I have 2 hands that are kind of similar. I'm posting separately. Both hands I have marginal strength hands but Im pretty confidant Im ahead.

$2/$5 Live

I ($500) limp with 77 UTG. Cutoff ($350) raises to $25. Button calls, both blinds call and I call. 5 to the flop. Everyone but hero and Cutoff are non factors.

I have a lot of experience with villain. He doesnt raise preflop very often which to me means he raises almost exclusively with big aces and mid to big pps. Hes pretty aggressive post flop.

Flop ($125). 9h 8c 2s. We all check to villain and he checks also.

Turn ($125). 6d. We all check to villain and he bets $45. Folded back to me. I have the straight draw but Im pretty sure my hand is good right now. I dont believe villain would check this flop last to act with an overpair. Im fairly confidant that he has AK/AQ and either thinks hes still ahead since nobody has shown interest or hes hoping everyone will just give up. I also have the draw of course. I call.

River ($215). 2d. What does everyone do here? He could check behind with AK. He could also pound away for about $150 trying to get me to fold A8 or 44 or whatever.

Im trying to decide which a really strong player would do here. Grab his balls and value bet or check/call even if villain bombs away with a big bet.

Gonna be really tough to value bet here, Vs that match your description never make sick hero calls with A high. You have to check here and then decide how confident you are with your read. I think there's certainly some hands that this guy could check behind on the flop that have you beat, but if you are confident and feel that he's capable of a big river bluff, i have no issue with snapping him off. Go with your read.

Same as your other hand. V is probably more likely to bluff than bluff catch with worse.

And, again, if you bet and are raised are you bet/folding or calling off more money?

If I bet, Im folding to a raise. I dont think there's more than 1-2% of 2/5 players that will bluff raise here.

once the turn got heads up and we picked up an oesd did you ever think about c/r'ing? I always prefer to raise and try to take it down when I pick up equity rather than fish for cards and hope they hit. He would have probably cbet if he had a big PP anyway so we should have FE.

as played, since he raises exclusively with big aces and big PP's, he's most likely checking back ace high but since you have a lot of experience with this villain, does he bluff the river with ace high? If he's that passive pre they are usually passive post.

This is what I was looking for....and the answer is No, I didnt think about check raising. The purpose of a check raise would be to make him fold a hand that beats me, correct? I dont think he has a hand that beat me so Im really not fishing for any cards to hit. I would pretty much have to shove since my call of $45 makes the pot $215 already and he has about $285 left

Other purpose to raising is to get him to fold hands with equity however small. If he has AK we just let him get there. If any high card comes we could be behind.

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I liked the idea of a check/raise on the turn. No point in betting now. If he's folding on a turn raise, he's folding to a river bet. As played, check/call. I highly doubt he's calling with anything you beat. If he might take a stab, let him.

Does anyone like a blocking bet here on the river? Hardly anyone does it live and I cant figure out why.

If I make a small enough blocking bet he might even look me up with AK/AQ. I think the pot is too big compared to stack sizes for him to even consider bluff raising.

(I need to think more about the turn check raise)

I like the blocking bet much more here than in your other hand for a few reasons.

1. You beat a lot more in this hand, including all A-high and some random pocket pairs and 6x. So you're more likely to get value from worse.
2. V in the other hand is a LAGtard, while this V is just aggressive post-flop. LAGtard is more likely to bluff-raise your blocking bet. Also much more likely to stab at pot if checked to. If we check to this V and he bets again, we're likely beat. The other V we can bluff-catch more.

I think players don't like blocking bets because they end up leveling themselves into calling a raise because they think they made an obviously weak bet that induced an opponent to play back at them.

How much of his river betting range includes hands that can call a check raise?

Why would you block bet vs. A high? You have showdown value - so take the hand to showdown.

This. Not sure what we are blocking? Don't we want him to stab at it if we think we are ahead? I'd much rather check/call against this guy.

Because its hard to take the hand to showdown OOP. If I was IP I could check behind easily. Being OOP against an aggro post flop player its much tougher to get to showdown. I dont want to make a hero call for $125 or more so why not throw out a stupidly small bet that he cant do anything with?

