How to Check-Raise Like a Pro

Incorporating an aggressive check-raising strategy into your game will make you much tougher to play against (and more profitable)!

Many poker players c-bet too many hands in spots where they should be checking. The counter strategy you can use to exploit players like this is simple: check-raise aggressively.

If they do indeed c-bet too often, they will be forced to fold a large portion of their range versus your check-raise.

But it’s crucial you check-raise in the right spots and with the right hands. This article will go over three tips to consider when deciding to check-raise.

(Note: All of the preflop charts below were taken directly from the Upswing Lab training course, which includes 439 total preflop charts covering almost every possible situation. With over 5,000 members, the Lab is Upswing’s most popular course, and it teaches a consistent strategy that enables anyone to take their game to the next level. Learn more now!)

Tip #1: Check-raise more often when you have way more super strong hands than your opponent

Not all boards are created equal.

There are some boards where you should frequently check-raise, and others where you rarely or never should.

There are two questions you should ask yourself as soon as you see the flop:

1. How does this board interact with each of our ranges?
2. Who has a higher concentration of super strong (two pair or better) hands?

Having a higher concentration of super strong hands is known as having a nut advantage.

Let’s consider an example of a 9-handed cash game where a player raises UTG and the big blind calls. (These preflop ranges will be different in tournaments, but the check-raising concepts remain the same.)

Here is the raising range for UTG (Red: Raise, Pink: Optional Raise).

And here is the range for the big blind when facing an UTG open (Red: Raise, Orange: Raise or Call, Green: Call, Light Green: Call or Fold).

In this situation, each player has a very different range. The player in UTG has a more narrow range that consists of mostly premium hands and suited broadways, while the player in the big blind has a wide range that consists of middling hands like offsuit broadways, suited connectors, and small pocket pairs.

Because of this, the player in the big blind should almost never check-raise on high flops like A-K-9 and A-Q-7. As the preflop raiser, the UTG player has a significant advantage on these types of flops because they are the only player with the strongest possible hands (AA, KK, QQ, AK) in their range.

However, the big blind can check-raise aggressively on lower boards, especially those that are connected, like 9-7-6 and 7-6-5. This is because these boards smack the low and middling cards that only the big blind can have given the preflop action.

Tip #2: Check-raise more frequently against smaller c-bet sizes

The size of your opponent’s c-bet size significantly impacts how often you should check-raise.

Let’s consider two possible c-betting strategies an opponent can have:

• Player A c-bets frequently for a small size (33% pot).
• Player B c-bets a middling frequency for a bigger size (66% pot).

You should, generally speaking, be much more likely to check-raise against Player A than Player B. There are a couple of main reasons for this.

The wider your opponent’s betting range is, the more hands you can justify raising for value. Since you’re raising with more value hands, you get to raise with more bluffs as well (more on this in a moment).

A secondary reason is to reduce the stack-to-pot ratio with your strong hands so you can try to win your opponent’s whole stack by the river. If you only call the small bet on the flop, it’s going to be very difficult to extract max value.

Tip #3: Check-raise with a balanced range that includes both value hands and semi-bluffs

Besides your strong hands, you should also check-raise with semi-bluffs that can improve to strong hands on later streets. The frequency at which you semi-bluff should vary based on how many strong hands you have in your range.

For example, let’s say the cutoff raises to 2.5x, and you call in the big blind.

Here is your range for calling in the big blind when facing an open from the cutoff (Red = Raise, Orange = Raise or Call, Green = Call, Light Green = Call or Fold).

The flop comes , and you check to your opponent, who bets 2 big blinds into the pot of 5.5 big blinds.

First, you should choose which hands you want to raise for value. In this spot, your strongest hands are 75s, 88, 66, 44, 86s, and 64s. A reasonable approach would be to check-raise with most of these hands, but slow-play with a handful of them to protect your calling range.

You should then look to balance out those strong hands with bluffs that have equity to improve. On this flop, reasonable bluffing options include:

• Open-ended straight draws (97s and 53s)
• Gutshot straight draws that can make the nuts (T9s, T7s)
• Gutshot straight draws that also have a backdoor flush draw (, etc.)

Remember that every board is different, so it’s helpful to always go through the same thought process of first figuring out your value raises first, followed by your bluff-raises.

Conclusion

Check-raising in poker can be intimidating because it drastically increases the amount of money that goes into a pot. But if you want to be a long-term winner in poker, you can’t be afraid of playing big pots.

Learning how to successfully implement an aggressive check-raising strategy can drastically improve your bottom line.

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