If you're that confident that V1 always/almost always leads out strong hands on turn after flop checks through, and that his x/r is mostly semi-bluffs, then fine, gii.

But keep in mind that if V1 calls suited gappers pre, he has a lot of strong hands. If you add in sets, I'm pretty sure you'll find more 2pair+ hands than big draws (straight/flush combo draws)... If V1 folds suited gappers pre, then he's likely to not have that many big draws anyway... Basically what I'm saying is his preflop range should create more value (2pair+) hands on the turn texture than it creates big draws.

So in order to be correct, you not only have to believe that V1 is very very likely to play his big draws like this, or that he is very likely to play his weaker draws (8-9 outs) like this (which live players almost never do), but also that he is very very unlikely to play his value-hands like this.

Why do you think he is more likely to play draws than value hands like this? He does not sound like a "thinking player" if that's true.

Not betting flop is somewhere between bad and really bad

I mean betting flop is an obvious point of contention in this thread, so it would be a bit helpful to get some reasoning.

There's lots of reasons why flop bet is best, one of the main reasons is that you fold out their high card equity like KQ, AJ etc. Too costly to give up all that free equity.

Its a hand like this where player history and knowing tendencies comes into play. Making simple observations over time can help in situations like this. It certainly appears there is a little of this going both ways between you and V1.

I think pre-flop is fine, no changes. A case can be made on the flop to bet but you also have plenty of equity to allow for checking and seeing a turn. If it checks through that's fine and you can certainly call easy enough as long as action doesn't get crazy.

The turn bet seems a little suspect but that could be the point. Your hand appears to be more in line with AK/AQ and maybe JJ based on how its played out so far. V2 probably has a piece but not big according to your read on him. V1 being a semi-thinking player probably thinks you are vulnerable based on his read on you. Your read on him says he has a piece but not a huge piece. His range hits the board better and more often than yours. With regards to the turn 3! shove, its a bold move Cotton, lets see if it pays off. You're not dead to any hand and your read says V2 cant call off 1k unless he smacked the straight or hit a set on flop/turn. Your read/observations says he is unlikely to have those hands. As long as your read is correct, I like jamming to move him off his hand and isolate on V1.

V1 could have 2pr and he could also have a combo draw like 87 or 76. Maybe he has the flush/straight draw mix. I don't know how often he will fold here with A10/K10. Axss might be able to find a r/c as well, especially A8ss or A7ss, if he plays those hands OOP. I think V1 calls more than he folds in this spot.

Not sure about the long responses...flop bet is terrible, good check back. Too many hands that beat you, you're OOP so later streets are too hard to play without knowing where you're at. Turn bet is ok bet more tho. We're betting for value with the presumption the other players would have bet better hands on the flop. Horrible reshove after the ck/r; 75 got there, and if the player was going to be super aggressive with a draw they probably would have bet flop. Unless you have a read they might get aggressive after you check flop, give them credit in a multiway pot. Heads up is a lot different.


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To the people saying bet flop...quote unquote TAG players at LLSNL play way too many hands preflop and are playing a lot of Tens and will peel with crappy hands like shouldn't, like QJ. Our 9 blockers are really good here and I can see a bet 3w with decent reads, but four handed is a lot of players and we should be conservative in this spot without a dynamic that gives us a lot of confidence in our bet. I don't see an incentive to bet and making a profit at LLSNL is all about being very judicious when betting with marginal hands.


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Flop check is good. Check turn and evaluate if someone bets. Bet/jam seems pretty ambitious IMO. What bluffs does he have?

Bonus points being we can bet those same high cards on the turn once we've narrowed the field down to 0-1 callers putting pressure on Tx while still getting value from the pair + draws.

Narrowing this hand down and folding out random overcard equity seems so painfully obvious to me that I'm puzzled at the pushback.

