KTs, TP, seems familiar

[Cerril]

Party Poker 2/4 Hold'em (10 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

Preflop: Cerril is CO with K/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, T/images/graemlins/diamond.gif.
<font color="666666">1 fold</font>, UTG+1 calls, <font color="666666">2 folds</font>, MP2 calls, <font color="666666">1 fold</font>, <font color="CC3333">Cerril raises</font>, <font color="666666">1 fold</font>, SB calls, <font color="CC3333">BB 3-bets</font>, UTG+1 calls, MP2 folds, Cerril calls, SB calls.

Flop: (13 SB) Q/images/graemlins/club.gif, 6/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, K/images/graemlins/heart.gif <font color="blue">(4 players)</font>
SB checks, <font color="CC3333">BB bets</font>, UTG+1 calls, Cerril calls, SB calls.

Turn: (8.50 BB) 6/images/graemlins/club.gif <font color="blue">(4 players)</font>
SB checks, <font color="CC3333">BB bets</font>, UTG+1 calls, Cerril calls, SB folds.

River: (11.50 BB) 4/images/graemlins/club.gif <font color="blue">(3 players)</font>
<font color="CC3333">BB bets</font>, UTG+1 calls, Cerril calls.

Final Pot: 14.50 BB
<font color="green">Main Pot: 14.50 BB, between UTG+1, Cerril and BB.</font>

[maxpowers21]

You have to raise the flop here.
1. You want to charge the maximum value to your opponents with a worse hand or draws ir you are good.
2. You don't know if you are good here, raise to gain information against the BB. There are many possible hands you can beat BB with, and you must protect your hand if it is best.

[Cerril]

My thinking on pretty much every street is along the lines of 'if I'm good, I'll almost certainly stay good and I want some people with worse hands to stay in. If I'm not good then I don't want to lose extra bets on any street.'

Would you say that if I don't raise the flop, folding is the next best option? Or is this actually an instance where the order is raise/call/fold?

[maxpowers21]

Folding would be terrible, but I hate to check call to the river and pay 2.5BB's without having any idea whether my hand is good, and if it is, that i'm doing nothing to protect it.

The only time I will check call to the river is if the pot is heads up and I'm trying to induce a bluff from an agro player, or if i plan to check/raise or raise the turn for value. Check calling is weak with a hand as strong as yours.

[Cerril]

I guess that's the question. How strong should I consider KT against a three-bet preflop, when bet into on the flop? Also, there is the consideration that I'm not winning as much as I could by raising here into slim draws - but maybe the concern should be just maximizing what's there already with three bets to the flop.

[maxpowers21]

How about AQ AJ AT JJ TT 99 etc... You have all of those hands well dominated. You cannot play this hand passively. It is incredibly weak tight to assume that you are beaten here. Until the preflop raiser proves otherwise, which he hasn't yet you need to raise. And even if 70% of the time you are beaten here you should still raise. Do you see why? Note that 70% is an arbitrary value here I'm not sure what the exact % should be wihout some deeper calculations. But basically if you are ahead in this pot only 30% of the time you will get return value on your flop raise from the big pot. I also think you'll have a better hand then the preflop raiser more then 30% of the time here.

[chesspain]

[ QUOTE ]
2. You don't know if you are good here, raise to gain information against the BB. There are many possible hands you can beat BB with, and you must protect your hand if it is best.

[/ QUOTE ]

Unless BB three-bets the flop, how does raising protect your hand? And if BB does three-bet the flop, then you are probably toast. So in essense, unless BB is a maniac, you will likely not be able to protect your hand if it is best on the flop.

[HajiShirazu]

I think this is an okay way to play it. A raise on the flop won't protect your hand, and probably isn't for value either against a range of 3-betting hands on this flop, but I think you are ahead often enough + will suck out enough that you should probably take this one to a showdown if it's one bet on each street.

[daveymck]

[ QUOTE ]
My thinking on pretty much every street is along the lines of 'if I'm good, I'll almost certainly stay good and I want some people with worse hands to stay in. If I'm not good then I don't want to lose extra bets on any street.'

Would you say that if I don't raise the flop, folding is the next best option? Or is this actually an instance where the order is raise/call/fold?

[/ QUOTE ]

Your thinking is flawed. You dont want people with worse hands to stay in(well ok sometimes), you either want to push them out completely or make it incorrect for them to call. The bb who could have called preflop with 56s might see the turn for 1 more bet and hey presto has overtaken you. You are thinking in a manner that will get you rivered time after time.

You probably have the best hand raise it up, if someone plays back at you that is the time to think about playing defensive.

We want to win pots, and decent sized ones we have to take the action that helps us do that, yes sometimes we lose the maximum but thats the nature of the beast, get on and ride it dont try and tame it cos it will bite your head off.

Edit: Me bad didnt notice the 3 bet pre flop, however still dont like your thinking.

[BigEndian]

Tough hand, but I like it. I think the most interesting part is the overcall on the river. At first glance it looks like an easy fold, but I've been burned enough times previously by thinking too highly of my opponents that it's worth the 13-1.

- Jim

[Cerril]

BB has A9o, UTG+1 has Q7o, I take the pot and take the hand number down.

(by the way, I don't know what happened to my comment on reads in the first post but I didn't have any. Both of these guys were relatively new to the table and didn't stay long enough for me to get any reads or stats on, other than this [telling] hand)

So is there a consensus here? BB's aggression froze me up from a raise I'd usually make. My hand might be good as is but it could get very expensive to find that out - and I didn't think it'd be good half the time I saw this sort of PF and flop action. That I was giving anyone who was behind a likely 4-5 outs (provided they didn't have a strong draw) occured to me of course, which is why I'm posting - wondering where the most profit lies in this hand.