Giving and Taking Free Cards

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 04 February 2009 / Leave a Comment

The term 'free card' simply refers to any situation in poker where you either 'take' a free card by checking behind after an opponent checks, or by checking yourself, with the intention of 'giving' your opponent the chance to let their hand improve.

Perhaps the best example of giving free cards comes about when you flop quads in hold'em. Here your hand is so strong, and the board so bad for you (after all, there is not much your opponent can have when you hold a hand like quads - simply because they cannot have paired anything except one of the flop cards), that you nearly always want to check and try and let them catch up. They may well turn a gut shot straight or a flush draw, or any other hand/draw that encourages them to start putting money in the pot.

Having said this, giving free cards is actually one of the main mistakes weak players make, particularly with sets. A set is a very powerful hand, but one that can be outdrawn relatively easily. As you will be looking to invest as much money as possible with this sort of hand, it is important that you protect it. Giving free cards is really for when you flop absolute monster hands - not for every time you flop a big one. Start giving away lots of free cards with your strong hands and you will really only be trapping yourself.

In terms of taking free cards, you want to be looking for spots where you have a good draw but do not want the pot to get massive right away. A good example of this is when playing flush draws in position. Say you flop a flush draw, fire at the pot on the flop and are called. The turn is a blank and your opponent checks. It is often a mistake to fire another barrel here - your opponent may well check raise you and you are being given a shot at making your hand for free by checking behind.

Again, weak players usually give far too many free cards and it is important to try and take advantage of this at all costs. A player may appear aggressive, crafty and on the surface good, making advanced plays such as turn or river check raises and float bluffs, when in reality they will be a losing player because they give too many free cards and take too few.

If you can spot a leak like this in a player's game you will have a sizable advantage over them regardless of how good they are in other areas - as you will be making hands that you shouldn't when they let u draw for free, as well as forcing them to make errors, when you give them free cards to make a hand that has no chance of winning, and this very quickly adds up to a lot of profit.

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