By simply calling this check-raise you are showing weakness, and insecurity in your hand. If you simply call, on the turn he knows that if he bets strong you’re gonna fold.

And if he does bet strong on the turn then you are in the exact same perdicament! And with his cr on the flop and strong bet on the turn you will be forced to fold!

Personally I would put him on Top pair with excellent kicker. But you are both playing deep, and risk losing alot… AND if you call the pot is getting way too big already! You’re going to be playing in a big pot with a mediocre hand which is a big no no.

The good hands and big pots are coming, be patient and throw this crap away.

What seperates this from Limit is risk reward. Here you committing your chips on this hand when you stand to gain only an extra say $16, if you knew that he would commit to your raise with an AQ and is willing to go all in, then you might have a tough decision, but if he is just bluffing, you stand to gain $16 but stand to lose a hell of a lot more.

Wrong Decision 1: He’s bluffing, you reraise committing both you and the player and he folds, you win $16, but you risk a hell of a lot more just finding that out.

Wrong Decision 2: He is not bluffing, you reraise and he has you greatly dominated with a set or top 2 pair.

Switching player types- against a LAG …K10, 910, and all kinds of hand combos your EV will certainly improve and pushing here is certainly fine with a better read…

But AQ or weaker queen was probably possible enough. Ed states in ss that you should assume loose / weak opposition util proven otherwise. I know he was talking about limit, pre-flop, and the game in general, but I think that is what I should have done here. I had a read but it wasn’t based on a very long time span.

I still can’t see how I should have called here though. If I believe I have the best hand, I should raise and charge him or take it. If I think I am behind not only will I face a big bet on the turn but most of the hands I am behind take away either the J or the 4 as outs ( with the exception of QQ which I confidently rule out).

So I viewed this as raise or fold. But, as I’ve stated, I am still transitioning from fl to nl and finding my way. Discussions like this are immensely helpful, so again, gracias.

It states: “It can be right to call with decent hands that have little chance of improving even if you plan to fold if there is a bet on the next round.” Later, the authors state that sometimes you will have to call two reasonable barrels just to find out you were beat and make a sound muck on the river.

Although the examples given in the book did not include hands where Hero was check-raised, I think this concept kind of applies here.

If we imagine your non-maniacal, non-idiotic opponent check-raising 22BBs on the flop, leading for 30-40BBs on the turn, then shoving in the last of his stack (or close to it) on the river, then we can assume you are a significant favorite to be beaten, usually by QJ or 44.

The drawbacks of this play are that it will cost you something like 40% of the effective stack size to call the flop and turn, and if he shoves the river, you would be getting ~ 2.5-to-1 for a call. Also, there are some bad cards that can come on the turn that will make us hate our hand (Aces, Kings, Queens, or Nines). Further, if he is an aggressive player who will make the play with hands like top pair, straight draws, and sets and two-pairs, then we are actually 3-to-2 favorites here and should play the hand more for value. However, the original poster categorized his opponent as rational and somewhat straight-forward. If we assume he will only make this play with top pair hands or two-pairs or sets, then we are dead-even against that range.

The positives are that if he eases up on the turn (either because he’s slowing down with his top pair hands or check/calling or check/folding his thwarted semi-bluffs) then we can go into value mode.

Also, when he makes that big river bet and we’re right (he has us beat), we save $ when we’re behind and avoid getting stacked with bottom two (never a good hand when a solid opponent starts putting insane amounts of BBs into small pots).

I’m not entirely sure if the concept applies here, but I think I would call flop and evaluate on the turn and possibly take it to the river given how he plays 4th, using its reasoning.

—-

You asked “Adding all of this up your happy to chuck a medium strength hand to what in your read is more than likely a strong hand with you at the bottom of his likely range and save your chips for later where I am more likely to not want to give up on a medium strength hand when my read has me more in the center of the villains range?”

Wow. That’s a doozy of a sentence. I think the answer is yes. I’m happy to dump medium strength hands in large stack NL games when I don’t think my opponent is a frequent bluffer.

IMO, you win the most money at LL NL by making great hands vs. good hands (sets vs. overpairs; straights vs. 2-pair+). You don’t make money by making heroic calls out of position with pretty good hands that may or may not be good.

I think this is where some of the cash versus tournament strategies come into play. I think semi-bluffs and check raise semi-bluffs are a critical part of accumulating chips as blinds rise in tournament play. The fold equity is as valuable as the stacking potential. They aren’t hands you sit on try to make, they are hands you attack with. It’s so natural to my thought process that I have to give credit to a villain for attacking this way.

