The Merits of Check Behind on the Flop In a HU Blind Steal

[toss]

Folded to me on Button, I have Q8s, I raise, BB who defends his BB liberally calls.

Flop 235r with one of my suit. He checks, I autobet, he auto calls.

Turn is J. He checks, I check behind figuring he'll have K high, A high, or a pair more often than I have him beat.

River is 5. He instabets. I fold.

Villain seems to be instacalling all my blind steal flop bets and instabetting the river evreytime I'm checking behind on the turn. Should I instead just check behind on the flop and save a small bet? If I do I can see villain betting out on the turn a lot. My counter strategy against this would be calling down with Ace high and sometime seven King high. Does this mean I should limit my Blind steal hands to A high and K high should I plan to check behind on missed flops? Blind stealing is hard.

If he's used to you checking behind & folding the river when you give up on your steal, then fire again on the turn. He'll think you must have something because he's used to you folding.

Surely some of the times you quit & he bets on the river, you've got him beat (even with Q high). Similarly, some of the times you fire again on the turn, he'll be beating you. But, in my experience, you can't stop on the turn in 6-max if you're stealing but suspect BB is too (you said he auto-calls your steal). This increases the investment to stealing, but I'm betting you will find more success.

What % of the time do you win when stealing? I'm at about 70% and nearly 1 BB per hand in the black (or green rather), so you can gauge from there. I'm not sure what "ideal" is for these figures, so I'm posting mine to also hear other responses.

[ipp147]

Hi Toss,

Here are my thoughts.

The first thing I do is tighten up my blind steals somewhat and remove some of the more marginal hands that are difficult to showdown as winners unimproved (T9s/JTo etc).

Obviously a large component of our profit from the button/steal situation is fold equity which isn't the case for you here.

The second thing I do is to check the turn the next time I have a decent made hand (even if it is slightly vunerable) and then raise the river when they bet (this tends to slow them more than if you just call)

A couple of other things to bear in mind. I always look at the guy's plan out of the blinds in similar situations to see if he does this auto-bet, some players do it 100% of the time. Obviously the greater frequency I see them doing this the more marginal a hand I need to call down.

Also, despite what alot of SSSH will tell you it is not illegal to open limp on the CO if the BB is defending alot. I need a really co-operative and predictive SB for this.

If they are really annoying you then don't be afraid to move tables.

I'd be interested in hearing other peoples point of view.

[xCEO]

If he is always autocalling your flopbets this doesn't have much value when you hit nothing (and Q high). Because he is also not folding I think it's just a waste of your small bet IF you don't follow through on the turn. I think you don't want to do this with only Q-high, so those hands you can check behind on the flop. Play A/K-high more aggressive and mix up your play. Maybe you can check a flop behind when you hit something, then he'll probably autobet the turn so you can raise him..

[stillbr]

Against guys like this I throw in moves like this to keep them from bluffing the river every single time.

I raise with Q8 on the button. SB folds. BB calls.

Flop 23Q He checks, I bet, He calls

Turn 7 He checks, I check behind

River T He bets, I raise

Obviously this should rarely be done, but it is good to throw this in the mix against the guys that defend their blinds like you described. It will discourage them from auto-betting the river after you check behind.

[milesdyson]

cantsit-

when i do this they have T3 or 72.

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
The second thing I do is to check the turn the next time I have a decent made hand (even if it is slightly vunerable) and then raise the river when they bet (this tends to slow them more than if you just call)

[/ QUOTE ]
This is very bad advice. Villain is bluffing the river 100% of the time. This is a very serious error on his part. You do not want to "slow" him because that would greatly improve his play. You want to encourage him to keep doing it.

The correct way to handle the river is call with every hand that can beat a substantial part of his range. PokerStove says OP's actual hand can only beat 25% of random hands on the river. At 4-1 pot odds that makes it a marginal call, depending on which hands you think are too good or too bad to play this way. But certainly it's an easy call with K8.

Moving back to the turn there are 3 BB in the pot. OP doesn't really say how Villain handles turns but I'll assume he calls a lot, folds a lot too, and checkraises sometimes. You should be betting good hands for value, semibluffing some hands that have no showdown value, and checking in between hands like Ax.

The plan with the in between hands is to win a bet on the river by catching a bluff. Consider cases:

1. Ax is losing. Certainly checking is better than betting the turn. Losing a bet on the river and not risking being checkraised off your outs is the best you can hope for.

2. Ax is winning and he would fold the turn. It's +EV to win a bet on the river even though you sometimes lose to his 3-6 outer. The pot is small.

3. Ax is winning and he would call the turn. Catching a bluff on the river is just as profitable as the free showdown play. This play saves a bet when he makes his hand on the river. It also avoids all issues related to bluff turn checkraises and bluff river donks.

Moving back to the flop, if Villain calls the flop with any two and then gives you a free look at the river, how bad can betting Q8 overcards be? If your pot equity is really terrible you could take the free card, but in that case you should be done unless you improve. There is no reason to push 87 unimproved versus someone who never folds.

Moving back to the preflop, against a terrible postflop player you should usually play more hands not less*. Calling this flop with T7 is a really bad play and it makes me want to play hands like J9o more often, not less. You are going to clean up when you pair the flop, get cheap cards when you don't, and get great implied odds when you improve courtesy of his bluff fetish.

What more do you want out of this?

* There is a caveat to the idea of playing more hands versus a terrible postflop player. His play needs to be terrible in the context of your current hand. Overaggressive play is bad because it loses too much to good hands, but it's a great way to play against a J9o steal because he'll just sweep you off every flop you miss, charge you the max for your draws, and win some of the rest of the time too.

[toss]

Stellarwind, I'm going to take everytime you write and tatoo it my brain. Like another poster once said you're handing out gold for free. Thank you so much for posting here.

[Jake (The Snake)]

Terrific post Stellar.

[ QUOTE ]
You should be betting good hands for value, semibluffing some hands that have no showdown value, and checking in between hands like Ax.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the most important idea here imo. I am betting queen high here, but usually not king high and probably never ace high unless I think it's for value.

There are some flop + opponent combinations where I will check a turn intending to give up, both those are rare occurences.

[Wynton]

What occurs to me whenever anyone described an opponent who is "instabetting" is that he's not really playing his cards, which makes it more important that we play our own (rather than try and adopt by hand-reading).

In other words, this type of opponent is evidently not paying very much attention to the board, as much as he is adopting a set routine. If his reaction is predetermined, then I think that's more of an argument for us to play our cards, rather than try and force the villain to adopt or try to make inferences about his hand.

This is just another way of saying what has already been said. I think we continue to bet for value when our cards are great and hope for cheap showdowns when they're marginal. I just wouldn't spend too much time trying to put our opponent on particular cards, since the villain's "instabet" suggests they're making actions regardles of what their cards happen to be.