1. Do we likely have the best hand? Yes.

2. Should we be giving free cards to three villains? No.

3. Can we thin the field with an extremely moderate bet size while getting called by worse? Yes.

You're thinking ahead for a bad plan. We don't want to barrel multiple streets with second pair here. If we were heads up, sure, bet bet check or bet bet bet is going to be the best line against the majority of villain ranges. Here you are taking a best case scenario and cherry picking the instances that are profitable for us. The value we get from cbetting the flop and barreling the turn is marginal compared to what we lose when we're wrong. Compounding this problem is our position and the fact that ranges are wide enough to make playing the turn/river profitably tough in practice. There are few good cards for our hand. So a lot of times when we have the best hand on the turn or river we end up surrendering the pot anyway. Yes, ranges are wide enough and there are enough draws to theoretically make this hand profitable if we could play close to perfectly and have a ton of information. But betting this flop OOP four ways with the vague reads OP has given us shows no clear path to long term profitability. I see where you're coming from but you should not in any way be puzzled that people are reluctant to cbet. Do we likely have the best hand? Maybe, but we really don't know and our equity against the ranges of three other players is not great. Should we give a free card? A free card is not good for our hand, but the question is "is betting or checking more profitable in the long run," and sometimes that means we take passive lines and allow worse hands to catch up. Will a bet narrow the field? Once again, maybe, but no one would be surprised if hero bet and everyone called. These aren't the right questions and I hate to be trite but it's a classical straw man type argument which has little to stand on.


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9's are the only turn we like? What about the four 7's that give us a straight?

I'm not saying we have to bet the turn, I'm saying we have the option to based on callers and board texture. There are way too many variables that depend on what happens on the flop to analyze in depth our turn play, but using moderate sizing ensures we risk the minimum when value cutting ourself while giving us the best chance at taking down the pot when we have the best of it.

I deleted that part of my post because I'm mobile and didn't want to argue about the particulars of which cards are good and which are bad. My point is that most are bad.

And that's the thing. Betting the turn IS going to be hard, yet we're almost always seeing a turn. That's what I'm saying about the flop cbet--you're hoping you can protect a poor hand but there's no real plan for the turn/river.

The best cbet betsizing is interesting to consider and I agree a moderate bet is best if your plan is to fold out overcards. But you're getting so many calls on average that the plan isn't good, even if the betsizing you're considering makes sense.

Advocating for a flop cbet underestimate the issues with our position and the playability of our hand against 3 players. I'd rather have QJ here--a hand that can turn the nuts or at least top pair. But even QJs I am checking here because I do not believe this is a profitable cbet without very good equity. 2nd pair and an inside straight draw 4w OOP. Not great.


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mainly turned flush draws. 77 as well. he might even be capable of turning AsXx into a bluff. I just think he is capable of attacking my range as it looks quite weak - meaning he can be turning some random hands into bluffs as well. think many of villains are just not really strategically choosing their bluffing hands all the time.


@johnnybuz i understand the merits to betting. obviously the first thing i think of on the flop is whether or not I should bet to protect equity. but imo its so hard to play later streets OOP on a million different turns. i see a lot of merits to betting flop, but im kind of annoyed at people saying stuff like "checking flop is somewhere between atrocious and abhorrent." like there are merits to betting and checking. yes we can bet flop to protect equity, and we have the best hand a fair amount, but we have 2 blockers to the main draw that we can extract value from and bloat a pot that will be very hard to play OOP if we get a caller on a ton of turns.

Forgive me if you've answered this earlier in the thread, but what makes you think he might be bluffing other than your range assessment? I think you can justify jamming here in a live game but it's really player dependent and you didn't give much info in your original post.


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i didnt give much info because i dont have a ton. ive played with him a couple times before. we've had some short conversations about poker and he seems to take it fairly seriously - uses words like blockers/etc, but i just dont really have a lot of specifics. so really, my thought process is:

1) I think he leads a lot of his value hands than x/r here given that the 4s is a fairly innocuous card and the action checked through on the flop (and by he, i just mean most people would lead here more often than x/r)
2) he is a player that i presume to be capable of some bluffs (younger player, takes it seriously, thinking, etc)
3) my range looks weak
4) I also have the nut blockers which is pretty relevant meaning that it is very unlikely he is being super trappy with the nuts

button clicking/fancy moves will always have some risk to it and will always be spewy in some eyes. so i really just posted this to see if there's any merit in my thought process, or if like 100% of the forums would just say "spew, dont ever do that again."

also flop bet has been a good discussion.

Yah our position sucks but that's the cost of doing business by raising 99 UTG. If you are raising 99 UTG the assumption is you are not strictly set mining and will be fighting for pots postflop. If you are playing this hand as a set-or-forget hand then what is the point of raising pre and risking being 3bet and forced to fold? Just limp/call and play a disguised hand with good relative position.

Btw, I don't think checking flop is terrible or abhorrent or anything like that - I just think betting is slightly better with this specific hand which happens to be the worst hand I would value bet on this flop.

