betting to "see where you're at"

[Valerio]

First, let me introduce myself to the forum. I started playing poker with a SnG type format in college just before this summer. My friends and I got into it after watching WPT and we were pretty poor players. I became really interested in the game, though and I started playing online during the summer. I busted out a couple of times at party poker playing cash games, and then tried my hand at SnGs. I was quite successful, and started tracking my results. I studied "Theory of Poker" and later "Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Holdem" and started playing the 2-table SnGs at PokerStars. I have been doing well, making a 35% ROI over 300 sngs. I have just moved up to $10 2-tables.

Anyway, I read something in Championship No-Limit/Pot Limit Holdem that I am wondering about. TJ says that making a bet to see where you are is incorrect, because if you have been observing your opponents' play, you should be able to know you are without making a bet. But, I am wondering how much this applies to online SnGs, where:

a) one generally do does not meet the same opponents very often

b) you cannot get any physical tells

Say I have AK or even 99, I raise preflop, and get a call from a player I have never played with before. The flop comes Q-x-x and its up to me. My feeling is if check, I am basically saying "well, I had a strong had pre-flop, but I don't have a queen." Would I not rather bet out to gain information, than try to get information based on my opponent's bet? This may be be a dumb question but I'm interested in people's opinion on this.

Valerio

[AleoMagus]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyway, I read something in Championship No-Limit/Pot Limit Holdem that I am wondering about. TJ says that making a bet to see where you are is incorrect, because if you have been observing your opponents' play, you should be able to know you are without making a bet. But, I am wondering how much this applies to online SnGs, where:

a) one generally do does not meet the same opponents very often

b) you cannot get any physical tells


[/ QUOTE ]

Notice, TJ talks about observing an opponent's play, not as much about physical tells. Physical tells play far less a role in putting players on a hand than many believe. When you observe an opponent's play carefully, you should be able to put an opponent on hand even in a very small period of time. Just one example might be a player who rarely sees a flop and suddenly raises UTG preflop. Compare this to a player who sees virtually every flop and suddenly raises (for the tenth time) UTG preflop. Even in 15 hands I can come to limited conclusions about this sort of thing.

[ QUOTE ]
Say I have AK or even 99, I raise preflop, and get a call from a player I have never played with before. The flop comes Q-x-x and its up to me. My feeling is if check, I am basically saying "well, I had a strong had pre-flop, but I don't have a queen." Would I not rather bet out to gain information, than try to get information based on my opponent's bet? This may be be a dumb question but I'm interested in people's opinion on this.


[/ QUOTE ]

The thing is, betting out is not bad here, but you are not doing it because you'd like to gain info. You are doing it because you'd like to get a fold. You are doing it because you feel that you have enough info already to make a probabilistic determination about how likely it is that this opponent just made a hand and you think that you can win it right here.

Regards
Brad S