♠️🗺️ Flop Play Friday: Read the Terrain

🗺️ Flop Play Friday: Read the Terrain

Everyone loves to ask about tough turn and river spots.
But most of the time, the real mistake happened on the flop.

Buckle up.
This is one of the most important concepts in poker — and we’re going deeper than usual.

Before you can dominate future streets, you need a solid foundation.

Flop play isn’t about fancy tricks — it’s about structure.
Think of the preflop and flop as the frame of a house. If it's shaky, no clever work on the turn or river is going to hold it up.

Start with the key questions:

• Who has the range advantage?

• Is the board dry or dynamic?

• How often do we want to bet?

From there, reorganize:

• Sort your hands into made hands and semi-bluffs

• Ensure you're betting and checking enough of both so that you’re not predictable

Too many players bet all their strong hands and leave their checking range weak and face-up.
And when it comes to bluffing? They don’t bluff enough.
They wait for the most obvious draws — open-enders and flush draws — and miss a ton of opportunities: hands with equity and big potential, like gutshots, overcards, and backdoor draws.

🔄 Let’s Revisit the Hand From ♠️🔨 Three-Bet Thursday: Turn Breakeven or Losing Hands Into Winners 

Dry flop, no obvious draws.

We have the range advantage, since our range is uncapped (we can have a lot of the best possible hands).

Since those two things are true, we can bet often.

But we have nine-high, maybe our worst possible hand in this spot. So what now?

This is where most players go narrative based, “I bet because I raised preflop.” That has nothing to do with our range or our hand, and certainly isn’t a plan, so we dig deeper.

We have plenty of strong made hands to bet with, such as AA, KK, AK. That’s half the battle. Now look for our best semi-bluff candidates:

• Hands like A♣️Q♣️: overcard, backdoor straight draw, backdoor flush draw

• Suited connectors like T9s, 98s of ♠️, ♣️, ♦️: backdoor straight + backdoor flush potential

These aren’t desperation bluffs — they’re thoughtful draws that:

• force your opponent to fold better hands (like Ace high or a small pocket pair)

• improve on a significant number of turns

• keep the pressure on our opponent

• can even end up beating our opponent’s good hands

Want a huge rule of thumb for learning to bluff well with mediocre draws?

➡️ Continue your semi-bluff when your draw improves on the turn.

Let’s apply that to this hand. What cards improve our draw on the turn in this hand?

• ♠️ Spades- 10 cards gives us a flush draw

• 🔟 Ten (non-spade)- 3 cards give us an open-ender

• 6️⃣ Six (non-spade)- 3 cards give us an open-ender

• 5️⃣ Five (non-spade)- 3 cards give us a gutshot

✅ That’s 19 cards that give us a draw to a very strong hand!

Here’s a visual representation of all possible turn cards, with our “outs” outlined.

🧠 Bonus question

What is the percent chance that one of those cards hits on the turn?

🧠 Bonus answer: 19 outs × 2% ≈ 38% chance one of them hits on the turn.

🔗 What Comes Next?

We’ve laid the foundation. We’ve bet the flop.
Our opponent called — and the turn is coming.

What happens when one of our draws comes in?
What if it doesn’t — but they check again?

These are the exact questions we’ll answer tomorrow on
🟩 Suited Connector Saturday, where we’ll take 9♠️8♠️ all the way to the river and build a complete, balanced line — whether we hit or miss.

This hand’s not over. We’re just getting started.

What is the one flop texture that always throws you off?
Hit reply — I might break it down in a future Flop Play Friday.

Stay sharp and curious,

— Mike

Want 1-on-1 help with your flop play?

Book a coaching session and we’ll develop a repeatable process that takes your game to a whole new level.
👇️ 

Schedule Coaching

📫 Already subscribed?
Share your referral link and earn rewards!

🔁 Someone forwarded you this issue?
Click here to subscribe and start getting strategy in your inbox.

🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 

The Early Edge Referral Challenge (Limited Time) 

Refer 5 new subscribers, and I’ll personally give you a 30-minute coaching session — no strings attached.

Track your referrals and grab your link here