30/60 KTo

[Nate tha' Great]

Party 30/60. A new player to the game open-limps UTG. I have only a small number of hands in my database on him but in that sample he's quite loose (40% VPIP in about 35 hands) and reasonably aggressive. It's folded around to me in the BB, I check with KTo.

Flop is AJx with two diamonds. I have the king of diamonds. The ace on the board is not a diamond. I check, indending to raise.

[Chris Daddy Cool]

generally without a real read on a player i don't like making plays in small pots because your effenciey rate has to be real high for it to be profitable.

if he calls your flop c/r what is your plan on a blank turn? on a favorable turn?
and by favorable i mean either:
a) making a straight
b) making a pair
c) giving you a 4-flush

[random]

That can get very expensive if he decides to call you down with a better hand. Fight the good fight and save the plays for bigger pots. I don't think it's that bad, but definitely prefer leading over checkraising. For someone who plays that many hands, he's probably adjusted his style to be very passive, so you might get 2 chances to catch up for 30 bucks if you're behind.

[Nate tha' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
generally without a real read on a player i don't like making plays in small pots because your effenciey rate has to be real high for it to be profitable.

if he calls your flop c/r what is your plan on a blank turn? on a favorable turn?
and by favorable i mean either:
a) making a straight
b) making a pair
c) giving you a 4-flush

[/ QUOTE ]

My intention was to bet just about any turn card if he just called the flop. I think players in this game are capable of getting away from a hand like middle pair or a gutshot in a smallish pot, but it requires a turn follow-through. The downside is that players in this game also really, really like to just call your flop raise and then raise the turn.

[Chris Daddy Cool]

[ QUOTE ]
The downside is that players in this game also really, really like to just call your flop raise and then raise the turn.

[/ QUOTE ]

which is why chip spewing in such small pots can be very dangerous.

by checkraising the flop and then auto-leading any turn, you're investing 2bb to win 2.25bb. needless to say, this has to work a lot of the time for this line to be correct.

[mmcd]

A-high flops generally aren't a good spot to make plays in heads-up unraised pots. There's a better than average chance that the early limper has one, a flop check-raise has a certain amount of transparency to it, and there's only 75 bucks in the pot. This move costs $120 and you will have no info until after you spend the money.

[hockey1]

How about raising preflop?

[I_am_B]

Having sat in that game with you for a while last night, Nate, I think it can become a solid play for two main reasons (that you probably know already):

1. Your ability to gage how they react to your flop check-raise does not make your turn bet 100% but a better bet since you have something of an idea of where they're at (the same applies when you bet the turn). You also get a better read and psychological assessment of your oppt for future encounters (kinda like you were able to do with Don_Wan on 14441 when you had QQ and he reraised you PF w/QJoff and you sucked him out all the way, easily making up for a couple of bets that it looked like you gave away to him on recent hands, even though they were calculated assessments)

2. Future impressions. Having played with you quite a bit, as with any great player, image manipulation is key. By either succeeding in getting him to fold on one of those two hands or, hopefully, hitting the gutter and getting raised on the turn (in this case, you'll get gratuitous payoffs or flop raises for well over an hour by some players), you create an image to utilize in the future.

B