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A check raise is a powerful move at the poker tables designed to put your opponents in tough spots and force them to make uncomfortable decisions.
In the past, many poker rooms would ban the check raise altogether, but today, you can check raise all you want in poker rooms around the world.
If you want to become a good poker player, you will need to incorporate this move into your arsenal, along with many other plays. Before you can do that, you need to learn what a check raise is and when to use it.
In this article, we are going to go in-depth on the topic of check raising in poker and identifying profitable opportunities to employ this power play.
By the time you are done reading, you will have a better understanding of when and why you should check raise and how it will benefit your game in the long run.
Before we proceed to look into the strategy of check raising, let’s briefly discuss what a check raise is and when it comes into play.
By definition, a check raise is the action of checking on a betting street (flop, turn, or river) and then raising once another player puts in a bet.
The check raise is most commonly used on flops, but great poker players will throw in a check raise on the turn or river once in a while as well.
The idea behind a check raise is to represent having flopped a monster hand like a set, straight, or flush on the flop, which can put your opponent in a very tough position if they don’t have a premium hand.
Novice players often play their hands too straightforwardly and tend to bet out when they have a strong hand, check when they don’t, and call when they are drawing.
If you want to be tough to play against, you will need to add plays like the check raise to your arsenal to make sure your opponents never know what they are walking into.
You may be wondering why you would ever want to check raise. After all, you could simply lead out with your strong hands and call with your draws.
However, leading out when you played passively preflop (called a raise) gives your opponents and opportunity to play perfectly against you, especially if you only do so with strong hands.
What’s even more, you don’t want to always just call with your draws (especially out of position), as this allows your opponents to blow you off your hand if you miss.
By check raising some of your strong hands and some bluffs, you allow yourself a chance to win the pot outright with the extra bet from your opponent now in there, or build a bigger pot and have the initiative on future betting streets.
If you build your check raising range well, it will be made up of your strongest value hands, mixed in with some drawing hands that have future playability and equity to win the pot against anything.
By check raising a range made up of value and bluffs, you ensure you are unpredictable, and your opponents can never know what you are holding by your actions.
Playing poker like this will put even the best pros in difficult situations while completely dominating the fish who won’t know where they are at when playing you.
Typically speaking, most check raising opportunities will come when you are out of position, usually when you are in one of the blinds, and you defend against a preflop raise.
In these situations, you will often be calling quite wide when facing small raises that are typical of modern poker games, especially in the BB.
When you find yourself in situations like this, you should be check raising a decent percentage of the time, but you should make sure to use board texture as your guide.
In most cases, the player in the blinds wants to check raise on boards that give him the range advantage, which means they have more hands that connect with the board than the original raiser.
A board like 8s6s4d is a typical example of a board that might connect with the big blind’s range better than that of an early or middle position opener.
On the other hand, a board like AdKs9h prefers the opener’s range, as they can now have all the nutted hands like AA, KK, AK, and 99, while the big blind defender typically can’t have any or most of these hands.
The right time to check raise the flop is when your opponent’s bet represents a wide range of hands that mostly are not very strong on the given board, which makes the check raise a lot tougher for them to play against.
Now that we know the situations we want to be check raising in, it is time to think about the hands we want to be check raising with.
Let us imagine a scenario in which we defend the big blind in a cash game against an MP opener, and the board we mentioned previously, 8s6s4d comes off.
In this spot, like most others, we want to check with our entire range. If our opponent fires out a bet, we can start thinking about a check raise.
We mentioned we want to create a balanced range made up of value hands and bluffs, so let’s take a look at all the value hands we want to include.
We will obviously be raising any 75s combo, as this is the nuts, followed by 88, 66, and 44, all of which are sets and 86s, which makes the top two pairs, as well as 64s.
We will need to balance out this value range with some bluffs, so let’s think about hands that are obvious bluffing candidates.
These include Ts9s, 9s7s, As9s, As7s, As5s, As3s, As2s, Ks9s, Qs9s, Js9s. We can also include some 97s and T9s combos that are not spades, as these also have a decent amount of equity if called.
