vs turn check-raise

How to Check-Raise with Short Stacks Like an MTT Boss

Check-raising is an indispensable play in tournaments.

Since average stack sizes are shallow, a check-raise will typically represent a large portion of your remaining chips. This allows you to put a lot of pressure on your opponent(s), because in order to play back they will probably have to go all-in and put their tournament life at risk.

However, many otherwise decent players choose bad spots to check-raise, and/or the wrong hands to do it with. To help you avoid such mistakes, Iโ€™ve put together this comprehensive guide for check-raising with a shallow stack.

Check-raising from the big blind

The most common check-raise scenario on the flop arises when the player in the big blind faces a c-bet after defending pre-flop. There are a couple things to note about this spot:

  1. The big blindโ€™s range is usually much wider than the opener’s as a result of getting great pot odds to call pre-flop. Consequently, the big blind is more likely to have taken the flop holding a junk hand.
  2. The big blind will usually be at a range disadvantage. On some boards the big blind will have a range advantage, e.g., when the flop comes 7-5-3 versus a middle position raise. But on most boards the opener will have the stronger overall range.

Recognizing how your range interacts with the board is a crucial aspect of check-raising successfully. You don’t always need a range advantage to check-raise, but itโ€™s usually best to avoid check-raising when at a large disadvantageโ€”for example, when the flop comes A-A-J versus an early position raise.

When flatting from the blinds, the best boards to check-raise are low straightening boards, such as 7-5-3 or 9-7-5. High-card heavy boards and total brick boards favor your opponentโ€™s range, and are therefore not boards to check-raise.

It’s also important to understand the basics of check-raising math. A good principle to memorize is that, assuming standard bet sizings, a check-raise should be roughly equal to the amount of chips in the pot (not to be confused with a pot-sized raise).

For example, if the pot on the flop is 1,000 and your opponent bets 400, a standard check-raise would be about 1,400 total. This is a handy principle because it makes figuring out whether a check-raise is profitable or not very easy:

1,400 / (1,400+1,400) = 0.5 = a check-raise needs to work 50% of the time to break even.

You need not always follow this principleโ€”and sometimes you shouldnโ€™t!โ€”but itโ€™s helpful to remember that a check-raise of this size needs to work roughly half the time to be profitable (even if you check-fold every turn).

If 50% sounds like a small number, that’s because it is. And in today’s games, where a typical c-bet size might be just 25% of the pot (making the pots smaller, and thus the amount we need to risk with a check-raise even smaller), you can get away with check-raising often. Even if you check-raise like a maniac, it’s not easy for your opponents to play back enough to keep it from being profitable.

So, should you become a lean, mean, check-raising-every-hand machine? Not so fast.

Don’t forget that more often than not you will be at a range disadvantage. As a result, it often times doesnโ€™t make sense to raise with any hands on the flop against good players.

Against weak players, however, check-raising with a wide range — even on disadvantageous boards — can work well as an exploitative adjustment.

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6 questions to ask yourself before exploitatively check-raising

When you face an opponent who c-bets too wide, you can punish him with an aggressive check-raising strategy. But before you decide to bluff check-raise, you should ask yourself these 6 questions:

1. Does your opponent c-bet too much?

HUDs tell just half of the story; a c-bet percentage of around 60 percent is good, but anything above 80 is exploitable.

However, hand samples often get skewed, and so rather than relying only on c-bet percentage it’s important to note at showdown what hands your opponents typically c-bet with. When you see a player c-bet Aโ™ฃ Kโ™ฃ on a board of 9โ™ฅ 8โ™ฅ 7โ™ฆ, for example, then you’ve found a player to punish with wide check-raises.

2. What are the stack sizes?

If you’re very shallow, you shouldn’t check-raise and commit half of your stack with air. The optimal stack size leaves low-but-not-too-low stack-to-pot ratios (SPRs) for turnsโ€”around 25โ€“30 big blinds effective.

3. Whose range does the board hit better?

Even against an opponent who c-bets too much you still need to be wary of boards on which you canโ€™t have many strong hands.

For example, on a board of 2-2-5 neither you nor your opponent is likely to have trip deuces. Meanwhile, your opponent can have all the high over-pairs and you can have none of them. So, a check-raise would be risky.

4. What’s your actual hand, and where is it in your range?

Generally, you should check-raise only hands that have some kind of equity, backdoor draws, or blockers, as opposed to check-raising total air.

5. Is there another way to play the hand that would make more sense?

Check-raising isn’t the only way to play back at a wide c-betting strategy. For example, it might be more effective to check-call with the intention of taking a stab on the river.

