We aren’t going to always flop a made hand in poker and we need to have some bluffs in our range, bad players will just choose any 2 random cards and just decide to go for the pot, but we need to construct smart bluffs where we will have equity on different run-outs, welcome to our guide to playing backdoor draws…
Bet with your weakest hands when they have a backdoor flush draw
This will help you win on turn cards that give your hand more equity in the shape of hitting one of your cards to make a flush. We can also win the pot when the turn card is a scare card that completes draws on the flop, so we will have a few good cards that we can represent helped our hand in turn situations.
Example:
Hero: 4♣ 5♣
Flop: 2♣ 7♠ 9♥
We can continue betting on cards like any ♣ that will give us a flush draw, but we can also bluff cards like any 3 or 6 that will give us an open ender or we could pile on the pressure when cards like 8 or 10 hit the turn, as these will be dangerous cards that improve our range often on this board.
Try to use hands that have good backdoors as check-raise bluffs
When looking to construct some check-raise bluffs in situations like blind defence, some of the best bluffs to have will be hands that can give us a good card on the turn to apply more pressure with a double-barrel.
Hands that have both backdoor flush and straight possibilities are amazing candidates for these moves.
Let’s look at an example:
Hero: J♠ T♠
Flop: K♥ 8♠ 2♦
Against an aggressive opponent with a wide C-Betting range we don’t really want to give up with our hand just yet, but calling is weak too. This hand will make a perfect check-raising hand, because we can look to win the pot here with just Jack high but our hand can hit some amazing turns like any Queen or 9 giving us an open-ended straight draw, other cards like any 7 or Ace giving us a gutshot straight draw, as well as our backdoor flush draw where any ♠ hitting the turn, will give us added incentive to try and win the pot or build a bigger pot for a potential bluff or value bet on the River.
The good thing about check-raising with these types of hands is that we don’t have much equity right now so for the times when our opponent 3-Bets the flop and we have to fold it’s not a big loss for us.
Try and pick good spots for this, we aren’t going to want to be check-raising the tightest player on the table and we are going to want to attack dry boards like this or alternatively a board that is much better for our range in the blinds than it will be for the raiser’s range. These are good spots to apply huge pressure.
Use Backdoors to continue in close spots
Let’s say we have a gutshot on the flop but our opponent leads out at us from the Big Blind, now normally we could look to fold in spots like this, however this time we have a backdoor flush draw too… we can use these margins or the extra equity to continue in certain spots, as now we aren’t just calling to hit our lightning in a bottle gut-shot, we could also hit one of our backdoor flush cards and take the pot away on the turn.
A key to winning these types of pots is to figure out which cards you consider bad for your opponents’ range and follow through on trying to win the pot when these cards hit the turn when you float. It’s a bad plan to only continue to try and make the nuts in pots like this as often we will just be donating in the long run if we never act on good bluff cards.
Utilising Backdoors in Blind Vs Blind Battles
We are going to want to have these backdoor hands as big dividing line in which hands we continue with when defending our big blind, opponents from the small blind are going to be playing a huge range, so unless we pick a wide range of hands that play well moving through the streets of action we will just be over-folding to C-bets on the flop.
So we need to call with some hands that have not hit, use hands that have one overcard to the board and a backdoor flush draw to widen our floating range against flop bets.
Example:
Hero: K♣ 4♣
Flop: 7♣ Q♥ 2♦
We can call on this board with our hand because we have showdown value firstly having King high, we are in position so we can look to bet our opponent off the pot on the turn or river regardless of if our hand improves, just by knowing if our opponent shuts down and gives up on the pot.
Once we start to call with these hands not just our draws and pairs when defending against C-bets from the Small blind, we will start to have the correct kind of frequency for not getting over-bluffed out of the pot.
Some Final Thoughts
These plays are important to work into your game from time to time, but we still need to be playing a solid style in general.
Don’t just go nuts with hands because they have backdoor equity, pick spots where your pair outs, as well as draws, might give you the winning hand and don’t look to play aggressively on boards where your opponent has the nut advantage.
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