So, in a low limit live game, your position is that there is less value in semi-bluffing to win a small pot because you want to save your chips for when somebody makes the inevitable huge bad call and it works against itself because people call anyway and you just wasting chips if your hand doesn’t come in.

Now, let’s give the villain 44. If I have 44, I’m thinking about check/call on the flop with one bettor and check/raise on the turn. If I get a bettor and a caller, I’m going to check/raise the flop. As it turn out, there was one bettor and there weren’t very many cards that are going to kill my action. As the SB, I mostly think the BB has some sort of hand centered around top pair good kicker. Maybe a little better, maybe a little worse. If I have 44 in the SB, I have every reason to believe that the BB will put in another bet if checked to on the turn and this will allow my raise to have more absolute value while giving decent pot odds to call making it seem like an easier call while building the pot.

Your position is that you would raise a hand like 44 on the flop because you are likely to get a call from a relatively weak hand and there is no sense in waiting, leading you to the conclusion that the SB is more likely to have a strong hand here.

Adding all of this up your happy to chuck a medium strength hand to what in your read is more than likely a strong hand with you at the bottom of his likely range and save your chips for later where I am more likely to not want to give up on a medium strength hand when my read has me more in the center of the villains range. Does that about capture it?

“Matt,

From the villains point of view, how are you playing 9T or KT? Would you be check calling most of the time?”

———-

Short answer: yes. But it depends on so many things.

Long answer: In the low-limit games I play (and I assume this hand is LL live), the #1 mistake opponents make is taking good but not great hands way too far. The way to beat these games it to make great hands vs. their good hands and stack them. The most common example is when they raise AA or KK PF, you call with a pair, flop a set, and they lose it all.

This hand is similar because you have a reasonable chance of stacking your opponent IF he has a good hand AND you make your draw. Some may say that’s a weak tight approach to the games, but I stand by it.

If I had KT or T9 in the SB vs. several limpers, I would certainly complete PF, as villain did. I really like the flop, which gives me an OESD. I’m willing to treat my hand as a nut-draw, since AK is very unlikely given the unraised pot.

I think there are too many enemy to bet into this pot. The last thing I want is to bet, get raised by a short stack, and have to fold my hand on the flop after putting $$ in (if all the stacks are very large, a build-the-pot bet might make sense, but that’s rarely the case).

So I would likely decide to check and see what happens. I might call, raise, or fold, depending on who bets and their stack size. If, for example, it’s checked to an aggressive mid-stacked button player who makes a 1/2 pot bet, I’ll almost certainly raise. However, that didn’t happen here. Action came from the big stacked BB. I WANT ALL THAT MONEY!

So after I check, the BB (hero) bets the pot, and all fold back to me. I like this action, primarily because the BB is so deep. While his bet is big relative to the pot, it’s tiny relative to his 150BB stack. The implied odds mean that I’m definitely playing, the only question is how.

As the BB in an unraised pot, what could he have? I highly doubt he’s bluffing into so many players, so he has something. I doubt it’s bottom-trash (something like 74). I’ll give him credit for a real hand. It’s probably not QQ or JJ, since he would have raised pre-flop. That’s too bad, since I’d really like him to have QQ here. If I hit my turn card, we’ll likely get all the money in on the turn. Alas.

So it’s not too hard to put BB some kind of hand range. I’d guess he has somewhere between top-pair decent kicker and bottom set, inclusive.

What to do? If I put in a big raise, he might muck the top pair hands…but he might not. And if he doesn’t, will I continue on the turn (assuming I miss) with a hand I know is a big dog? I dunno. I know that I hate being out of position in a large pot, though.

If I have some reason to peg the BB as a weak player who folds too much, I’m more likely to make the CR and/or lead at a blank turn. But is he a player who’ll call off his stack? If so, I’m more likely to try to hit my hand and get paid off. Absent a specific read, I’m likely to consider him a typical player who will call too much. That means BOTH that a semi-bluff is unlikely to win the pot here AND I’ll probably get paid off if I make my hand on the turn.

So back to the flop…I’m looking at a 7BB bet and dreaming of winning 150BBs. I probably call the BBs bet and await the turn. If it’s a blank, I check and probably call again. If I hit, I probably lead out with a near pot-sized bet and hope I get raised.