Live 2-3 NL. Villain seems to be a pretty average reg. Hasn't gotten out of line in 45 minutes at the table. Playing a reasonably tight game.

Villain ($350ish) raises to $13 in MP. Hero ($400ish) on button calls with JT

Pot is $22ish (not sure how much rake) on a flop of KQT

Villain checks.

Hero bets (how much) or checks, and why? Also, would it be different if you called with 55 and the flop came 764?

(For most of my poker life, I think I'd bet here 100 percent, but some recent reading has me thinking a check is better here.)

Stack sizes?

Until you realise that stack sizes are important and why that is, you're going to find it hard to improve.

Yeah, I know. Neither was short so I forgot to add them. Both players over 100 BBs.

You can go either way here. A bet of $10 clears out his total air that has given up on hand already and helps to inflate the pot a bit when you do hit. A check is fine also in a situation where villain can be waiting to check/raise and you are generally either well ahead or need to hit your draw.

Your draw isn't as good as it looks at first glance because it will be hard to get paid if you connect. Because of that I would favor a check but only slightly. It's really a live read situation which is better.

We mainly want to check here.

Villain's range hit that flop hard and if he happens to have an underpair to the J he's gonna have a difficult time at winning this hand in any case (and will likely be happy taking it ti showdown).

Villain can easily check AJ,AK,KQ,KK,QQ,TT in this spot. If he has an airball then his best chance of winning is check-raising the flop.

Check it back. We're probably not folding the turn.

We have very limited reads apparently. I’m ok w a number of things here, 3b pre or flat ok. I don’t want to bet the flop unless I’m going to keep it up w more aggression. Since we don’t have a better read on v, I think I prefer a check.

Let's say Hero has A5 on a flop of KQ5

Still checking? It's still bottom pair plus a draw.

In position to a check, I'm betting that.

You gotta say why if you wanna be in my thread

I'd check back and take the free card. I'm personally not a huge fan of raising on a board like that with a MP raise preflop. To many players in low limit like to slow play flops that they connect on really well and are looking to extract value from hero. The range that I'd put villain on in this situation is not good for betting to me.

That's very different. We can often get folds from 66-JJ, which have a ton of equity against our hand, and we can get some value from draws. In the JT hand, there aren't really any hands for V that have lots of equity but are likely to fold. (There also aren't a lot of hands with very little equity that are likely to call.)

If initial stacks sizes are 250, I bet 20 into 30, he check raises to 70 I jam for 215. Because I have good equity against his range, on rare occasions he folds and because there is dead money in the pot improving our pot odds. And because well... I'm usually folding to any C/R so gotta let them know i'm more than happy to take a flip. And they don't understand that our hand even dies well against KJ.

If stack sizes are 700, I bet 20 into 30 and call a raise to 70/80. Cuz unless he's a fish or a maniac, he's not stacking off without top 2 pair+.

Oh and with my spewy image, if I hit I can bet and get paid... or at least overbet... and start building more of a spewy image so I can get paid value betting light later.

The main difference between the two hands is what we have and want FE against.

In our hand, we have some FE against hands like 99- and whiffed Ax, but since we already have them beat, we don't really care (they are on a 2 outer). So we're fine with checking back the flop, especially considering this flop typically smashes an EP raisers range and they can be going for a check/raise here.

In this hypothetical hand, we again have some FE against hands like 99-, and since we're already currently behind those hands (or those hands are sucking up a lot more equity against our hand than they likely realize), we'd love those hands to fold. Which is why I'd typically bet the hypothetical hand.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Among other reasons people have stated: This draw is to the sole nuts as opposed to drawing to a chop a huge portion of the time when we hit.