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It is often the case that checking is a very good poker play with hands that other players may actually bet with. Quite often when you flop a decent but not great poker hand or you get dealt a strong pocket pair then it may not be possible to get three streets of action post flop. We will look at an example here, you open raise with A-A to $3.50 in a NL100 Texas Holdem game and the small blind decides to call you with J-J. The flop comes K-10-4 rainbow and your opponent checks.

You decide to bet $5.50 into the $8 pot and your opponent calls. If they had a strong hand like K-K or 10-10 then they would likely have three bet pre-flop (which we know is true because they called with jacks) so it is unlikely that they flopped a set. They may have something mediocre that they don’t want to be blown away with to a simple continuation bet.

Remember that all they have to go on is your pre-flop raise and flop continuation bet so they cannot fold their jacks just yet. In fact a clear case can be made for check-raising here as at least a check-raise ends the hand early and that is what the jacks want ideally. So a check-call by them indicates their inclination to not want to get blown off of a hand that may be the best at this stage.

But pocket jacks are not a hand that can stand three streets of action and unless they hit a jack on the turn or a queen arrives to give them a straight draw then they may fold to another bet in the knowledge that they may have to face an even bigger bet on the river. So when the turn comes and is the 2c and they check then checking back the aces is the best way to extract value.

This is because our turn check looks weak and a river bet looks like a bluffing attempt. Also the player with the jacks now knows their entire potential outlay unlike on the turn where the size of the action on the river would be unknown. So their call on the flop was because they didn’t want to be bullied and their call on the end was basically for the same reason. There was $19 in the pot on the river and the river card was the 5d and they checked looking to pick off a bluff and we bet $12 which they call and we win a $43 pot.

In these instances then the check on the turn controls the pot size but also gets value on the river when the jacks called when they would not have called on all three post flop streets. A downside to this is that poker players can hit their outs and take the pot away from you but the effect of this is more than offset by you being able to control the pot size and also to extract more value on the river.