Debtable on nearly every street.

[1800GAMBLER]

Usual soft, loose-passive game you all hear so much about. 1/2 blinds $200 buy in, stacks are equal.

3 limpers to me and SB checks. 2 of the 3 are very loose limpers. Ax X,xs players. I check my J /images/graemlins/club.gif T /images/graemlins/club.gif

Flop:

6 /images/graemlins/spade.gif 9 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif T /images/graemlins/spade.gif

I check for the reason i want the turn to blank first. Ray Zee has a post about this but his was against tougher players.

Check, MP min bets $2, 2 callers and i checkraise now for $12.

All call.

2 of these players are loose enough to chase gutshots.

Pot: $58

Turn 5 /images/graemlins/club.gif

I bet $35

1 loose, 1 normal player call.

River: 5 /images/graemlins/spade.gif

I check and it gets checked through.

[1800GAMBLER]

Debtable for the following reasons:

Flop. I checkraised because no one shown strength. Could be argued that some hands beating me wouldn't show strength to a min bet. Arguement against not betting out and checkraise a bettor.

Turn. First arguement will be overplaying into so many callers. Another may be giving away too much info by not pot betting the turn.

River. Arguement for not betting and folding to a raise could be possible.

[1800GAMBLER]

Bump! I'm sure there are many people waiting bad mouth my plays.

[Zag]

Is there some inside joke about the word "debtable" that I have entirely missed? I had assumed it was just a typo, till you did it again.

Anyway, to comment on the hand:

You said that stacks are equal, but didn't say how much.

Preflop, some small percentage of the time I would raise here, for deception. You haven't got a terrible hand (Stu Ungar's favorite hand can't be all bad) and it gets you some control of the hand. However, that would be only 5 or 10% of the time, and usually I would just check.

On the flop, I don't really think that this hand is strong enough to check-raise with, at least against normal players. Besides the risk of checking around, I would think that only better hands would now call. However, if you are confidant someone will bet, and you think that a hand as bad as overcards or middle pair might call a check-raise, then, by all means, go ahead.

On the turn, you now have 3 players that called your check-raise. Somebody's got two pair. If you had picked up a flush draw to go with your top pair (if, say, the 9 on the flop had been a 9c) then I think I would bet out, but right now you just have top pair and not much of a kicker. I would check and hope it gets checked around.

On the river, I absolutely agree with the check, and I assume you were planning to fold to a bet. With 3 people calling your flop checkraise, and two calling your turn bet, either they were ahead of you already or they were on a flush draw, and now they have made it.

My prediction: You didn't say, but I'm going to assume that the play order on the turn was you bet, normal player called, then loose player called. If this is true, then I put normal player on a flopped straight, and he failed to raise because he wanted to keep loose player in. Then the river scared him, thinking either a flush made it or one of you filled up. Loose player had bottom two and you were third until the 5's paired. Or maybe he had 56 and just sucked out on both of you.

If the loose player is before the normal one, then I have no idea.

[1800GAMBLER]

I won the hand.

Preflop i like the idea of a raise here a lot, for many reasons.

Flop: min bets in my opinion mean 90% draw, 10% made straight/flush, i decided i was leading and checkraised. I didn't check with intentions of checkraising though.

Turn: Any other players i doubt i'd bet. I wasn't fearing a monster as it may have awaken on the flop, plus how loose these players are.

River: Due to the looseness of the players i think betting and folding to the raise could be good.

[Zag]

Hmmm. No response on debtable / debatable. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

I thought of another reason to raise preflop (still only occasionally -- less than 10%) with, specifically, JTs. If you raise preflop, then a lot of the flops that make for a good semi-bluff will look especially scary to your opponents. In other words, if the flop contains AK, AQ, or KQ, then you can bet out and be very frightening to someone who has flopped top pair with no kicker.

Sadly, of course, not to all opponents. Playing 5/10 during lunch just now, I made a preflop raise with JTs in the cutoff after 1 limper. Flop was AK5, with one of my suit. Turn was 2 of my suit, and the river was an offsuit 7. I bet every round, and he called me down with 99.

[1800GAMBLER]

I've stopped betting those board after my preflop raises due to it just wasn't profitable. If i raise preflop with TT and the board contains an ace i'm a lot less likely to bet the flop than i would be if the highest card was a K Q J.

I've found most players (maybe just in my games) once they call a raise preflop than hit their pair just aren't folding unless you put them on the business end of a shotgun.

The bluff on these board also contains more effective odds than 'right away' odds, because if you wish for these bluffs to be successful you are going to have to pot sized bet the turn as well.

In short, if i think a board looks scary to my opponents and i missed the flop it's usually more scary to me than it will be to them when i bet.

HPFAP has good reasons to raise JTs but i'd _much_ rather be raising JTs from LP than the blinds when playing NL, and i don't usually put much emphasis on position.

[Zag]

I've stopped betting those board after my preflop raises due to it just wasn't profitable.

Yes, I have, too, except against certain players. In this case, I was 100% sure that the player in question would have bet out with any ace, and pretty sure that he would bet with any king. In fact, I was surprised he did not bet out with the 99. Also, he often would call flop and turn bets and then fold to a river bet, probably on some wild-ass draw, or, well, I don't know. I just know he did it more often than seems correct.

I agree that the semi-bluff, especially out of position, will sometimes require firing both barrels (or even all three!) so it would be a pretty rare occurrance for me even to start the sequence. But you don't have to show down but one of those and it will bring you a lot of extra calls when you do have the nuts. Of course, the best way to show them down is after your opponents have folded. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Also, I don't think it is a crime to fire just one shot across the bow, and then check and fold. Note that my most common play with a very big hand (in early position) is to bet out on the flop, then check-raise the turn. In order to provide cover for this attack, I occasionally have to make the single bluff. I have even bluffed with this sequence (bet out, then check raise) against a player I knew well (and he knew me well, too). It worked the one time I did it, but it will likely be months before I find another situation for that play.

(Nearly all of my bets and raises are somewhere around 2/3 of a pot-sized one, whether they are for value or bluffs. But the JTs hand that I was talking about above was a limit game.)