6. How does your opponent generally react to check-raises?

Some very active opponents might frequently 3-bet shove over your check-raises with gutshots and random high card combinations. It would be burning money to check-raise bluff against this kind of opponent.

You should now have a good idea about how and when to exploit players who c-bet too much. So, let’s move on to a more interesting and tricky topic: check-raising against good players.

How to check-raise against strong opponents

Let’s run through some check-raising example hands for each stack depth.

In all of these hands, we will assume that our opponents are c-betting a typical amount, and that they are neither super aggressive nor super nitty, unless stated otherwise.

Check-raising with a shove-or-fold stack (15BB or less)

After defending from the big blind with a 15BB stack, we will typically have just two pot-sized bets behind on the flop. When our opponent c-bets, we should either fold or shove.

But how wide should we check-shove? The answer might surprise you: we should shove very wide. For example:

Tournament. 14BB Effective Stacks

Hero is dealt Xx Xx in the big blind
Villain (MP) raises to 2BB. 4 folds. Hero defends.

Flop (6BB) Kโ™ฃ 9โ™  2โ™ฆ
Hero checks. Villain bets 3BB. Hero…?

We estimate that Villain is opening 20% of all hands from middle position. There’s 6BB in the pot and we have 12BB behind. Villain c-bets 3BB. Let’s figure out how we should play this spot with the following two hands: 9โ™ฃ 8โ™ฃ and Qโ™ฆ Jโ™ฅ.

First, we should figure out, roughly, how much equity our hand has against our opponent’s bet-call range. In this example, I gave villain a bet-calling range of KT+ (assuming hands like QQ and 9x check back flop). Here’s how Qโ™ฆ Jโ™ฅ stacks up against that range:

check raise shove QJo equity

16% is actually a pretty terrible scenario for our QJo. 9โ™ฃ 8โ™ฃ isn’t doing much better with 20.5%.ย 

Now, we just need a fold equity calculator to figure out how often a shove must work for it to be profitable. Note that I used Q-Jo in this example:

ย  check-raising fold equity calculator

Even if we have just 16% equity when called, Villain only needs to fold 44% of the time for a check-shove to be profitable (with 9-8s, it’s 39%).

How often will Villain fold? While we cannot know exactly, it’s easy to estimate.

The bet-call range we gave Villain amounts to 63 combinations, or 5.4% of all hands. We need him to fold less than half the time here, and it isn’t hard to find enough combos from his remaining 14.6% of hands that he opened to justify the QJo shove

Now, this spot is likely profitable, but not all that great for usโ€”usually weโ€™ll find spots to check-raise that are more enticing, where an opponent might bet/fold a bottom pair type hand or a weak draw.

Here’s a good rule of thumb with a shallow stack (<15BB): a check-shove is rarely bad if you have more than 25% equity against your opponentโ€™s calling range. I think you can skip most borderline cases to decrease variance, but 25% is more than enough equity so as long as your opponent has enough chips to bet-fold.

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Check-raising with a middle stack (~20โ€“30BB)

With middle stack sizes, we will have between three and four pot-sized bets behind on the flop. This makes things more interesting because we no longer have to shove or fold — we can check-raise-fold or check-call.

This is also a stack size players tend to make a lot of mistakes with, usually because they didn’t plan ahead.

Tournament. 25BB Effective Stacks.

Hero is dealt Jโ™ฆ 9โ™ฆ in the big blind
Villain (UTG1) raises to 2BB. 6 folds. Hero defends.

Flop (6BB) Aโ™ฆ 8โ™ฅ 6โ™ฆ
Hero checks. Villain bets 2BB. Hero check-raises to 6BB.

Let’s assume the villain is opening around 15% from UTG+1.

This flop is a slam-dunk check-call with all flush draws, except maybe combo draws (9โ™ฆ 7โ™ฆ, 7โ™ฆ 5โ™ฆ, etc). This is for two reasons:

  1. Villain has a range advantage on this board, and thus we have very few made hands that want to check-raise
  2. Both check-raise-calling and check-raise-folding make no sense with a flush draw at these stack sizes (we’ll either get it in behind or have to fold without seeing a turn)

Here’s what PIOsolver thinks:

check-raising piosolver calculation

Blue means fold, green means call, red means check-raise

The only made hands we can check-raise are 86s, 66, A6, and A8. If we check-raised every draw, we’d be terribly unbalanced towards draws, which Villain could exploit by going all-in very often.

