This happened to me,

I raised with AQ, i got a caller from late position.
I hit my Q on the flop. the Flop had a flush draw, but no straight draw.
I cbet, He min raises me. i call.

I have no reads on him, except that he is not insane.

Turn is a blank, i check, he checks behind me.
River is also a blank. i check he checks.

He shows down KQ and i win.

The min raising to get me to check the turn. Even if i thought it was good to value bet the river and he calls, it still would have bean cheaper than letting me value bet till the river.

Is this strategy sound or What? If i didn't have AQ he would have gotten a fold also.

In that regard his strategy is pretty not sound. Obviously you also call him w sets, overpairs and 2pair as well. So he raises and you only call his raise when he is beat,not good for him.

We REALLY need to value bet this river though. He made two plays that portray weakness in this hand imo, both the min raise on the flop and the check behind on the turn. With the combination of these two plays we should be very confident that we are ahead, and at a minimum we need to be betting the river for value. It's OK to only get two streets of value w TPTK, but one street is certainly pretty suboptimal.

my thought was,

This would be done with the plan to fold against any aggression.
He would have gotten me to fold AK, AJ, A10, all pairs under Q. Even AQ some % of times.
If I Raised his min raise he would folded gotten away from it.
If i called and bet into him on the turn, he would know good chance he is beat and fold.
If I Value bet the river and he called, it still would have cheaper that calling flop turn river.
That plus % of times he gets checks both turn and river form some people, like form me, i thought it could be worth it.
also lots of people would make the river value bet smaller than their usual value bet size after being raised earlier. So cheaper call on the river.

He doesn't check a set to us after he check/raises the flop. So he either has a weaker one pair hand or a draw.

So bet the turn.

No, he doesn't fold KQ here. We could have the flush draw or AK.

Mainly though I'm betting for value against flush draws trying to get a free cards with the x/r, not just KQ.

If we think he's on a draw (which could definitely be played this way), then checking the river to induce a bluff is better. And the times Villain ends up value betting his one pair for us handles a percentage of those times. I don't mind a check/call, but it really depends on whether we put him on a draw vs a weak hand.

Overall, I'm not sure how I feel about Villain's play. I recall mentioning thoughts about this type of play a few years ago when I was just starting NL. I must admit, I don't use it, but I also think there's possibly something to it.

GcluelessNLnoobG

We act first on the turn (i.e. we don't know yet whether he has a weak one pair hand or draw).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Whoops, misread. That does totally change things. I would check, intending to dump AQ to a large turn bet, and bet/fold the river after he checks behind (including when the flush completes).

As with most things in poker: It depends.

If he is unbalanced in his min-raising the flop range then its terrible as we can shove over top of him with all worse than pair hands and let him fold out all his 1p hands and profit nicely. However, if he does this with two pair, sets, strong draws, weak draws, it could be a better strategy.

It also depends on how he expects his villain (in this case, you) to play. If he expects you to call with Q8+ (non two pairs), 99+ (non sets) then he is getting called by more combos of worse hands than better. So it could be for value in his eyes, not realizing that you are dumping all but the top of your range (AQ+ as per your own words) and in which case it is not a good strat as he folds out everything he beats and only gets called by better, and most of the hands that are behidn him have little to no equity (20% or less).

I play with a few guys who do this on the flop with their entire continuing range.

I go for 3 streets w. TPTK! Donk the turn, 1/3-1/2PSB on river.

Raising the flop for pot control is actually an interesting concept if you're deep, but needs a fairly specific set of conditions.

The major one is you need to be in a hand vs a thinking player who isn't one of these who is pure level 1 thinking, so you raise flop, he flats then just donks into you on the turn with any sort of top pair hand, you've achieved nothing.

This is something I do in my home games with Vs I have LOTS of history with, and I think I've employed it at a 1-2 game exactly twice in the last 150 hours or so.

Ah GG the old free card play from limit poker.

If villain has a plan to steal it should be profitable or at least break even. Stack sizes and reads would help. There are a couple regulars in my room that try this at 2/5 - this being high flop aggression. They get a lot of call downs when stacks are deeper.

What if you had a draw instead of a better hand?