KQo in the BB

[Unarmed]

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Most players won't fire the third barrel on the river unless I'm beaten?

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Most players will check behind on the turn with AQ. Really though, don't worry about it. Most of the time this hand will either be checked around on the flop and you can lead the turn, picking up all sorts of value from weaker hands, lookup artists, gutshots, whatever.

Just try to get comfortable with not knowing exactly where you are in the hand. Don't worry about the pot getting big, AQ doesn't want to make this pot big either, and your flop call on a done dry board would probably scare the ish out of him.

[Jason Strasser]

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Do I *ever* get raised by a worse hand here? Does a worse hand bet the river when checked to?

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Uhhh, I'm not sure your point here... yes? I mean, I've seen both. What if the opponent here held a worse pair, decided it was no good, but that he could push you out... I mean... dont bet small fractions of the pot and expect players to play straightforward.

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I didn't check because I knew if he bet I would have no idea what to do on the river if I called.

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This is called playing poker. Are you really sure you'd have no idea what to do? I mean, if you believe him fold, if you dont, call.

Weak players will often play certain lines that make life easier because they share your fear of not knowing what to do. If you feel like you are going to make bad decisions checking the turn then fine, obviously make the move to have your opponent define his hand more. However, the good players are the ones that will sometimes put themselves in tricky spots, but the best spots. See some of bruiser's old top pair posts in plnl. Essentially they involve him making one pair vs an aggressive 25-50 NL opponent, playing pretty passively, and having some extremely hard decisions. However, bruiser felt like even though he could avoid those spots, they were the highest EV spots (provided he made good decisions).

This attitude:

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I hate being OOP. I think I like Unarmed's line of check calling the flop and leading the turn.

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Makes me think that you are scared of tricky spots and are willing to give up EV to make things simple. Thats fine, but IMO not optimal. And an example of taking a line like that would be showing tons of strength by check calling and leading the turn, then folding to a raise. As you progress to higher limits and such, you will just get murdered doing that because the hand range that raises you is almost always something WAY ahead (two-pair, set), or a bluff. So you can take that idea and understand why taking this line with a hand that is not very strong or very weak, is usually a bad idea.

-Jason

[durron597]

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Just try to get comfortable with not knowing exactly where you are in the hand.

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Normally I am, but normally I play most of my hands in position. It's the combination of having a decent but not great hand out of position that is making this hand so hard for me.

[Jason Strasser]

Checking the flop is obviously fine, especially given the texture of the board. It's definitely a very viable option, especially because there aren't many turn cards you wouldnt like to see. With deeper stacks, I like betting the flop just to get rid of those very tough hands to see that might pick up a weird running flush draw or straight draw while you may improve your hand... That can get ugly... But thats the cashgame jason talking.

-Jason

[durron597]

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Essentially they involve him making one pair vs an aggressive 25-50 NL opponent, playing pretty passively, and having some extremely hard decisions. However, bruiser felt like even though he could avoid those spots, they were the highest EV spots (provided he made good decisions).

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I've never thought about it this way. Perhaps I should have earlier. Thanks, I think this will help my game a lot.

I remember a lot of YOUR old posts taking lines on earlier streets to give myself easy decisions on later streets. Maybe I'm taking that idea too far.

[Jason Strasser]

Man, you can go to the archives and get a whole country full of strassa2 posts that I would strongly disagree with or even laugh at. Some are good.

I dunno, I've changed a lot since I spent my days really grinding out sngs. Perhaps my mentality has changed too, especially since one of my big ideas was to keep things simple when you are multi-tabling.