After talking to a couple of people who play way better than I do (face it, could be lots of people), check/raising on this board is wrong for <reasons>. Given that hero checked, calling is correct. Donking would make HJ's range miserable, makes you tough to play against, and this
You and the cold calling CO share this flop. Depends on ranges as to which one of you likes it more. If the CO weren't a LAG and were one of those Bellagio regs who cold calls hands they should raise, then you could like it most. As he's described as LAG, I'd assume that he's playing hands in this zip code.

Equity is not created equal. Of that 17%, what percentage gives us not only the best hand but some confidence we have the best hand? The total equity bothers me less than the "solid equity." Put it this way - if HJ made a flop bet and a turn bet at the same time (and by calling we got to see the turn and river), would we call? (No.) So, basically, profiting here depends on our ability to save a bet when behind and/or gain a ton of bets when ahead and that's the clarity we lack with this hand.

Put it another way - what turn cards make our equity reach a point where we could call a turn bet? AKQ doesn't (although we may have fold equity on the diamond versions), diamonds and gutshots barely make the cutoff. And 864 has a lot of gutshots (e.g., is our equity significantly worse if it were 8d6d3o?)

As a point of contrast, 22 should have roughly the same equity, but with a very different distribution of equity. The majority of the value is clear - UI with a blank board or spiking a set. I'm a lot more tempted to call that than J9.

To be clear, you're saying that if a diamond falls, we're only *barely* getting odds to see the river?

Part of the answer here is how often would we need to call a turn bet. I would not be surprised if the turn checks through 25% of the time or so. There's a lot of peeling going on with this flop, and it's not immediately obvious to me that someone will definitely bet the turn. Yes, we do have to look at CO, but "somewhat aggro" isn't enough for me to think that he's betting 100% if checked to.

I'm not.

I'm a bit surprised at the debate here. I would have taken this as a no-hesitation peeling situation, especially closing the action.

Edit: "Put it this way - if HJ made a flop bet and a turn bet at the same time (and by calling we got to see the turn and river), would we call?" -- I think this is a far too pessimistic way of looking at the situation. You're completely denying the information of the turn card before making your decision to see the river, and that negates most of the value of closing the action on the flop and completely negates the backdoor draw mechanism.

We're barely getting equity.

J-high flushes are not great flushes. All those hands we hope HJ has when he cbets the flop and we have clean pair outs turn into liabilities. We'll be like 38% to hit but maybe 20-25% to win.

That was kind of the point. The point was to show that our action on the turn is heavily dependent on the turn card so how easy it is to make a turn decision is more important than in the scenario where calling a flop-turn combined bet is close. For an example of unclarity, if the turn is likely to check through then it's better for our backdoor draws but worse for our pair draws. So are we hoping that the turn often checks through or not?

If someone who advocates calling can post a plan, like "x, y, and z cards we're going to check and call 1; a, b, and c we're going to donk; etc." I think it would be very helpful to the discussion.

For those folding the flop, what hand range do you think your opponent has? What is your equity against that range?

Now change the flop to a 9-high flop (964), but don't change the hand range of your opponent. What's your equity now?

On the flop card? We're getting 8.5:1 with something like 15-20% equity. That doesn't count as "barely" in my books.

Again, this seems a bit pessimistic. But maybe you've got him on a much more narrow hand range.

How much worse? I don't think hitting a J on the river is some sort of disaster. You're going to share the kicker only a relatively small percent of the time when you hit it on the end.

It depends on what fell. Most of the time, you'll be most pleased with the turn checking through. You're a little disappointed if a 9 or J falls and it gets checked through, but it's not some monster failure.

How about this: Check-call for one bet if the turn pairs one of your cards, is a diamond, or QT7. Check-fold otherwise.

So you're basically assuming your pair outs are mostly good, but if you hit one of then you're planning to check? You won't be so happy the turn checked through in that case.

I won't be as happy, but I'm not upset about it. That's what happens when you're out of position sometimes. Bet most rivers (if the turn is checked through), and expect to get called by one opponent and have the best hand most of the time.

If the flop bet is called, there's nearly 10 SB in the pot going to the turn. Even if I don't get extra value bets in with the best hand, I'm still quite happy to have taken the chance to win the pot for 1 SB.

Edit: I'm not claiming that my line has been optimized at all. But I am suggesting that it's likely to be a profitable line to take.

