As a rule I'm not good at picking turn cards to barrel. Of course I can think of hands they would have to fold and hand they're never folding, but I don't have a good feel for the relative balance in their range.

This hand is from a game on a Saturday afternoon while I'm waiting for an O8 game to start. In my experience this game is tougher than NL games used to be, with people knowing to fold to tight players' preflop raises and not pay off multiple streets with weak holdings. However, they tend to be "standard" passive postflop, too, without a lot of bluff raising.

It's my first hand at this table and I don't really recognize anyone.

$3-5 quasi-no-limit, $500 max bet, 3 raises max per round

Stacks:

I have $200
BB covers

Preflop
I have 22 in the CO

All fold to me
I raise to $15
Button and SB fold
Youngish Asian male in BB calls.

This was a little absurd because for some reason I thought I was in a $1-2 game and tried to raise to $7. The dealer asked, "I'm sorry, seventy?" and I straightened my raise size out, but hopefully it made me look like an idiot or at least unaccustomed to playing in this game (even though that's not really true).


Flop (2 players, $27)
AK7

Check
I bet $20

I figure this is a good flop to cbet, because I can represent an ace or perhaps a king. I hope to get folds from bigger pocket pairs and perhaps sevens. I'm indifferent to getting calls from naked flush draws and gutshots, since it could be hard to get to showdown and they have so many outs against me. I plan to turn my deuces into a bluff by betting again on most blank turn cards, representing a strong ace and hopefully folding out kings and perhaps weak aces.

Turn (2 players, $67)
AK7 K

Check
?????

What's my line for the turn and river?

I would just give up at this point. If he has a king or a flush draw you are obviously beat and he is probably not going to fold any aces because it is a BTN vs BB pot he will suspect a barrel. Also, if he has aces with a weak kicker there are a fair number of outs that give him a better kicker.

Take a free card. Maybe the RVR will be a deuce and he will have a king or flush and pay you off.

Cbet's okay. I think turn is just give up time with your stack. There are better hands to barrel with.

I don't expect folds from AX. I think that makes the difference in betting again or not.
Plus people will call with any diamond hoping to bink. That includes QJ QT JT and random pp's that decided to call you otf.
As it is unlikely you're firing a third barrel just check it.

You say people fold weak holdings in this game but then say you don't recognise anyone? Seems contradictory. I think I'd at least go to my default readless and not expect folds from the above hands ott.

Raise bigger pre, give up flop.

Don't play with 40bb.

Why do you assume I'm one of the best players at the table or that the deeper stacks are to the right of me? (Both of these should be factors in choosing a stack size.) Nevertheless, thank you for the suggestions.

Incidentally, your namesake gave me my biggest laugh in reading The Life of Pi while spending over a week in the hospital.

Never mind. From reading your other posts, you seem to just want to argue for the sake of arguing, and not of any practical use.

That's actually not true. Even though I'm not that great at NL, I understand enough of the theory that I'm confident that covering deep stacks to the left and shallower stacks to the right is pretty -EV, even though virtually everyone recommends buying in as deep as possible regardless. Why would you volunteer to play extra money OOP that you can't play very often IP?

I consider that a practical application of theory, but you may differ.

I played a 20bbs stack once at a 1/2 game for fun. It was amazing, and very profitable too.