It depends if you are planning to check your entire range. Two possibilities:
a) You are not planning to check your entire range regardless of flop. In this case you should obviously never check in the dark, as you are needlessly giving away information about what part of your range you have.
b) You are planning to check your entire range. In this case I hate it less but you're still giving away that you don't have a donk-bet game - you're saving villain from incorrectly discounting combos that he wrongly thinks would/might have lead out with. If you can start a fashion for it in your cardroom though you might see more hands per hour. I once suggested a new version of Holdem where action starts each round on the player with the last aggressive action - the idea being to speed up the game and also to punish calling OOP less strictly.
Partially contradicting the above, my main read is that it's someone who doesn't know what they are doing and therefore its hard to say what hand they think they would want to check regardless of flop and/or it's an intermediate player who always plays "in rhythm" and therefore is checking to the raiser all the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by King Spew
I prefer the dark check in the scenario I gave. Specifically when I checkraise, my hand is still somewhat unreadable. With a light check, the c/r is MUCH stronger and easier to play against.
If it's scenario b) then your hand is equally unreadable if you wait to actually make the check, just your opponent doesn't know that and may adjust your range incorrectly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by allinonriver
the game is about using all the information you can possibly gather to exploit your opponents. by "checking in the dark" (lol) you are giving up the FREE information of looking at a flop.
say for example that you have 22 and check in dark
flop is 2 4 7 with a flush draw.
now normally you would probably lead this flop for a large bet to charge draws and build a pot. but you decided to be of mongolian decent and check it dark so now you're opponent who would have folded to a pot sized flop bet is getting a free chance to check back his 86o and see a turn 5 and beat you.
DUCY now?
It's not just that you are giving away the chance to get more information before you decide to check - it's also that you are giving information to your opponent about the fact that you didn't use that information.