As I mentioned previously, my cbet success rate is around 50%. But that means that I get called or raised around 50% of the time as well. How should you proceed when this happens?
What if You Get Raised?
Let’s start with what to do when you get raised.
When I get raised on the flop I am going to fold the majority of the time, especially when I am OOP.
Being OOP just gives us so many terrible options on later streets so I am going to be more inclined to fold when I am in this spot. But this really isn’t even so much about position. It is about them usually having a really strong range when they raise my cbet. If there is one thing that can be said about nearly all micro players it is that they are very passive on average. That really says it all.
This isn’t to say that you will never be bluff raised at any point at these limits. What I am saying is that it will occur less frequently at these stakes than at any other limit. So in general you should give their aggression quite a bit of credit.
Every situation is different though and I definitely don’t fold 100% of the time that my cbet gets raised. So I am going to go through a bunch of examples to hopefully help you understand how I approach some common spots. Let’s start out with some easy ones. And I will be assuming that the raise size is a standard amount (3x or more). I will get to mini-raises in a bit.
Example:
In LP you have,
You raise and get a caller in the SB. The flop comes,
You cbet and he check/raises.
Regardless of the player type in the above hand I am going to fold here. Our hand has very little actual value. We don’t even have any backdoor draws. The only real reliable outs that we figure to have here are with an ace. And there are only three of them left in the deck.
As I said before, most of the time when you get raised by someone at the micros they are representing a pretty strong range. And I think that when you get check/raised it is probably an even stronger one than normal as this play requires a little more forethought and planning.
So I tend to give this raise quite a bit of credit. Perhaps a hand as strong as top pair or better. From time to time they will have a flush or straight draw here but probably not nearly as much as you might think. Remember, these players are passive. Passive players are much more likely to just call with their draws than raise.
So we should just fold here and move on regardless of whether we are IP or OOP. Getting fancy here and trying to outplay them at the micros is a very big mistake.
Example:
In LP you have,
You raise and get a caller in the BB. The flop comes,
You cbet and he check/raises.
This spot is even easier than the last. We have absolutely no equity here and should just fold 100% of the time versus any player type without giving it much thought. Again, do not ever try to get fancy at the micros in spots like this. Just fold.
Example:
In MP you have,
You raise and get a caller in LP. The flop comes,
You cbet and he raises.
This spot is a lot closer than the previous two. Firstly, this would be one of those spots where a check/call instead of a cbet would be perfectly fine as well especially if you are up against one of the aggressive player types. We have a decent hand that cannot stand a raise. Checking with the intention of betting the turn and some safe river cards is a good line and probably the one that I would take here against most players.
However let’s discuss this hand as played. Once our cbet gets raised here it is completely fine to fold a hand even as strong as this OOP. Especially against the more passive player types who don’t usually raise many flops to begin with. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, yes our hand is TPTK, which is a very strong hand, but we have to consider future streets here and what cards may come and what can happen. With a board this wet and coordinated, literally half of the cards in the deck that come on the turn are going to be scary for us. And the same thing goes for the river.
To make matters worse, we are OOP and have no clue what our opponent is going to do. Will he barrel all the remaining streets? Will he give up on the turn but bomb the river when the flush comes in? What do we do then? This leaves us in all sorts of terrible spots with difficult decisions. And at the micros especially I would advocate that you try to keep all of your decisions as simple as possible.
This hand plays a little bit different if you are IP. But it is still probably a spot where I am going to be finding the fold button more often than not against most player types. Always remember this, with a board this wet and coordinated, even if you do get “bluffed” here, it is often by a hand that has a huge draw with something like 40% equity. Don’t worry about it. Keep your decisions simple and move on.
Example:
In EP you have,
You raise and get a caller in MP. The flop comes,
You cbet and he raises.
This spot is close like the last one. We have a pretty strong but vulnerable hand. This is another one of those situations where instead of cbetting I might check/call against one of the more aggressive player types. And I would cbet and fold to a raise versus one of the passive player types.
As played however we should fold here most of the time. This is another situation where position is a big factor. Always remember that calling raises OOP is just like throwing money away. It is much harder to win a pot when OOP and you will find yourself in all sorts of ugly spots with a bloated pot.
This hand is a little bit different than the last one however. We do have two outs to the virtual nuts here with a T. And there don’t seem to be as many made hands that can beat us right now. Also there are a couple hands such as,
that our opponent might think that he is raising for value with. For these reasons I would call the raise on the flop if I was IP. But I would fold OOP.
Both of these spots are close however. It is not by any means a huge mistake to call the flop in either of them. You will encounter these situations many times throughout your poker career. It is important not to get too bogged down on them. When two or more different actions yield a result for us that is pretty close EV-wise, it isn’t going to make that much of a difference in the long run which one we decide upon.
The main reason why I would rather fold in these two spots however is because it leads us down the road to bigger mistakes on future streets that really do matter a lot. Remember that it is better to make cut and dried decisions early on in a hand than to get roped into a mess.
