Bet or Check Call on the river

[Usagi_yo]

Here is a notion I would like experts to comment on.

You are at the river and hold a medium to strong hand -- meaning it can be beat various ways. You have an idea of what your opponant has and you think and you believe you have him beat, but this is just an educated guess as they can certainly have something altogether different and possibly have you beat. Either way, you are willing to risk your stack on your hand.

In such situations, is it more profitable to bet your stack, or check then call your stack? (disregarding any notion of "selling the hand").

[gomberg]

I'm by no means an expert, but if the stacks aren't crazy deep, I'd rather push in here against a very good, great player, or else check-call vs. an average player, or push in vs. a bad player.

Here's my reasoning. vs. a great player, he most likely will not make a mistake if you check, whereas if you push a marginal edge, you don't know if you want a call or not, and it gives you good deception for future big bets with great hands. If you think he'll call some and fold some hands you beat or don't beat, then it's just increasing your variance. I've seen this called as a 2-way bet in some skansky literature. Plus it gives the opponent a chance to make a mistake because of a mis-read by him.

Vs. an average player, they will probably fold more often, and probably bluff too much, so I like the check-call route against these types.

vs. a terrible player, they'll call a lot more often than bet and call with worse hands usually - hence pushing in probably has more value - it allows the player to make a much bigger mistake than normal, and you must give bad players this opportunity (especially calling stations).

Just my 2 cents...

[tbach24]

Throw out a blocking bet.