We hate them.  If you don’t know what they are yet, consider yourself lucky.  A scare card is a card that hits on the flop, turn, or river that could potentially wreck your hand.

An example of a scare card is when you raise KK preflop and the board brings an Ace.  Another scare card is when you flop three 8s on a 7h8h2d board and the turn brings a third card of the same suit.  That third heart could have given a drawing opponent a flush.  Flushes beat sets so we are scared.

Finally, to add that little red cherry on top of it all, scare cards can scare your opponents if they don’t have the draw that just hit.  You were hoping to get that three-of-a-kind to win you a big pot but the flush card landed and killed all the action.  It’s a common occurrence and I’m going to attempt to help you out a little.

My first advice for dealing with scare cards is to be brave.  You can be scared on the inside, but don’t show it on the outside.  Brave poker players will make a lot more money than scared poker players in this situation.

Playing From Out of Position

First of all, if you play scared you’re not going to know where you’re at.  If you check every single time a scare card hits, you’re just opening the door for opponents to walk in and steal your pot.  You will have no idea if they are bluffing because you checked or because they actually benefited from the scare card. Now I'm not saying you should never check, I'm just saying there are benefits to betting that should make you want to bet on scare cards more often than check.

If you place a bet, the opponent will have a harder time making a big raise as a bluff.  This will make your hand easier to play.  Making bets just to see where you’re at isn’t the way to win at no-limit, but this isn’t the only reason I advocate a bet.

The second reason is to keep you mysterious.  You want your opponents to always wonder what you have.  Make your opponents fear you and scratch their heads with puzzlement as they try to figure you out.

What I am getting at is how you play your other hands.  A part of properly dealing with scare cards is playing your other hands correctly.  More specifically, this means mixing up your play with drawing hands.  If you are sometimes betting your flush draws the same way that you bet your made hands, it will be hard to tell which type of hand you actually have.  So when the scare card does come, the opponents don’t know for sure if it helps you or hurts you.

Don’t go overboard with this and just slam bluff after bluff into the faces of hardcore calling stations.  Instead go for the occasional semi-bluff just often enough to make your opponents wonder if you are protecting a made hand or if you are semi-bluffing a flush draw for example.

There is a third thing I recommend you do to help yourself out in this situation.  I recommend you do this way less often than the others and only against smart opponents, but it’s pretty important that you do, especially as you move up in stakes.  If you are only betting completed semi-bluffs and other strong hands, your smart opponents will catch on.  This means that you must occasionally fire 2nd barrel bluffs on the turn into scare cards.

Now you can bet again on scare cards and hope for some loose action.  If the opponent has seen you bet scare cards before, you can bet again and feel confident that your bet is not placing you into only-get-called-by-better-hands territory.  In other words, you’re going to get more calls from weaker hands.

If you are playing against a totally unknown opponent and a scare card comes, I would still bet again.  If the scare card has helped the opponent, he will let you know fairly quickly.  If it hasn’t, you can hope that your bet will get a loose call or two to look you up.

A part of playing scare cards is just reading the board and breaking it down mentally.  You give the opponent a range of hands based on the betting action so far.  For example, say an opponent raised preflop, you 3bet with KK, and he called.  The flop came three low cards, you bet, and he called again.  The turn brings an ace and you punch the keyboard.  Don’t freak out just quite yet.

You have to analyze the situation.  How likely is it this particular opponent called a large flop bet in a 3-bet pot with a whiffed AK?  Do you think he slowplayed AA preflop and on the flop?  If he is an average opponent, he probably didn’t.  That reasoning then would make it less likely the ace is a hand wrecker.  Add to this a little history with the opponent and you can give yourself a pretty good shot at figuring out what type of hands he is holding.  The more you practice this, the better you will get at it.

Playing from In Position

Scare cards are about twenty times easier to play when you are in position.  The best action to take depends a lot on your hand and the opponent.

If you have a set and the turn brings a scare card, the argument for betting again is to get action from weaker hands like a pair, two pair, an overpair, or some other draw.  This will get you the most value for your hand when you are ahead.  The only risk you take in betting again from in position is that you open yourself up to a big checkraise.  If an opponent checkraises you on a scare card, I advise a fold as the default play unless you have some history or a read on the opponent.

The argument for checking behind on a scare card is that you can give yourself a chance to improve, avoid a big checkraise, and look weak.  If you have a set again, the check behind will give you a chance to improve to a full house.  Also by checking behind on the turn, it makes opponents more willing to call a river bet because you have made yourself look weak by not betting the turn.  The downside to checking behind on a scare card is that you give the board a chance to really get ugly (bring a fourth flush card) and you may be missing out on value from weaker hands.

Most of this applies to the turn, but the same reasoning should be applied if the scare card falls on the river.  The only difference is that on the river the pot may be bigger and you are done getting chances at improving.  If you keep those thoughts in mind you should do pretty good at navigating these treacherous waters.

Conclusion

Hopefully I have given you a comprehensive strategy for dealing with scare cards.  I probably went a little out of the way setting this whole strategy up just for dealing with scare cards but the thing is that you should always be mixing up your play anyways.  By consciously making an effort to take different lines you keep yourself from being too predictable.

Mixing it up makes everything harder for your opponents and easier for you.  When you keep your opponents off balance like this, they will have to play more ABC poker against you because of this confusion.  They don’t know what to do so they play it safe and fold or they play it safe and raise.

Keep in mind that mixing up your lines applies to more than just “gee I hit a set against a preflop raiser, how should I play it?”  It means taking different actions with your bluffs, your semi-bluffs, how you react to scary turns, etc.

The longer and harder you work on this aspect of your game the better your overall game will become.  You will get better at reading hands, assigning hand ranges to opponents, and making the most +EV moves.

That’s it for this article.  Good luck at the tables.