How to improve my post flop play in big blind?

You can just fold **** on the flop you know

There are a lot of things that matter here.

First of all, if you are not HU then c/r 2 pair+ can be very significant.

Assuming this conversation is about being HU, I would highly recommend c/r with sets and 2 pairs (though not all the time). There is no guarantee that Villain will be betting the turn when you have smashed the flop. If there are not many draws out there like on a rainbow flop, then just calling has advantages because it can look like middle or bottom pair. When there are draws out there then your c/r can look like you have a draw with overcards.

When I flop Top Pair in the BB I don't often c/r. If the top pair card is A/K/Q then there are not a lot of cards that will hit that will cause us not to have Top Pair. It is also significant if we have like KJ/QJ on a Jxx flop because an overcard could give us 2 pair. The other thing is that while we block top pairs it doesn't mean Villain can't have a top pair with a better kicker. If we c/r Villain will often fold unless they have us beat.

I also think that c/r bluffing on boards that hit our range is better than c/r bluffing on boards that smash Villain's range.

Thanks Mr Rick 😀

Yeah I was referring HU, should have made it clearer. Hmm the points you noted make sense, but in the first instance wouldn't your calling range be much weaker now?

I also feel like I struggle with these points, but there's a couple of things I think about:

1 - most hands from the BB vs. a c-bet you aren't supposed to take lines with 100% of the time. You shouldn't always check-raise a good top pair, for example. Since you're worried about getting barreled off too much, you can mix in some calls with your check-raise hands, or delay and check-raise the turn. (Strong flush draws and open-ended straight draws, especially ones with some other equity like overcards, should be mostly calling flops anyway-- unless you're ready to get it in. The bluff check-raises should be hands like gutshots and double backdoors, which have some equity that you can potentially barrel the turn if you improve.) Or, you can just start calling down lighter.

2 - You pretty much always should check-raise middle and bottom set and bottom two pair. Those are the hands where you unblock top pair and want to start building a pot against those hands.

3 - as Mr Rick said, ranges matter. Check-raising, say, bottom pair and an overcard is better with, like, 94 on an 864 flop than A4 on a KQ4 flop. But they also matter with your choices of c/r hands and how the specific board either gives you more backdoor outs or hits villain. Mr Rick's example of just calling KJ/QJ on Jxx is a good one; it also holds for, say, bottom pair with an ace kicker on a board where villain may not have many top pairs but can turn an ace for a strong top pair. (I dunno, A4 on T74? AK/AQ/AJ might c-bet and then you can win a big pot if you hit an ace.)

So, all in all, I'd say-- don't do anything with any hand 100% of the time; consider how the ranges interact with the board; adjust your c/r ranges and be more prepared to call down. I think.

Thanks Nath, I think you are right, I need to think about what I am doing in relation to the flop texture and how the ranges interact more to make adjustments. Do you use solvers to figure out the exact spots or just general intuition?

Sometimes I'll see what the solver would do if I found a particular spot I played tricky, but mostly I use it to look for overall patterns-- how to play certain hands on certain boards, or vs. certain ranges (like, facing a UTG open in the BB vs. facing a CO open), which hands the solver chooses for its bluffs, how it sizes certain hands, things like that-- and then trying to understand the why behind them.

In general we make more when we are the aggressor as long as our bluffs are balanced. So the more hands we c/r with the better we do. However, there are times I don't c/r with sets. For example on rainbow flops with few draws I will sometimes just call because bluffs will fold to our raise. But against maniac Villains I have no problem calling if they are going to be 100% betting the turn.

In terms of calling, we are OOP and its going to be a battle. I prefer to call with hands that I don't really care as much if Villain is betting the turn or not.

Big blind play is naturally difficult because we naturally have a wide range when we defend. But a lot of the basic principles apply. You need to understand your range, your opponents' range, and how your opponent should be playing based on board texture.

Here are three examples, 60 BB effective, HJ vs. BB in a single-raised pot.

In this first example - Q93 rainbow, facing a 20% pot bet, you can see we're raising 17% of the time. A lot of the raise feel pretty counterintuitive - we raise a lot of 3x here as bluffs. We raise Qx as weak as Q7. We also have to find some wrap around type bluffs as well, like J2dd and 54dd. But this raising is a by-product of our villain c-betting small with what's going to be a very wide range, so we get to attack that range with a lot of check raises.

In the second example - AKT rainbow, facing a 83% pot bet (which is definitely a good size), you can now see we almost never raise and call less than 30% of the time. And that makes a lot of sense, because this hand smashes the HJ's opening range, and while we do have some good hands, we also have a lot of bad hands as well. The few raises we do have are very value heavy, like our best top pair and two pair hands, but even those hands don't raise all that often. So in spots like this you probably don't lose a lot of value by just either calling or folding.

Now in this final example, instead of checking, we actually lead about 1/3 of the time. And the reason for this is simple - we have more good hands (one pair or better) on this board than our opponent. Unlike most spots out of the big blind, the equities of each range are pretty much even. And when that happens, we actually get to bet some of the time. This is partially because we have those good hands, but also because we a lot of natural bluffs. (you can see that we have lots of 5x that we can use to balance out our value bets)

The point I'm making is this - big blind defense is no different than a lot of other spots you'll encounter in poker. The same principles - range construction, bet size, stack depth, etc. - still apply. You're simply coming at it from out of position with a wider range than you normally would have in other positions.