[Nate tha' Great]

Paluka,

This is certainly one of those spots that's easier to play on the virtual felt than on paper. My first instinct was that you should be inclined to call down. I can tell you that I definitely don't like any of the 3-betting type variations.

But after thinking it over some I think it's probably a fold. And the reason that it's a fold is because of your preflop cap. Unless your opponent has seen you capping light, he knows that a reasonable ace or some fairly big pocket pair are your likely holdings, and you're never going to fold an ace and he probably won't expect you to fold a big pocket pair either, especially as the pot has already become quite large. So I don't think your opponent can expect to show a profit from making some kind of a play here, again unless there are some metagame things that you haven't told us about.

On the other hand, suppose the opponent does have a big hand like AK, AQ, A9, 99 (AA might fall into a slightly different category since then it becomes less likely that you've hit the board and the opponent might want to play it a little slower and induce some bluffs). Is this a good way for him to play his hand? I think it is. Check-raising the turn is a little bit transparent and risks you either folding to the check-raise or checking behind and getting off cheaply. Something like check-calling and betting out on the river keeps you involved but doesn't extract enough value those times that you do have a second best hand that you're willing to call down or play back with. If I'm your opponent, I'm almost always going to have a pretty big hand here. In fact, this is not a spot where I'm going to make very many plays at you at all, but I expect that my table image will be tricky/aggressive enough from other spots where I *do* make plays that I expect to get called down or played back at pretty often.

Again, this is all because of that preflop cap. If you'd raised and just been called by one of the blinds and he check-raised this flop, I think the calldown would be almost automatic, even though the pot would be smaller.