A Check Raise, Semi-Bluffing Specialty.....

[SirArthur]

Poker Stars $100 buy in (blinds .50/1.00)

Hero-$132.05 in chips
Villain-$97 in chips

Tight table, I've played with most at the table many times, and the game is dying, any preflop raise at all and everyone folds. However, I have no read on the villain here, as he is no regular to these games as far as I know.

Hero deal A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 10 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

I'm in mid position and it's folded to me, I raise to $2 (don't know why, I never raise to anything less than $3 but thought I'd just do something different here)

The CO raises it $2, I call.

Flop=J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 5 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

I check, with the intent of making a check-raise semi-bluff on my nut flush draw.

Villain bets $5, Hero raises to $15
Villain Calls $10 raise.

Turn=4 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

Okay, now I've got myself into a sticky situation, I'm out of position, and missed my draw. What's my move?
Well, I decide to fire away another semi-bluff here, I throw in a $25 chip, hoping my opponent folds.

Uh oh, he comes firing back at me with a $25 raise. I'm in trouble now. I call his $25 raise here as the pot is rather large now and hope my draw comes.

River=Q [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

What a beautiful card that was, how fortunate could I be?
I put my opponent all in for his final $28, and he called and mucked of course.

So let's here it, I know I made mistakes along the way.
How would you have played this?

This hand goes to show how difficult it can be to play a drawing hand out of position, especially heads up.
I usually avoid these situations but got sucked into this hand and lucked out on the river.

Also, I could not place my opponent on a hand here, I was thinking maybe Q/Q or A/J, can you guess what he had? I later checked in the hand history.

[PokerFink]

Sounds like he has anywhere from QQ-AA, although he is pretty lazy if he keeps just using the min. raise button. with these hands.

I LOVE you're check raise on the flop, plays like that win a lot of pots. People love to do that in position (to buy a free river card), but doing that out of position is just so sneaky. Very cool move.

As for betting out on the turn, I disagree with that move. He obviously thinks he has the best hand if he re-raised pf, bet and then called a raise. If he thinks he has the best hand, and a blank came that could not have possibly helped you're hand, why bet into someone who thinks their hand is good? I would check and hope he either checks or bets a small amount so that I can chase my draw cheaply. If he pushes you fold you're draw without losing too much.

[SirArthur]

So many replies to mull over, took me forever to read all of them.
I agree, my turn semi-bluff was a bit much, I should have check called depending on how much he bet the turn.

Hand history shows he mucked A/A