The explosion of no-limit hold’em cash games in the past few years is something like we’ve never seen in the history of poker. There has been more coverage of poker strategy and poker tournaments since 2003 than the 100 years before 2003 combined. Because of this high exposure of poker strategy, it takes more than knowing just the basics of no-limit hold’em to succeed in today’s games except at the lowest of stakes. Learning key concepts of no-limit hold’em strategy like playing for the gap cards will allow you to gain an edge over players who haven’t put forth the effort to advance their game past the basics. Here we’re going to take a look at gap cards, and show you how to take advantage of them.
Suppose you play a starting hand that has a one-card gap in it, like King-Jack off suit or Ten-Eight suited. The card that comes in the middle of your two starting hole cards is what we’re going to call a gap card. If you have a starting hand with a gap, and your gap card comes on the flop, that alone is almost always going to be sufficient reason to continue your aggression with a continuation bet in heads-up pots, and will often be a good enough reason to continue pushing the chips in when you have a multi-way pot as well. There are a few reasons the gap card is so important.
If you think about the gap card from a bluffing stand-point, when you have a possible gap card, that also means that the gap card will be present in many of your other starting hands. For example, if you have King-Jack, that almost always means that a lot of your possible range of holdings includes a Queen. In this case that’s definitely true, since if you have King-Jack, you could also have hands like Ace-Queen, King-Queen, Queen-Jack, and so on. Therefore, when your gap card comes on the flop and you follow up with betting and raising on the flop, your opponents will have to be worried that you made a pair (especially if it’s the highest card on the flop), and won’t be able to continue without a strong holding. This allows you to make many profitable bluffs.
Now, from the point of view of having draws, the gap card has to come on the flop for you to have an open-ended straight draw, and the presence of the gap card guarantees that you have at least a good runner straight draw that you can often continuation bet and double barrel the turn with. If you have Queen-Ten on a flop of Jack-Seven-Four rainbow, then any King or Nine on the turn will improve you to having at least 8 outs, many of which are two the nuts. These outs allow you to make tons of profitable semi-bluffs, which add to your bottom line.
Noticing the gap card is important whenever you have starting hands that aren’t perfectly connected in no-limit hold’em. If you hit your gap card, that’s often enough reason to go ahead and continue being aggressive in the hand. If you are interested in learning more about this game of poker you can click here https://koinqq.com/.
