QJo in the big blind

[wuwei]

Here's a hand from last night's trip to Canterbury. UTG plays poorly, both preflop and post. MP1 seems to be decent... he's aggressive postflop and appears to play pretty tight preflop.

Canterbury 4/8

Preflop: Hero is in the BB with Q /images/graemlins/club.gifJ /images/graemlins/heart.gif
UTG calls, UTG+1 folds, MP1 calls, 3 folds, Hero checks in the BB.

Flop (3.5 SB) A /images/graemlins/diamond.gif J /images/graemlins/diamond.gif J /images/graemlins/spade.gif
Hero checks, UTG checks, MP1 bets, Hero calls, UTG folds

Turn (2.75 BB): 8 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif
Hero bets, MP1 raises emphatically, Hero calls

River (6.75 BB): Q /images/graemlins/diamond.gif
Hero checks, MP1 bets, Hero raises, MP1 sputters and says "What, you got a straight flush?" and calls.

[private joker]

I hate not betting this flop. Hate it. First of all, people don't put you on trips when you bet out on paired boards (because "everyone likes to slowplay them"). Secondly, there are two to a flush and broadway galore, so your hand can be counterfeited with a number of turn cards. Start betting and start betting now. You're lucky it didn't get checked through, but why didn't you checkraise? What, did you think you didn't have the best hand?

[wuwei]

Yah, I wasn't real happy with my flop play here. The pot was pretty small, and for some reason I was very intent on keeping UTG around hoping to extract some more bets from him. That's why I didn't follow through with a c/r on the flop. I was confident I had the best hand, and didn't want to make his decision to fold easier.

Once it's heads up, I felt leading the turn was best even if I'm representing a flush and could cause my opponent to fold. I cannot afford to see the turn get checked through. It turned out this wasn't an issue, but that's the other part I'm wondering about here. I played pretty good poker all night, but had two trip jack hands that were complete clusterfucks due to me getting fancy /images/graemlins/confused.gif