Too passive or just right? What do the experts think?

[DONTUSETHIS]

Some hands come up for me and I play them like this. Does anyone think this is wrong.

Early in tourney with fairly deep stacks both hero and villian have over 75BB.

Everyone folds to me and I raise to 3BB with 99. Aggressive button calls.

Lets say that the flop is JJ2. He checks, I check.
Turn 7. He bets 4BB. I call.
River 4. He bets 6BB. I call.

Do you think that this is wrong? The way I see it is that after the flop the villian is either way ahead or way behind. Raising will only do one of two things, stop him from betting a worse hand or build a pot where I am well behind. What do you guys think?

Against any two cards with deep stacks, sounds good to me.

2:1 to call turn bet.
2.5:1 to call river.

[ansky451]

First of all, you'd be acting first.

Secondly, I'd bet a jj3 flop w/ 99 probably 80% of the time. I might mix it up against a thinking opponent, but usually you should be betting flops like these.

I'm not one of the experts but I would bet the flop. Yes, I could wait and try to extract more from a worse hand, but this is not a way ahead/way behind situation IMO. You only have 99. You could be giving free cards to a hand like QT, KT etc. There are too many overcards that could fall for me to just check this through.

not so much too passive (it is), but you seem to be a calling station. not good poker at all. BET.

[elmitchbo]

i'm not an expert either, but i will draw on advice from THE expert barry greenstein. he discusses this in his book, and i've heard him discuss it in interviews.

as you said, you're probably way ahead or way behind. in that case the correct play is either raising or folding, and calling in either situation would be incorrect.

barry g. says that often times inexperienced players, when faced with these way ahead/way behind situations, will call as a compromise between the two. it is in fact much better to choose one of the options that can be potentially correct, rather than choosing the option that is almost certainly incorrect.

in addition to that we know that aggression is almost always a good thing. so bet at it! that is very likely to be the right play anyway, and even if you are behind the bet gives you some chance to take the pot away.