You should probably just be donking the turn on a J,T,9,7, or 5 a lot of the time

Possibly. I don't think it matters a huge amount in terms of justifying that you should call the flop bet. It seems to me that almost any reasonable line you take from the turn onward is likely to be able to show a profit. I just put something specific out there to push the conversation forward.

The only issue I would have with donking here is that you would really want to be comfortable with the predictability of your opponents on the bigger streets. And specifically, you would want to understand their patterns of aggression.

If the turn is a J, you donk, and the action is call-raise behind you, you'd better have a pretty good sense of what HJ and CO are doing, because you've now just bloated the pot out of position with what looks to be a medium-strength hand based on the action. If you don't know what's going on in that type of situation, I would argue that you're better off checking and calling.

If you don't know what do on the turn, I'd argue you should just fold the flop.

I think the pot size is too large for that bland of an approach. Again, I think you're profitable doing something as simple as just check-calling good cards and check-folding bad ones.

I would also add that the logic here is like saying "If you don't know what do to with QQ when an A or K falls, you should just call preflop and wait for a good flop before putting in any extra bets."

It's more like 'if you don't know what to do in borderline situations, fold if you're more likely to screw the hand up more later."

i think most of the cards that improve your hand should be donked simply the turn checking through is really bad for you and this is 'our' flop.

I guess why it feels some dirty to me is that we can win this pot a decent amount UI because it's a whiff if both players have high cards and you can get some people off stuff like A4s. It's mean when to be attacking the turn more than just planning to ch/c. If you donk the turn and barrel the river you get someone to fold a high on the right run outs. If the turn checks through you just going to get looked up a lot cause **** it

If we're going to continue past the flop, I want a better plan than to hope to make the best hand. In some cases that's a fine plan, on this flop I think we can do better

I agree. But this point is tangential to the central debate, which is whether to continue at all.

There's a post or a blog or an article somewhere where the thesis was "I didn't become a better player until I played more hands." The cost of learning about marginal situations is paid by playing them and losing a few. The cost of not learning about marginal situations is that you don't learn to play better.

I don't think it's "really bad for you." I think it's not ideal, but if you hit a pair and get to show down for either one or two bets, I think you've done okay with the hand.

Disagree, I thinks really bad. There will be tons of awkward rivers calls that can make collecting on the river difficult. You basically have zero hands in your value donking range nown the turn, and we need to be donking quite a few of them.

And it's not really tangential. If you're going to call the flop, you already need a plan for the rest of the hand. Saying the flop is call but not knowing what to do the turn, can change the flop decision.

I think that's solid general advice but I would advocate picking a hand where there's a more clear path, like where your backdoor flush draw is to the nuts and there's multiple ways to pick up open enders (the 7 doesn't really count).

J9 = 6 cards and we don't need to hit the river
Non-9d diamond = 9 cards, and you'll hit the river 9/46 (including 9d)
T7 = 6 cards, and you'll hit the river 8/46
Q = 3 cards, and you'll hit the river 4/46
Field = 21 cards

You lose 1 SB on the field, and 3 for draws that don't hit, but win 7 for draws that do hit.

-21/47-3*3/47*42/46+7*3/47*4/46... I'm not going to type it all out, I did it on Excel.

= -0.31 SB

That is, even if every single draw is good, and every pair is good, and get 4 SB for every bink (2 on the river for your draws because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition and 2 streets of value for turned pairs), you don't profit.

The only way to navigate this is by some combination of having the turn check through enough so that you can draw for free, but still getting that sweet +0.64 SB from turning a pair (which is magically always good).

+1

But I want to repeat again that if you don't take a strictly passive line, this pot can be won a non-zero amount of the time by bluffing. This flop is generally better for you and can get ugly for them in hurry if you know the spots/ways to apply pressure

I fprgot to include the existing pot which will probably put the best case scenario over 0.

But I also didn't get to subtract thw times that a J/9 is no good.

Right. So if we can come up with an estimate of the percent of each range that will fold and that's positivr, it can give us some additional equity.

But both villains need to fold.

The one thing that private joker taught me is that you should know exactly what you are going to do for exactly every subsequent card for all possible actions. It was sage advice and helps you with the current street.

That's rather tough to do at typical LHE speed.

Not really. Occasionally on the turn/river, I'll be like "oh **** an ace and he donkey!?" and have to think, but other than that I know my action already.

Well for some hands it wouldn't be too tough, and you could lump a lot of cards together, but for a hand like this it seems like it would be very difficult, with so many different card ranks that could be important to our equity. I wouldn't be able to do it anyway, which I guess reinforces that I should just fold the flop here.