You say he's TAGish but will get out of line and talks about blockers at the table. From my experience these players tend to play pretty loose pf and may push marginal hands post flop because they rate their own skills highly and tend to underrate other factors in the hand.

That said, going for a check check/raise bluff would be a bold move, even for an egomaniac. Your range does look weak, and so does the other caller's range, but if he's bluffing why did he raise so small? If the player behind has a draw they may have odds to call, and you might call with a draw and overs because his bet looks so weak. Furthermore he knows his hand looks like a bluff and yet he raises enough for someone to call or jam over. Hmm. My guess is he got lucky on the turn and is taking a very greedy check / weird small bluffy looking turn raise.

Ultimately you have to go with your reads and feeling at the time but id probably let this one go. Then slide down in my seat and hope he pitches his cards too high in the air. Lol



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I dunno man. I think it's pretty big mistake. It's a flop action so the amount of BB mistake it actually costs is low, compared to a river or turn mistake; it's still a large error. Also a lot of the reasons people are giving to check flop are huge errors in thinking and will cause much greater mistakes in other facets of play.

To those people saying we shouldn't bet flop because turn and riv is hard to play oop after we bet: do you think turn and riv is going to be easier to play with 3 other people?

Turn plays much easier after betting flop.

What hands would you check the flop with here? Or are you giving up 100% of the time you check? Sounds like you are.
I understand that any JQKA are bad cards. So thats 16 cards out of 47. So a third of the time, if we check flop and it checks through, we probably should check turn as well.
Two thirds of the time when overcards dont come, we should probly bet the turn, mainly to deny equity(like you said) and to get value from worse. The difference is that now that their ranges are weaker. Another plus is that we now have a weaker range and are very near the top, allowing us to get value ott, whereas many of these worse hands fold otf.

Denying equity is important, but its far from the only thing. Our hand simply doesnt measure up well against other hands that call a flop bet. It *does* however measure up well to hands that check flop and call a turn bet. We need to shape our opponents range to perform badly against our hand. Im firmly in the check flop camp

When we check this flop and face a bet from 1 of the villains we really don't have the defend that much, a very, very small % due to the pot being multiway. Always folding after we check isn't even that bad. I'd rather check a hand like AT, KT, QT, JT with the BDFD.

How does our hand not measure well against the range of hands that call a flop bet? Against everything that beats us that isn't 97 (which we heavily block) we have 6 outs and the majority of the time we have the best hand on the flop, even against 3 other ranges. We can also get called by a lot of hands like 9x, 7x, 6x w/ a gutter, 8x w/ a gutter, QJ, J9 etc.

What I'm saying is that of course denying equity isn't the only reason to bet the flop; I never said that. However, it is one of the main reasons in this scenario which pushes a flop bet well ahead of a flop check.

When our villain or villains check/folding range has a tonne of equity (two overs have somewhere between 25%-28% equity) against our specific holding, and we can get called by worse, and we're pretty uncapped, it's going to very rarely be a mistake to bet, and very often a huge mistake to check.

i dont really get this statement. AT we can clearly value bet as we expect JJ+ to 3! pre, and AT can get value from way more hands i.e. KT/QT/JT/T9/99. bet for value as well as deny equity.

if I open ATs preflop and get this flop, i am never checking this flop.

^ as someone who plays 2/5 somewhat regularly I'm happy to hear that. It's one of the many major leaks of regs who bet hands they shouldn't and also check hands they shouldn't. This is one of those spots.

Now, you're not going to lose that much by doing it. Checking hands in spots like these aren't going to cause you to be a losing player; you're just going to win less.

Lol man...you are really off base here. Take a look at Pf calling ranges including all broadways 4 handed. That's why we don't bet 99 and we absolutely are betting AT 100% of the time, basically for all the reasons you are saying to bet 99.


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Nah it's just funny to me how people come on these forums with just the biggest egos and post these condescending comments.

There are merits to betting this flop and checking it with 99 4-way.

As for AT vs 99 on T86. AT is better and much more clear bet. We deny equity vs KQJ, similarly to 99. Biggest of all we extract value from KT/QT/JT/T9/99 which will be a much bigger leak of llsnl players as opposed to debates like this. Lastly, 99 has major blockers to the most obvious draws while AT does not.

Not sure why that is so horrendous and calls for statements like "'man I'm so happy to hear what you say and need you at my tables." Thread is just an ego fest.