The game is currently 5 handed.

I open UTG with KhQh, folded to LAG/TAG in the SB who 3 bets, folded to me and I call.

Qc8c3d....He bets, I raise, he calls.

Qc8c3dAh...He checks, I check?

I've seen him call the flop and CR an over pair on the turn. I have also seen him 3 bet the flop with top pair and draws. I don't know if he would donk a turned Ace or CR. If he checks the river he will pay off lightly.

He probably sees me as pretty tight certainly relative to how laggy he is. Does a lag tag fold the turn with a pair lower than Q's? Is my hand too strong to check back?

Why raise the flop?

id just call the flop

as played id bet the turn

Check turn. Wa/wb

If the game is capped at 4! I just cap it.

Everything else is fine.

Why not raise the flop? Seems like we should be doing a mix of raising and delaying. If he has tens, nines, sevens and sixes he could be shutting down on the turn and going into check/call mode.

Turn is a clear check.

I really want to protect my calling range on this type of flop.

The flop raise isn't bad, but it still grosses me out. I have an extremely hard time believing that more than a few players in the world know how to gain EV by splitting their range here.

I slightly prefer a bet on the turn. Many players will lead their ace on the turn. The fact that he didn't makes me think that we often still have the best hand. Plus our flop raise kind of looks like bs, so I think we can still get called by some pocket pairs. Getting check-raised is sickening, but I don't expect it to happen very often.

I ran a sim in Simple Postflop. It raises the flop with KhQh 17% of the time. It then has SB mixing between checking and donking with Ax on the turn. Once SB checks, the sim has HJ betting the turn 91% of the time and value betting brick rivers 100% of the time. So the solver definitely thinks KQ is still worth 2 big streets of value after SB checks the turn.

Interesting. I assume that with such a small % raise that we can simplify our strategy by always calling.

Never raising the flop in a spot like this loses only a very small amount of EV compared to incorporating flop raises into our strategy. But incorrectly incorporating flop raises into our range costs a lot of EV.

It is extremely difficult to correctly incorporate flop raises into our range here. We have to use a mixed strategy with a huge % of our hands that is not really possible to memorize. I personally feel like the effort needed to approximate such mixed strategies is not worth it.

Further, I feel like the typical LHE pro still spews a bit with their turn barrels. So never raising the flop actually slightly exploits the typical LHE player imo. Spewy turn barrels are expensive for the bettor.

I would have thought if two more bets were going in we lose more often than not. It seems like he wouldn't have too many worse Q's in his range. Should he be calling down in this situation with TT's or JJ's or worse? Are we assuming he may call down with K high given what looks like a polarized range from us?

It seems to me players may be value checking far too much these days. I'm seeing it more than I ever have.

Thanks for sharing the sim.

If we had just called the flop and the SB checked the turn when the Ace fell it seems we should be betting a large portion of our range. Would it make sense for the SB to screw play with some of their turned Aces? Should the SB be betting with pairs below a Q on an Ace turn? What about a hand like KJ?