Let's say in some fantasy world where a villain folds 66 on this flop. After putting $50 in pre.

He is going to improve 4.3% of time on turn. Should he not improve. We likely are going to induce a call on turn at least 5% of time.

Giving free card or cheap card to pocket pairs is not end of world. Especially if it helps induce an extra street of value.

Betting is fine. Checking is fine. But this is best candidate to check for a lot of reasons. If you don't feel the need to okay like a scared bot.

Don't check the flop. It's too trappy of a line after your pre action. Bet $80 on the flop. Jam the turn. If he hits a two outer on you on the flop or turn, so be it.

Betting flop 95%+, can only imagine checking if I flop quads or a full house.

I would bet more than most here as I really don't agree with the trendy "bet less than your pf 3 bet amount as a c-bet" move.

What don't you agree with? I would definitely be betting 1/3 pot on this board. If I had decided I was going to bet my whole range as suggested.

+1. V is calling here with any pair. It’s the perfect spot to bet for value and I would be cbetting here with near 100% of my 3b range. The only hand I could consider checking here for catchup value is QQ.

1/3 flop, check turn on this bone dry texture, bet big on river if checked too or jam over his raise.

Line I would take.

That's why we should bet and get the value now.

If a K or an A peels on the turn then he isn't putting another cent in the pot if he holds 99.

Also, the flop is the street where I see V's overvalue their hand the most in 3-bet pots. The super fish could easily check/jam middle pairs because they don't "believe you" or they think you are being a bully and they spazz out. I see this move a decent percentage of the time. Especially from bad Asian players. The more "aggro" you get the more they play back and do really dumb sh*t.


Plus, we should be targeting Qx as well. V can easily have AQ, KQs and QJs in this spot.

I am on board betting value hands at super high rate here. And denying equity. But this is spot where we don't have to deny equity and can add some balance to our exploitative play.

No need to target Qx. Easily get value and likely stacks in vs Qx on next 2 streets.

This hand for most part is over on flop. Whoever is ahead now is likely going to be ahead on river. If we have any chance to widen villains stack off range. I want to do it.

Every V in the world loves to "put Hero on AK" in a 3bet pot when no A or K hits the flop. Most Vs will not fold a pair OTF. If they do, then they weren't going to put in any more $ unless they hit their two outer, so it's fine to fold them out.

It's also a whole range bet OTF because double and triple barrelling will print $ against most of V's range when we are bluffing.

It's a super slam dunk bet on the flop AINEC.

+1.

Especially vs a 1/3, almost nobody here is folding a pair, even as weak as 22/44 if they have that.

Not folding pair, on turn or river either.

Per usual everyone who can't fathom checking a pair on this flop. Is also torching money with 100% cbet frequency on this flop.

So calling with any pair is super profitable for villain. Even if they are losing this specific time.

Whoa whoa whoa. Which is it? Are we exploiting villain by value betting at a super high rate, or is our cbet range terminally weak and villain can own us by calling with any pair?

Your take here is pretty mystifying, you accuse people who don't want to check of "torching money with 100% cbet frequency on this flop", but if you think our cbet range is weak, you should want obvious value bets in our betting range. Like your advice here is literally "Our cbet range is weak and villain will call with any pair, therefore check AA". Huh?

You would also appear to agree with us that betting the flop is the best way to represent a bluff, since so many people cbet too many hands. If we check, V would have to be braindead to think we have air. It just looks like we have JJ/TT, or maybe something like KQs/QJs, or QQ.

And yes of course we're going for three streets here, wtf.

You range bet small because you extract immediate value with your value hands and give yourself flexibility with AK/AQ/KQ (if you 3bet that). You can always get stacks in with a b/b/b line so there’s no reason to go crazy on the flop.

Check flop crowd hasn’t provided a meaningful argument other than balance. And balance for the sake of balance while preventing yourself from extracting max value is a pretty silly argument to make imo.

Maybe if you bet ****ty small sizes just for the sake of it.

Exactly.

Your recommended sizing is zero, just for the sake of it, lol.

Also not sure how you expect to get called over 3 streets

That sounds like a pretty good argument for triple barreling bluffs (which starts with a small flop sizing).

Point is fairly simple.

Majority of guys reading this have 2 major leaks.

1. is they cbet way to high of %. More than evident by reading posts.

2. Checking ranges on majority of boards are way to weak. (or don't exist)

Fact that very few even entertain thought of checking AA on this flop is proof of that.

I am not even remotely balanced or close to ever trying GTO. But semblance of balance has payed huge dividends in 2018.

So answer to your question is. I am value bething majority of my value hands. Especially the ones that are susceptible to over cards.

But see/use merits of checking some strong value hands for balance and deception.

Meh not when everyone is expecting calls and river will be a pretty small spr unless turn is awful size

You keep going back and forth on this. Is it easy to make people fold with a bet/bet/bet line or do you expect to get called down?

FWIW the correct answer is "people sometimes call down and sometimes fold and we are indifferent to what they do because we have a balanced aggressive range".

You don't want a balanced checking range here, because you want to be betting most of the time, because you have a range advantage. My checking range is all bluffcatchers here, i.e. TT, JJ, QJs. It doesn't need AA in it.

This is the weird thing, you identify a range which may actually be too weak, i.e. our cbet range, but then in the name of "balance" you want to move a strong hand out of our cbet range, further weakening it, and into our check range, where there are no issues. It's a solution in search of a problem.

If our cbet range is still too weak, the solution is to threebet less preflop. It's not to threebet and then go passive with AA postflop because we've suddenly discovered we are too weak on what should be a good flop for us.

Who cares? If you 3bet JJ+/AJ+/KQ+ pre then you can range bet flop small, size up turn depending on board texture/value hands and shove river on J+ boards with value and bluffs and x back low boards where you didn’t improve.

You’ve got tons of value combos going b/b/b and tons of “value” bluffs where there is a J/Q/K/A on the board when you have AJ+/KQ+ that you’re going to obliterate any range that is call/call pre and x/c x/c x/c post.

3 betting in this spot is printing cash. Would rather 3 bet wider and not play like a goon post.

Johnny is only person in the thread with good postflop strategy.

Rest seem to be standard 3bet. Cbet always regardless of board.

Simply suggesting there are other chioces. Including checking some flops both in position and OOP.

You have given zero evidence why checking flop is bad.

We betting all our air here too? Or is our 3bet range strickly 10+ and AK?

I'm pretty sure my postflop strategy is identical to Johnny here so I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing between us.

Checking flop is bad because the less value bets you have, the less bluffs you can have! Like, do I have to take this back to why aggressive poker is, generally, fundamentally better than passive poker?

I don't get it, this is the conversation we're having right now:

mikko: Boy I sure love threebetting, only problem is sometimes I'm cbetting too much and overbluffing and opponents call me down with any pair.
ChrisV: I love threebetting and being aggressive too, hey if our cbetting range is getting a bit weak why don't we put more value in it?
mikko: Not so fast, why don't we run our value through super sick trap check lines instead?

Like WHAT???? This is how poker works, if you feel like your cbet range is not value-heavy enough, you put more value in it. So that's my answer to why checking flop is bad. I'm still waiting for an answer for why checking flop is good. Like, there was this:

Your claim here is that LLSNL meta is such that if you threebet pre vs 5 players, flop Q33 and check behind HU, you look super weak and V will start hammering out bluffs at you. I can't disprove this, given it's a claim about meta, but you are definitely the only person ITT who thinks this is true.