One of the most common mistakes players make is automatically betting all their draws on the turn. When you’re playing a low SPR (Stack-to-Pot Ratio) scenario, like tournaments and even 100BB cash-games, betting a big draw can sometimes hurt you more than help. Even with a hand as strong as the nut flush draw, you don’t always have to bet. In fact, checking back will often be the better play.
Why More Isn’t Always Better
The impulse to bet big draws is understandable—you have good equity, so why not apply pressure? The problem is that at a low SPR you’ll often face counter-aggression in the form of a check-raise and be forced to toss all that good equity into the muck along with your hand.
You know the feeling: barreling an ace-high flush draw only to have your opponent jam all their chips into the middle. Now you’re left with two options: torch your potential nuts equity by folding your hand, or torch your long-term equity by making a mathematically unapproved call.
Fortunately, instead of falling into the overcommitment trap, we can sometimes choose to check back the turn and realize our equity for free.
The Power of Checking Back
By checking back on the turn, you take control of the pot and avoid forcing yourself into a bet/fold or bet/call scenario. Instead, you get to realize your equity for free and, when you hit, you’ll get to extract value on the river not just from value hands that were never going to fold, but also from disbelievers with marginal holdings who expect you to have continued betting your draw on the turn.
Checking Back In Action
Imagine you open AJ of spades from the cutoff and continuation-bet the 952 two-spade flop against the big blind caller. The turn brings an offsuit queen and your opponent checks again. You have the nut flush draw and an overcard to the board with the ace. In this situation, many players will bet 100% of the time.
However, in using a poker solver to calculate the optimal approach, we find out that AJ of spades checks back this turn 80% OF THE TIME! This counter-intuitive play highlights that in low SPR scenarios, where protection matters less and realizing equity becomes more important, there is still room for measured passivity in big-draw scenarios.
But what if I miss?
This is the big concern people have when thinking of checking back. But is it really something to fear?
First, with a hand like AJ, we do have showdown value against all other draws, not all of which will bluff. Secondly, let’s not forget that we don’t actually need a hand to win a pot in poker. If our opponent checks again on the river, or bets small, neither of which most players do with a strong hand when taking this line, we can choose to turn our ace-high into a bluff and raise. And that’s exactly what the solver chooses to do, meeting a small bet from our opponent on 7 of clubs brick river with a raise 25% of the time. Even facing an overbet on a king river, the solver still raises the AJ air 10% of the time, showing that there’s many different ways to win with a busted flush draw.
So, the next time you find yourself in a low SPR situation with a big draw, take a deep breath before automatically reaching for chips and remind yourself that it’s not a crime to sometimes check-back the turn.
