Checking for pot control

There are many situations where playing for a huge chunk of chips with top pair (top kicker or otherwise) is stomach churning and can often get you into trouble. In fact you’ll often be forced to throw away the best hand, and if not you may find yourself calling off your chips as a 4-to-1 dog.

Imagine you’re getting deep into the money in a tournament when you raise from the cutoff with Kc-Tc and are called in the big blind by a player also 35 big blinds deep. The flop comes down Ad-Kd-4c and you know the player is very capable of check-raising here both with made hands and as an anti-continuation-bet bluff (you did raise in late position after all). You’ll be put to a very tough decision if check-raised and ultimately will have to pass.

On the other hand, giving away a free card here isn’t that dangerous as you’ve got two very strong backdoor draws (J-Q for the Broadway straight and running clubs for the King-high flush). If your opponent has an Ace he’s beating you already and there’s always the chance he may hit a two-outer for a set (but that will only happen about 4% of the time on the turn). By checking here you automatically reduce the size of the bets being made on the turn and river, and as you are in position you are still in control of how big those bets are anyway.

Keeping it containable

If you don’t improve then check-calling the turn and river (depending on the size of the bets) will probably see you take the pot, particularly if your opponent either catches a card or likes to represent the Ace. And if they did catch top pair your check on the flop will have reduced the size of the pot so that you still have more than enough chips to carry on and aren’t in push-or-fold territory. If checked to on the river you’ve still got the option to make a relatively thin value bet which may be called by a pocket pair or turned/rivered pair lower than the King.

Checking for pot control shouldn’t be your default action but neither should auto-shoving any turn card!
 

Read Part 2...