The main takeaway, here, is this: If stack sizes allow your opponent to comfortably 3-bet shove over a check-raise, make sure your hand satisfies one of the following criteria before check-raising:

1. Your hand can comfortably call a shove (a made hand or strong draw)

With these stacks top pair is good enough to check-raise, but you shouldn’t always check-raise with it because your check-calling range then becomes very weak, and you’ll be easy to play against.

A good way to split your ranges would be to check-raise top pairs with the best kickers, and check-call the rest.

2. Your hand can comfortably fold after check-raising (hands with low equity, like weak draws and backdoor draws)

You’ll be folding some equity, but only around 15โ€“20%, which isnโ€™t too painful against your opponent’s shoving range.

3. Your hand might be ahead now, but is vulnerable on later streets

Check-raising hands vulnerable hands like bottom pair or a weak pocket pair makes sense some percentage of the time. For example, here’s how PIOSolver thinks you should play vs a c-bet on K-8-3 after defending the BB versus an early position raise:

check-raising piosolver calculation 2

Note that hands like A3, 44 and Q3s are check-raised at varying frequencies. This makes sense considering the great pot odds behind check-raising, and how much these hands benefit from protection.

To sum up: When you have 20โ€“30BB, check-raise hands you’re comfortable folding or going all-in with, and be careful not to check-raise-fold with too much equity.

Check-raising with relatively deep stacks (30BB+)

With this deeper stack size we have around six pot-sized bets behind, which gives us room to check-raise the flop, bet the turn, and bet the river. But this stack depth also means more tricky situations, on the turn particularly.

Facing a check-raise on the flop is no longer a commit-or-fold situation for our opponents. Floating a check-raise in-position, for instance, isnโ€™t out of the question with over 30BBs. From our perspective, then, itโ€™s crucial to determine the playability of our hand on the turn.

Here’s a pop quiz for you:

Tournament. 35BB Effective Stacks.

Hero is dealt Xx Xx in the big blind
CO raises to 2BB (30% range). 2 folds. Hero defends.

Flop (6BB) Kโ™ฆ 7โ™  3โ™ฃ

Which hand would you rather check-raise: Aโ™ฅ Tโ™ฅ or 9โ™  8โ™ ? Click below when you’re ready for the answer.

We also need to be more careful with value hands. Weโ€™re too deep to stack off with every top pair, but unless we’re facing a nitty UTG opener, we should still check-raise top pair with the best kickers, and anything better.

The deeper we are, the fewer top pairs we want to check-raise. But at typical MTT stack depths, going broke with the top of your value range is rarely going to be a mistake, especially from a theoretical perspective.

Remember that we’re usually at a pretty big disadvantage being out of position with a relatively weak range. We therefore shouldn’t be too ambitious with our check-raises, and risk our opponent playing back at us — value hands and a few bluffs with solid playability will be enough.

Donk-leading on the turn

I want to end this article by talking about an alternative to check-raising: check-calling the flop and then leading the turnโ€”a play I find underrated at slightly deeper stack depths (~25BB or higher to start the hand). For example:

Tournament. 35BB Effective Stacks.

Hero is dealt Xx Xx in the big blind
Villain (straightforward reg in MP) raises to 2BB. 4 folds. Hero defends.

Flop (6BB) Kโ™ฅ Tโ™  3โ™ฅ
Hero checks. Villain bets 3BB. Hero calls.

Turn (12BB) Tโ™ฃ
Hero leads.

Leading turn has a few advantages:

  • It’s more convincing than a check-raise on the flop

You called the flop to see a turn, which suggests that you have some kind of hand, while check-raising the flop suggests you might be bluffing.

  • This turn strongly favors your range

Your opponent would likely check back most tens on the flop, whereas your flop check-calling range is full of them.

  • Villain is less likely to continue with hands like A-Q, A-J, Q-J, etc…

…because all those draws are now very weak with just one card to come, and might already be drawing dead.

As for made hands, I wouldnโ€™t expect Villain to fold a king, but I’m optimistic about anything worse. Plus, when Villain does have a king, we’ll likely stack them when we have trip tens!

That’s all for today! Thanks for reading.

If you want to see more about check-raising strategy, particularly with deep stacks, check out this article by Ryan Fee.

Note:ย Want to crush your competition like a Super High Roller?ย Get your access to a Super High Rollerโ€™s strategy for winning tournamentsย when you join Nick Petrangeloโ€™s expert-level course.ย Learn more now!
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About the Author
Miikka Anttonen

Miikka Anttonen

Miikka Anttonen is poker professional from Finland with $2.4 million in career earnings and a world championship title under his belt. His autobiography is Once A Gambler. Find out more at https://www.onceagambler.com/

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