These hands combined should provide just about enough combos to balance out with our value hands, which means our check raising range will not be easily exploitable.
All other hands, such as one pair hands, other straight draws, and weaker flush draws, can all be played as calls, leaving us with plenty of hands in both our raising and calling range once faced with the flop bet.
It is also worth pointing out that the board we mentioned here allows us to have plenty of both value hands and strong bluffs in our range when playing from the blinds.
On the other hand, a board like AsQc9d would allow for way fewer of each, as we don’t have many strong value hands, and good bluffs would no longer be in our range after calling the raise preflop.
While the flop is the most common street to check raise, employing this play on turns and rivers every now and then will make you even more difficult to play against.
Opportunities to check raise the turn usually arise after you check call the flop and are faced with another bet on the turn after you check.
Typically, you will want to check raise on turn cards that change the board texture to make it possible for your hand to have improved.
Once again, you will want to construct a range made up of actual value hands and bluffs, with the actual nuts mixed in there.
For example, if you called the flop with a number of flush draws and one pair + straight draw hands, you may want to use turn straight cards as the perfect opportunity to check raise some actual straights as well as some of your busted flush draws.
By doing so, you will give yourself a chance to win more with your straight while also making it possible for your opponent to fold a better hand than yours when you have nothing but a flush draw.
If you happen to get called and are holding just a draw, you can still get there on the river or potentially bluff your opponent off a weak hand like one pair.
Much like check raises on flops and turns, river check raises should be polarized. In fact, the river check raise should be made with the most polarized range of them all.
Once you reach the river, you will be left with no further drawing opportunities, which means you will either have a hand or you won’t.
When faced with a bet on the river, you will naturally want to raise your nuts, but raising some busted hands should also be a part of your strategy.
Selecting the candidates for a check raise on the river works a bit differently than it does on flops and turns, as this time around, you don’t want to have too many of the cards that interact with the board.
For instance, if the board has straight draws and flush draws on it that did not complete on the river, your best check raising candidates are second and third pair hands that did not improve in any way and don’t hold any of the relevant drawing cards.
This is because you want to get a fold from your opponent, and not holding any of those cards increases the probability they have them and were bluffing the entire time.
On the other hand, if the river did bring in a draw, you will want to check raise bluff with hands that contain cards relevant to that draw and make it less likely your opponent has the nuts.
Note that you don’t want to turn too many hands into check raises on the river and will usually want to give up when faced with the third barrel on the river, but putting in that river check raise bluff once in a while will allow you to pick up some pots and keep your opponents on their toes at all times.
When playing at a very high level where everyone is playing a theoretically sound game of poker, check raising with balanced ranges becomes a necessity.
However, players in most poker games are not playing at such a high level, and you will want to check raise with more exploitative ranges based on your opponent’s tendencies.
Some players, especially in live games, tend to call way too often against bets and raises, making them the perfect candidates to check raise with a very value-heavy range of hands.
Others, however, will often fire out small c-bets but fold to raises, making them the perfect candidates to bluff off with a check raise with a wide range of hands.
The weaker and more predictable your opponents are, the more you will want to adjust your check raising ranges and move away from optimal plays toward more exploitative and player-dependent plays.
The check raise is one of the most powerful and commonly used plays among poker pros, and you should start incorporating it into your game if you want to move to the next level.
We have briefly elaborated on the types of boards and situations you may want to employ the check raise in, but the truth is there is a lot more studying to do.
If you want to become a true master of check raising, we recommend you keep studying the topic and try the play out in your games, starting with board textures that heavily favor such plays.
Just remember not to overdo check raising as a bluff if you are playing at lower limits, as players there will tend to be sticky and call bets more often than they theoretically should be.
Now that you've learned how to identify profitable check raising opportunities in poker, it's time to assess your overall poker prowess. Take the Pokercode Poker Skill Quiz 2024 to evaluate your knowledge and receive free access to coaching videos and additional resources.
Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, this quiz will help you identify areas for improvement and take your game to the next level.
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