[W. Deranged]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not so sure about the river on this one.

A common misconception people have on this board is that c/c c/c b/f is the only way to play a way ahead/way behind hand out of position. You can also c/c or c/f the river depending on the opponent and your cards. Usually when you have KK on an ace board you have more like 40% equity while when you have Ax you have 60%, so this changes your river play.

I think you could make a good argument for c/f this river if the opponent is good. Anybody agree?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you definitely can.

The important point to me is that, in the hierarchy of concepts to apply when playing a poker hand, that of "having the initiative as the pre-flop raiser with a good, showdown-able hand is a good thing" trumps "way ahead/way behind."

My basic thought is that some people responding to this post are so excited to find a possible WA/WB situation that they are not approaching this hand with the normal, straightforward poker approach that dominates play in like 90% of hands. Checking this flop does not make much sense.

Checking is more likely to cause you to lose money here. If you bet the flop and get raised, you may be able to confidently say you're against an A and fold. If you check the flop and commit immediately to going to showdown (which, in a four way pot, is foolish), you are committing to: a) never attempting to determine the strengths of your opponents hands; b) putting in money regardless of what those hands might be. This hand is not heads-up. Folding might be an option here. Similarly, since it's multiway, betting might actually cause opponents to fold (maybe not those with As, but maybe those with lesser outs). Betting makes this hand so much more straightforward to play.

Yet another way to think about this:

-If we bet and don't get raised, this is probably better than checking. If we check, either it gets bet behind us and we put in one bet anyway, or it gets checked through, and we may have missed bets.

-If we bet and get raised, fine. We can probably use our poker knowledge to make a sound decision about villain's hand, and probably get away from the hand more cheaply.

Going WA/WB assumes a bunch of factors that aren't at play here. One is that we absolutely have to get to showdown with our hand. (Not the case with an underpair in a four-way pot). Another is that betting puts us in a position to regularly get raised off the best hand. (Not the case in a four way pot, where the pot is generally protected and bets are more likely to mean something).

So we need to all think about the assumptions underlying certain buzz-word concepts before haphazardly applying them at the expense of much more basic concepts.