jjgoldy5, on Monday, October 27th, 2008, 11:55 AM, said:
Maybe I'm way off base here, but do you guys always bet the flop, check the turn, and only call on the river when you flop a relatively safe top 2? I think you miss a ton of value by not betting the turn.After the flop we can put the villain on a few hands... some type of flush draw, a connected hand that caught a piece (45, 56, 78, 79, 89), or a weaker Ace-x type hand. I wouldn't worry about a set here.When the 8 hits on the turn, I would never ever slow down here, as that card only helped 45 (sure that's what he ended up having, but that's irrelevant). You're still going to get value from a lot of Ax type hands, and you don't want to give the other draws a free card.You should be pretty confident in your hand right now, but its rarely going to improve by the river. You could get counterfeited by an 8, or slowed down by a flush or straight card on the river. So take the opportunity to get chips in the pot while you are likely ahead, as you are going to be frozen on the river by a lot of cards, and won't be able to extract value by checking the turn and raising the river.
Wow, this is excellent reasoning on why to bet the turn. I definitely prefer this line. I need to be thinking about what cards would scare me. I was really lucky that the river blanked or else I wouldn't have been able to raise. Well, really unlucky in retrospect, but you see what I mean.Here's some interesting math, guys. The pot as played is 2385. If I bet 200 on the flop, 340 (half) on the turn, and call 600 on the river as most of you would play it, the pot would be slightly bigger, 2565. If I played it the way I did, but in a more polished way (200 flop, check turn, 300+400 river), the pot would be 2085. I just decided to plug these in to see what would happen 'cause it's interesting.If we play the pot extremely carefully like Slacker, the pot would be much smaller, 1285. I disagree with this play though because I really think we are losing alot of value here, against AJ. I would just hate seeing all those chips still sitting pretty in his stack, when I know he would have called a small reraise.Your responses seem to be fairly kind, so I guess I didn't play the hand too badly. I was extremely confident in my misread though. I wonder how often I show up with the winning hand?Also, I tend to bet like 60-70% of the pot on both the flop and the turn. On an instinct level, I like betting more on the flop and less on the turn more, and so I will start doing that. Can you explain to me why this is a better strategy though so the non-instinctual part of me understands? :)By the way this post was written really late at night so sorry if it's confusing and jumbled.
0
, A 
2 folds, MP calls t30, 1 fold, Hero raises to t120, 2 folds, MP calls t90I only play these mid card unsuited aces in late position and if I think I can play the pot heads up. If I'm against more than 1 player, I play these hands extremely cautiously postflop. I felt like I could do that at this table.The villain is a pretty standard, cautious player. He isn't super tight, but he isn't acting like a donk either.Flop: (t285) 6 
, 7 
, A 
