I would rather put it like this and before I proceed, I must point out, that I assume, that if Hero donks on flop, then villian with his AJ at most will call the bet.

Villian is getting about 1 to 4 pot odds and is about 1 to 6 to hit his overcards .. so even if Villian was just called and not raised, there is no question, that it is a mistake to bet the flop.

Now we image that Hero checks the flop and after villian bets, our Hero turns over his cards show Villian that he is a dog and raises, thus completing his checkraise scheme

But lo and behold, Villian is getting the right price to call .. what gives ?? .. Can checkraising really be a mistake in this situation ??

No ... the point is, if Hero donks and is called ... or if Villian bets and Hero just called him, then Villian has taken on potodds 1 to 5 on a wager, where the true odds are 1 to 6 against Villian. That is a bad bet, and Villian is losing money over the long run.

But the checkraise is a clever thing, because even though Villian realizes that he is behind, he also knows that he has to stay in the race because for one more bet, he is getting the proper potodds

Has our hero made a mistake, you ask (Tension is building)

No look at what has happened, Villian has been sucked in by hero and milked dry

You see the race is still the same, Villian is 1 to 6 to win, but what you have done is made Villian accept a wager, there he lays to bets against the four bets in the pot and your two bets. That is odds 2 to 6 or as we prefer to say 1 to 3.

And that is a worse bet than if hero just called Villains flop bet.

So no paradox to be found here .. I would rather say, that you have stumbled on some of the beauty of poker.



Now one last thing comes to mind, what if we assume, that if Hero donks then Villian would realize, that he is behind and not getting the proper odds and just lay his hand down, would Hero prefer taking the pot there or is it better to go for the checkraise (yes, we know villian to be an agressive player, that always bets on the flop, so we are totally ignoring, that Villian might check and take a free card)

Now if we bet on the flop and Villian lays down his hand, we have won a pot of five bets, three of these belonging to hero allready, so profit is two bets.

Now if we look at the wager after the checkraise, then the pot is eight bets, and Hero vill win it five out of six times, so that equals (5/6)x8=6.67 and since Hero has put four bets in the pot himself, then profit is 2.67 bets, which is larger that the above scenario.

All in all, there is no paradox here, and given that Hero is sure that Villian will bet the flop, then it is good play.


For simplicity I have not looked at turn and river play, I doubt that it will lead us to a different conclusion (namely that checkraising is a bad idea, and we should look to win the pot right away, but then again, if anyone is up for the challenge, please look into it, I'm just too tired right now)

And I have also chosen to work with the original posters odds on hitting overcards and likewise also I have for simplicity ignored the dead half bet from the small blind in the pot, since it does not change my conclusions.


EDIT .. Two post have been posted while I was writing this one and so my answer comes with less freshness.

As I read the original post is like this:
TT was simply confused, that it can be a mistake to bet on the flop, but to call the checkraise is not a mistake, and therefore questioning if checkraising is powerfull, since Villian has odds to call the raise.

The discussion simply assumed that Villian would bet on the flop and thereby make a mistake.


There really isn't that much psychology in all of this as I see it, if we look at the rest of the play is pretty straight forward, AJ is a good hand against a random hand, so Villian value bets and given the range of hands that Villian could be raising with our Hero is getting proper potodds to call (Since he is on BB and only has to lay one bet against a pot already containing aprox three bets)


So the psychology part is narrowed down to whether Villian will bets the flop after Hero check or simply check. This is no easy answer, it depends on the playertype, that Hero is, I assumed that he was aggresive (Tight aggression is The Main Man here on 2+2 according to Dr. Al), but you can assume differently

What one could do given the time is to model different player types and attach to them a probabillity, that they actually will bet (Give The Maniac a prob of 100% that he will bet, reraise and then call when hero caps it .. and give the Mouse a prob of 100% that he will just check) and then run some computations .. and yeah .. you might as I said involve turn and riverplay as well (allthough this really gets complicated and just might not be feaseble and also might be quite uninteresting)

So my point is (as stated be zillions of pokerplayers before me) go for the checkraise against aggresive player and against a mouse, just bet and take down the pot on the flop instead of giving a free card.

That is my way of taking care of the psychology in the game .. attaching probabillies to different outcomes as a way of modelling different player types, but I am one of those people, who believes that psychology can be expressed with math, in my view it comes down to introducing different distributions of probabilly to different players types .. and in the end unique distributions to every player (Somewhere in these forums there is a discussion about a Mike Caro article, where he attacks math oriented known pokerplayers which many suspect to be well respected 2+2'er, stating that poker is about psychology and math is way overrated)

That thread is so crowded, that I have given up posting there and instead I have jamming it in here for some obscure reason, I do not expect many reading this, since this post really is not much out of the ordinary, and since it was posted many hours ago I suspect that many has moved on since

But IMHO Caro is mistaken, poker is about math .. it is about statistics .. when you get to know people, you learn there patterns, and so you change the distributions that diffine your picture of them .. (He raised his left eyebrow, chances are 90 percent that he hold a premium par) ... you then adjust it as time goes by.. (Ups he noticed me noticing his eyebrow, so next time it proberly signals a bluff)

While math of this type is very heavy to handle, and in the heat of the battle inpossible to handle, I believe that sitting at home going thru small simple computations like these can improve your poker

Poker is much about being observant and noticing patterns ... and while most of this comes at a subconsious level and simple gives you intuition and a feel for the game, basically it is just math

The hard part is sorting which patterns are relavent and which are not. If your opponent scrathes himself it needs not be a tell, he could just have an inch.

Or more typical to online poker, how often does opponent leadbet ... is it probable that he only does this with strength or is he betting to often .. or is he a starkraving maniac ... now if I reraise him, what is the probability, that I hold the better hand ?? (and what if he then reraises me, what is the probability that he now really has strength against him being a maniac, that defends his momentum)


The above is psychology, but since it can be observed given a large enough sample of hands, it does tage a psychiatrist to get into an opponents head

A good player shifts gears, he knows that you have a picture of him, so given the distrubution he figures you have assigned to him, he changes the probabities of his actions, so that you start misreading him (your math is not working) and making mistakes, but then again as the sample grows further, you realize that your distribution is fawlty and you adjust.

Simply in theory, but in praxis we just call it psychology and look away from the math, since the math is difficult and impossible to handle in everyday life


Damn I write too much .. but it is late at night, and my brain has gone haywire beyond overload, sorry about that