OK. I've tried this before by hijacking a thread or two in the past. Let's try it on it's own.

I'm wondering if anyone has some good examples or guidelines of situations where check-raising a flop with a medium strength hand is clearly better than betting out from Early Position.

What factors into your decision whether to lead or C/R a flop?

1. Pot Size?
2. Number of villains?
3. Style of villains (I know this is important. But, for the purpose of this thread, I'd like to minimize it's importance... and try to focus on some of the other reasons)
4. Board Composition?

This is one subject that always seems to puzzle me.

All righty then. Back to work for me.... oh wait... LUNCH!!!!!

Here's an example of when I'll consider C/Ring...

I'm in MP1 with Ad7d. There's one limper in front of me, and three players limp, including the button.

Flop is Jd 7c 4h.

I'm check-raising this if I can make it two-cold to a big chunk of the field. I'm calling a bet for sure with a backdoor flush draw, middlepairTK, and fully expect the aggresive button to bet with something stupid like a whiffed AK or KQ or something even dumber. He's definitely got outs against my seven, as does anyone who calls, so I wanna blow bitches out the pot, and end it as soon as possible, and leading pretty much any turn (and probably c/ring if an A comes off, just for fun).

Button bets, player before me folds, I check raise, everyone folds to the button, who calls. Turns the Qh, I bet, and the button folds.

Fun. He might have even layed down a hand like 99 or TT here.

Ice

With a medium strength hand, I'm usually going for the check raise against a large field of opponents. This way I can release my hand if the action gets to heavy, can simply call if the bet comes from my left, or raise if the bet is to my right.

I only bet into large fields with these hands if there's an aggressive player to my left, who will probably raise my bet.

Against a small field, in a small pot, I usually lead out. There is no reason to go for a check raise, since people won't usually be getting the proper odds to draw anyway.

Against a small field in a large pot, it all depends on the location of the preflop aggressor. If he's on my left, I bet. On my right, I go for a check raise.

The texture of the board does not matter in most situations, since it will, by nature, define the strength of your hand. But in some situations, I will simply check-call, if the turn card will change my equity drastically. For example, flopping TPDK on a 3-flush board. In most situations, I'm just check/calling here, if the action is not too heavy.

Obviously, this is just a generalization of how I usually play in these situations. Hope it helps.

My general take on check-raising the flop:

Like Ice says, it's all about position. If I figure person to immediate right will bet (i.e Button raise, when I'm in the blinds and I hit a hand that hit a good piece of the flop) I'll check raise to make the field call two cold.

But, if I have a great draw, or flop a big hand and pre-flop raiser is to my
left, I'll check to let them bet out, then check raise when it's back to me to build the pot. The key is not to bet first, so pre-flop doesn't raise and blow every one else out of the hand.

Sometimes on a low flop, and defending a blind, I'll check-raise a CO/button lead with any two cards representing a blind defense. At low limits you see a lot of slowdowns from LP bettors, and some bad folds as well.

anyways, I realize it's pretty basic strategy, but it works at Low Limits, and needed to be said.

Cheersch

Here is a plain example... 4 donkeys.. er.. I mean villians in.

Button Villian is a middle aged asian woman who will always bet the button, it's a live game, you look at the other three players and know they aren't going to bet (if you can't tell when people are betting in a live game under 30/60... YSSCKY)

You check w/ a medium strength hand.. let her bet and you raise... Voila, the field is slimmed from 5 to two.

I did this last night twice and it worked both times, I won one of the pots on a showdown and the other I folded to more aggression on the river.