Checking the turn too much again

[Mister Z]

Party 2/4. Villain is 25/5/.7. Bet this turn and check the river through? Is my turn check encouraging bluffs? Next hand?

PreFlop: <font color="blue">Hero</font> is Button with <font color="red">J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]</font> <font color="green">J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]</font> (10 Players)
1 <font color="darkred">fold</font>, UTG+1 calls, 5 <font color="darkred">folds</font>, <font color="blue">Hero</font> <font color="darkgreen">raises</font>, 2 <font color="darkred">folds</font>, UTG+1 calls,

Flop: (5.50 SB) <font color="black">4[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]</font> <font color="blue">Q[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]</font> <font color="green">K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]</font> (2 Players)
UTG+1 checks, <font color="blue">Hero</font> <font color="green">bets</font>, UTG+1 calls,

Turn: (3.75 BB) <font color="blue">6[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]</font> (2 Players)
UTG+1 checks, <font color="blue">Hero</font> checks,

River: (3.75 BB) <font color="red">5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]</font> (2 Players)
UTG+1 <font color="green">bets</font>, <font color="blue">Hero</font> calls,

Final Pot: 5.75 BB

[W. Deranged]

The turn check is fine, in my opinion. It's the river call I don't like.

Against this kind of loose-passive but not super-fishy opponent, I think the fact that he called the flop is really all you need to know. Check behind the turn, hope to spike a set, and, if you don't, fold the river bet. Your opponent is only a 25% VPIP, he called UTG+1, and he called on a rainbow KQx board. He has a K or a Q the vast majority of the time here, and so you can fold your JJ in a small pot. Someone with .7 agg. factor is not going to try to bluff you out with JT here that often.

[Nick C]

I'd probably fire again on the turn, hoping I'm up against AJ/AT/JT. (That's 32 combos; KJ/KT/QJ/QT is 36 combos. I'm not saying these are the only hands Villain could hold, but they do provide a starting point.)

If we're really lucky, maybe Villain will fold a queen. If we're really unlucky, Villain will decide to all of a sudden get tricky and checkraise with A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img].

[W. Deranged]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd probably fire again on the turn, hoping I'm up against AJ/AT/JT. (That's 32 combos; KJ/KT/QJ/QT is 36 combos. I'm not saying these are the only hands Villain could hold, but they do provide a starting point.)

If we're really lucky, maybe Villain will fold a queen. If we're really unlucky, Villain will decide to all of a sudden get tricky and checkraise with A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img].

[/ QUOTE ]

Given your breakdown of hands as a starting-point, I go as far as to say that firing a bet on the turn in this &lt;4 BB pot is spewing.

I don't think our opponent (given his .7 agg. number, it appears he doesn't really like betting and doesn't really like folding but really likes calling) is folding a Q here like ever. Most of the things he'd call the flop with, he'll call the turn. True, sometimes we're ahead, but this type of opponent will often just check the river to us anyway and we can showdown sometimes. I really don't think we have a value bet on the turn either.

[Mister Z]

What about 77, 88, 99, JTs? Villain's river bet does tell me we're behind a significant portion of the time, but checking the turn and folding the river HU with JJ feels weak-tight.

[W. Deranged]

[ QUOTE ]
What about 77, 88, 99, JTs? Villain's river bet does tell me we're behind a significant portion of the time, but checking the turn and folding the river HU with JJ feels weak-tight.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you feel uncomfortable, betting the turn and checking the river is significantly better than checking the turn and calling the river. The second line let's your opponent choose what he bets, whereas betting the turn forces an opponent with draws and weak pairs and such to have to put in 1 BB to see a showdown.

[The Goober]

[ QUOTE ]
checking the turn and folding the river HU with JJ feels weak-tight.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree most of the time, but this opponent looks pretty passive. Since I'm a live player, the numbers don't mean a whole lot to me, but I've certainly played against passive opponents where its right to essentially give up on the turn - it's all very read-dependant.

I think the take-home point, though, is that if you can't fold to the river bet, then you should bet the turn and take the free showdown instead. I'd only play it the way you did if you think that there's a significant chance that villain would check-raise bluff the turn, and that seems very unlikely here.

[Nick C]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'd probably fire again on the turn, hoping I'm up against AJ/AT/JT. (That's 32 combos; KJ/KT/QJ/QT is 36 combos. I'm not saying these are the only hands Villain could hold, but they do provide a starting point.)

If we're really lucky, maybe Villain will fold a queen. If we're really unlucky, Villain will decide to all of a sudden get tricky and checkraise with A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img].

[/ QUOTE ]

Given your breakdown of hands as a starting-point, I go as far as to say that firing a bet on the turn in this &lt;4 BB pot is spewing.

I don't think our opponent (given his .7 agg. number, it appears he doesn't really like betting and doesn't really like folding but really likes calling) is folding a Q here like ever. Most of the things he'd call the flop with, he'll call the turn. True, sometimes we're ahead, but this type of opponent will often just check the river to us anyway and we can showdown sometimes. I really don't think we have a value bet on the turn either.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think we have a turn value bet (I think we're ahead less than half of the time and have the worse of the outs), but originally I was thinking Villain might fold some hands that we'd like him to.

However, now that I've thought about this more carefully, I realize that (if we bet) we don't actually care much whether Villain folds AJ or calls with it. And we're cheering for a call from AT.

And, yeah, Villain isn't very likely to fold a queen (just like he's unlikely to checkraise a draw).

So that leaves this: Our turn check does encourage a river bet. Let's say Villain has a worse hand on the river 4 out of ten times (just for the sake of argument) and all of a sudden, because of the turn check behind, he bets that worse hand one out of five times that he holds one (let's say he never would have done so otherwise). And let's say he'll bet his winning hands half of the time. So, on 100 rivers, that's 30 bets with the winner from Villain and 8 bets from a losing hand. (Yikes. Suddenly we should call. I didn't do that on purpose. I thought I'd be setting up a situation where we couldn't call but Villain's river bet would cost us some money all the same.) Anyway, under this scenario, on the river we give back what we saved on the turn with our check behind.

All right, so I'm done making my half-hearted defense of my original recommendation.

Mostly, I think that's a crappy flop for us versus this opponent. And one thing that makes it worse than I made it sound at first is that he might've limped with AQ. What would help us out would be if Villain would often peel with a pocket underpair on the flop, but it's hard to tell just from the stats if that's the case.