[Mempho]

OK...so I avoided replying after first reading the comments this morning....but I first have to say a couple of things. Yes, the hand was played poorly. I agree with that. Now, let me give you some of my reasoning in the hand (although my reasoning in the heat of battle sometimes leads to faulty conclusions).

First of all, my preflop stats were way of line with what they normally are because I had a tight table and weak blinds and I had gotten several good starting hands.

I raised with A6 b/c I had picked out that hand at the beginning of the session as a random pfr hand. I pick out several of these at the beginning of each session by basically throwing a dart at a hand chart. If one of the hands makes it to showdown (b/c I make something out of whatever trash I'm playing with), I change it out (like they do with the hurricane name list). That said, A6 was a "rule" at the time, so I raised. I did not really want to raise, however, because my stats were looking very "laggish." At any rate, I had made money at the table, but I had gotten the distinct feeling that the table was "sick" of me.

That said, when I bet the flop, I bet it thinking that I had, in fact, been fortunate enough to flop the best hand with my trash holding. When the villain check-raised to $30, I had the distinct thought that the villain was trying to steal the pot with a lesser hand. Also, the villain had a flop aggression factor of 6.0. Essentially, my raise to $100 was supposed to be a blocking bet since I thought I was ahead, but it would also ensure that I did not lay down the best hand as the villain would have to come over the top all in and this could only mean a superior hand.

Of course, I found out that I was behind and I did the math and I had at best 5 outs, e.g, too little to make a call.

I realize that there is going to be great disagreeement with whatever position I take on this. In a results-oriented way, I know that this was a bad raise.

However, I think the question is this: What is the best way to find out that A6 is either good or no good once I am c/r to $30? Or, have I already found out? It seems to me that there are a lot of draws that could make this check-raise against someone with my stats.