[Harv72b]

I'm putting CO on either Q9 or some horribly overplayed top pair. In either case, I'm good.

Basically, my thinking went like this:

-It's a classic blind battle, so aggression automatically gets turned up a couple notches. When I bet/called the flop, I represented a weak hand...AK, maybe an underpair, what have you. When I check/raise the turn, I could still be on the same range of hands, although AK becomes less likely. A big part of playing in a blind battle is playing your opponent's cards...and I just didn't think he had me beat, or at best, I thought he might've limped in with Q9s. Moreover, I didn't think he thought I had him beat.

-I figured that he would've raised first in with 66 or 99, and probably any strong Q (AQ, KQ). He might have gone for a limp/re-raise with QQ, but I doubt that he flat calls my preflop raise with QQ. Possible, but you really need to have a read to assume that an opponent would do that. Ditto for AA. While I didn't have a strong read on him, I did have enough to say with some certainty that he wasn't an "any two will do" type, so hands like Q6 & 96 become very unlikely. A6 wouldn't have 3-bet my turn c/r, so that's out. Basically, his play in the hand so far makes any hand that would beat me very unlikely...although 44 might have been played like that.

-When I check/raise the river, I represent something really close to the nuts; he probably doesn't 3-bet with anything less than that, even if it beats me (44, for example). This is where I didn't like my play after the fact, though--I should've been check/raising with the intention of folding to a 3-bet, because a 3-bet would almost certainly mean that I'm beat.

Should I have gone ahead & capped the turn rather than going for a river c/r? Perhaps...certainly, if he had something like Ad9d that would've checked behind on the river but would gladly call my turn cap. However, I did have to consider the possibility that I was behind two pair at that point...again, though, I should have folded the river if 3-bet.

It turns out that I probably extracted the maximum from the hand he did have this time, although I most likely would've gotten the same number of bets out of him had I capped the turn & led the river.