Looking for some general advice on how to play/think about a spot that I have been struggling with.

Basically, it goes like this:

I open 88s-JJ utg or utg+1 and get a decent flop (low cards or cards that give me backdoors to straights). I bet flop and get called.

Low brick or card giving me straight draw on the turn and I think, "I don't want to get check raised or I can't get 3 streets so I need to pot control" and check. Sometimes, they check back, sometimes they bet and I call.

High card on the river and I check. Now I'm faced with a river bet.

I play with a relatively large group of regs and a mix of tourists. The regs are pretty ABC and I usually know where they are at and how they tend to play against me. So these spots against them are not that tough.

However, against touristy or unknown types I feel like I'm just guessing. Any general pointers on how to approach these spots?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts...

Add KQs type hands to the mix.

I face a similar dilemma OOP... you value bet flop as a standard, get called and then don’t know what to do on turn when your hand doesn’t improve to a set or trips or something. And the positional disadvantage makes it worse.

If there’s a flush draw out there, you bet big OTT again, get called anyway and then don’t know what to do on a brick river. If you check and they bet, you feel like calling putting them on a busted draw and they end up showing you 2p+.

If you pot control and check turn, you just gave their draws a free card or their bluffs a green signal to barrel turn/river if they’re aggressive. And then you’re left playing a guessing game.

I would say it depends on the stack depth most of all.

If you're fairly shallow and your flop bet gets called, I think shipping most turns will be +EV

How to approach these spots?

Flop better.

Yea I agree. Should have been more specific. I guess my probs start at around 150bbs effective.

I play $1/2 and it's pretty hard to raise more that $12 in ep and get called where I play. So I end up with an spr of like 9 and it doesn't feel right to get it in as a standard play.

Especially since some of these guys will flat jj+. I usually know who is doing that but not every time.

Just fold the river. You likely aren't getting bluffed as often as you think in these spots, and definitely not often enough to make calling a correct play here.

When I'm OOP with a hand that has good showdown value but doesn't do well against their calling range, I'm going to take the passive line. I know the books preach a tight aggressive strategy, but just barreling away with medium strength hands in the name of aggression is pretty spewy. When they fold, you probably had them beat. When they call, you are probably beat. So just check and force them to give you some more information. What is the bet size? What are their tendencies? What is the board texture? Then you can decide if you have enough equity to continue in the hand or not. Yes, we sacrifice some EV by possibly letting them draw for free, but not as much as we sacrifice by value owning ourselves.

If these are regs and you are worried about them catching on and upping their bluffing frequency, then you will have to counter by having some stronger hands in your checking range and/or getting stickier with medium strength hands.

The answer is don't think the bolded. Bet again and if raised, then re-evaluate. You will be shocked how many times a follow up bet on the turn wins the pot or u just get called. And a lot of times you can either choose to bet a benign river again for value (as bluff raise frequencies OTR are close to 0%) or check on that street as there are not too many players who will bet the river without a monster (as they are showdown monkeys). Either way, you win more while not risking your stack.

This dilemma is why you see people raise 4x normally but 8x with 99-JJ. They are afraid/don't know how to play those hands post flop. The answer is "it depends". You cant generalize something like this. It all depends on the board texture and your opponent (s).

Of course, it goes without saying that stack sizes matter, but could you expound on what is meant by "your opponent[s]? I only ask because you can do it better than I. Thanks

Its hard to answer a general question that the OP asked
************************************************** *

I open 88s-JJ utg or utg+1 and get a decent flop (low cards or cards that give me backdoors to straights). I bet flop and get called.

Low brick or card giving me straight draw on the turn and I think, "I don't want to get check raised or I can't get 3 streets so I need to pot control" and check. Sometimes, they check back, sometimes they bet and I call.
High card on the river and I check. Now I'm faced with a river bet.
********************************************

The exact cards on the board are pretty important. If the "high card" that comes on the river is an A instead of a Q the hand plays differently. What I meant by "it depends on your opponent" is: How loose are they? Do they chase draws? Will they call down 2 streets with middle pair? All of those type things are very important in a hand like this that can be tough to play post flop OOP. Theres really no great way to answer OPs very general question.

@MikeStarr, Agreed. What about their perception of you, or do they even think about your play?
Are they playing their hand strength vs. your range or just how many combos there are possible that beat them?
Will they just call down with a weak over-pair otf, like 99 but usually not fold to 1 over-card showing up by the river?

Eddy has written books [@ $50 a pop] about this. A lot of homework is the key to success. That is, unless you have the ability to read your V's soul.

Yea I now see that my question is too general. Trying to do a new study technique where I look at topics I need to work on. Not that good at communicating poker questions/thoughts, yet.

That being said, input from y'all has helped and I found a couple of articles that gave me some pointers as well.

Think I have some ideas on how to proceed as well as an idea about why these spots have given me some trouble.

Thanks!

Say you open for $12 UTG with 88 & only get 1 caller - The Button.

So the pot is $27 - $3 rake = $24

V is type of player to call with a 26.8% range OTB.

So what happens when you flop an over-pair?

You'll flop an over-pair 10.5%; using Flopzilla look at various flops where you flop an over-pair HU vs this range & then determine what type of players call light or need something more tangible otf.

For instance, the flop comes 763 & you have 88

You bet $20 and this type V [that we're analyzing] will only call with something more tangible than just 2 over-cards. Flopzilla has him continuing 32.8% of the time. However, if he'll call with 2 over-cards, he will see the Turn 92.9% of the time.

Change your suits to & & now V calls 34.6% of the time, but now it's 93.5% of the time with 2 overs. Why? because you're 8s of the other suits means he has more flush draws available. That's a lot of combos when he called pre with 78s, 86s, T8s, J8s, etc., all the up to A8s.

Using Flopzilla, you can spend endless hours playing out various scenarios with various hands. You can use PokerCruncher for multi-way. It's more cumbersome, but at least you can narrow down hands V will call with. Such as 98s, you can choose which suited hands he'll call with based upon the suits on the flop when he doesn't flop a str8 draw.

The possibilities are endless, which is why they say you should spend hours of study at home every week building your knowledge bank.

With just that one flop, you can look at how often you get called vs various types of players. It's why I hate playing OOP [UTG/UTG+1 etc], but will do so with PPs that are BBJ eligible, because I still wish upon a star.......

I would still value bet a K or Q most of the time. Likely doesn't hit them and allows me to bluff more balanced on such a runout. An ace is a closer spot.

And this is why I discourage "general" questions. It is so table dependent as to make any answer potentially counter-productive as a general rule. If you want a general rule, fold medium pairs pf until you know enough about your villains to know how sticky they will be and understand what flops are good to barrel and which ones aren't. Post specific hands with reads on the villains to start learning how to handle various situations.

Locked.