The Bet-Fold
It almost sounds like a paradoxical poker play, but in many situations the bet/fold can be one of your strongest allies.
In order to understand this concept, try to think of the bet fold as a defensive move rather than an offensive weapon. It’s essentially the antithesis of a checkraise.
With that out of the way, let’s look at how the bet/fold move can help you in a theoretic sense. There are three main reasons to bet/fold, and all three of them lead to the same conclusion.
If you have a made poker online hand, say second pair top kicker, or top pair weak kicker, and you see a board that presents danger to your hand (i.e. a flush board or a straight board), and you simply check and get bet at, you’re losing the opportunity for pot control as well as losing any information you may gain about your poker online opponents hand. In this case a bet will show that you have some strength. And if you get bet back at, you end up not losing as much as you would if you checked, called, got a decent turn card, and ended up check calling again. A bet fold, saves you the second bet you’d have to wager if you called after a second checkback.
Concluding, that same conclusion that all three situations have in common is simply that the bet/fold gives you pot control while at the same time giving you initative. Thus, any response your opponent gives you is more clearly defined, and you can fold more comfortably when your aggression is met with more aggression rather than having to counter their aggression with passivity.
Oh the mind games we play.
