the flop if there’s more than one person in. The pot odds and weak opponents will cause your bets to be called a good percentage of the time. Against a single opponent, feel free to take a stab at the pot now and then if he’s capable of folding.

Aggression

Aggression wins money in poker. If you bet and raise more than you check and call, you’ll be a long ways in making poker a profitable hobby. Playing an aggressive game means you bet and raise when you have strong hands and you simply fold when your hands are weak.

There isn’t any room for mediocre hands with which you might want to just call. Those types of hands just cost you money and should be folded. Calling should be reserved for when you have a draw and the correct pot odds to chase it.

An aggressive strategy accomplishes two things: It gets money in the pot when you have a strong hand and it protects that hand. By playing your strong hands with aggression, you can build yourself a nice pot and charge your opponents to draw out on you. It all works out in your favor.
Protecting Your Hand

It will often feel like it’s impossible to protect your hand in low limit games because there are so many opponents in the pot with you and you can only bet a fixed amount. It is true that your opponents will often draw out on you, but your strong hands will hold up often enough to make a profit in the long term. It just takes patience to handle the short term variance that low limit games can bring.

Protecting your hand means both betting and raising with your strong hands. A raise is a very effective way of protecting your hand if there are still people to act behind you. The combination of a bet and your subsequent raise forces the people behind you to call two bets cold to stay in the pot.

A successful check raise is a good way to make it expensive for your opponents to draw. The risk associated with check raising is giving your passive opponents a chance to check it through, causing you to miss your check raise. Use this move sparingly in low limit games unless you have a good reason to believe someone will bet for you.

Drawing

When you have a drawing hand on the flop, the pot odds will have a major impact on whether or not you continue with the hand. If you’re not getting appropriate pot odds on your draw, you will want to pass on it.

Sometimes you can get a free card by betting or raising your draw on the flop and then checking on the turn when everyone checks to you. This play is a little risky because it reopens the betting and good players are aware of the free card play. Sometimes they will raise your bet on the flop and make it more expensive than you’d hoped.

Against certain opponents, the semi-bluff can be a very effective play. The semi-bluff is useful because it gives you two ways to win the hand. First, it can get the opponents to all fold, giving you the pot. Second, it can win by improving to complete the draw.