And who ever said poker was easy? Welcome to OOP poker.

So you would rather block bet something small so villain folds A high rather than make the tough call with tons of SDV and likely net yourself an additional 25 BB's?

And you claim to be a 10+ BB/hour winner? This is a textbook check/call.

So far thats what Ive done, but I posted the hand to see if I should be doing something differently. "Claim" Im a 10+BB winner? Here we go again with the accusations. Just because I do something differently than you do, that doesnt make it wrong. Have you considered that maybe you are doing something wrong? Or that theres more than one way to play winning poker?

New poster here. Please be gentle.

I overbet turn to take it down. If called overbet river. CO is slowplaying aces a lot and we have uncapped range.

As played bet/fold $5 OTR. If raised we are def. beat.

WTF?......thats my way of being gentle

I'm pretty sure this is not serious. If it is, please explain why. If not, please read the stickies. Trolling strat threads in this forum is not allowed.

Sure, I would certainly be willing to consider alternative lines when the situation calls for it, but this is not one of those situations. This is like "Fundamentals of Poker 101."

You've got a solid bluff catcher OOP against an aggressive post flop player. This is an ideal situation to be in. Doing anything other than checking is sabotaging your own chances at winning a very large extra bet.

From what I can gather, you are extremely averse to playing hands OOP which I have no idea why. Crushers crush not because they only play hands in position, but because they know how to play the right hands OOP and extract the maximum amount of value.

Imagine if the positions were reversed, villain would check his A high on the river to you and you would likely check back your SDV hand and scoop the pot. So being in position here you don't have the ability to extract as much value as if you were OOP. So use that to your advantage and turn this into one of the "big winners" of the night rather than just a small/medium pot.

Some of the biggest pots I have won were when I was OOP and gave a villain the ability to bluff. They aren't always the easiest calls, but they are so much more massively +EV than doing some fishy blocking bet because you are afraid of what villain may do.

Checking gives your villain an opportunity to make a mistake. Betting does not. Betting at its core is either for value (to get called by worse) or as a bluff (to fold out better). Betting this river accomplishes neither.

That makes sense and I may try it next time Im in a spot like this. It does make poker a lot tougher than it really has to be though and the easier the decisions are the less mistakes a person will make so I have to weigh the two factors of possibly making more money on the hand or possibly making a bad mistake.

In this case, I bet $30. I didnt expect him to call but he did and he mucked when I showed my hand. If I had checked, he may have checked behind and I made $30 less, or he may have bet $100-$125 and I may have sucked it up and called and made an extra $70-$95......or I might have not trusted my read and chickened out and folded and made $245 less.

A few days ago I folded the winner in a hand against a different guy. The pot was $300 at the river. I checked with what I thought might be the best hand but was not sure at all and he bet $150. I folded and he showed a 3 barrel bluff. If I had led out into him with a small bet on the river Im pretty sure he would've folded and I would've made an extra $300.

My math may be off here but if I check / call the $150 I have to be right about 4 out of 5 times, to make the same $300 per hand that make I make in one just one hand if I block bet the river and he folds (as opposed to me making a mistake by check/folding like I did). That doesn't account for the times that I make a small bet and he calls and wins though.

You are really overthinking this. You shouldn't expect to get hero called by Ace high, especially when you are betting a suck bet amount like $30 rather than a pot sized "bluffy" looking bet. If you are going to bet go big (which I don't advise) or just check/call.

You have to make a read and go with it. Either you think you are ahead and you call or you think you're behind and fold. Don't let villain's bet size alter your decision. Replay the hand in your head and determine if his line makes sense.

Two nights ago I raised AKs over a straddle and 4 calls to $30 from the SB (was playing 1/2), only the straddler called. Pot was $70, flop QQ2cc went check/check, turn was a 6 and I check/called $35, river was a 5 and I checked, villain shoved for $225 into a $140 pot and I snap called him because his line made no sense for a value hand (he wasn't sophisticated enough to play Qx like that and it's 1/2 after all).

Villain flipped over JTo and I sent him packing. Now if I had bet at any point in that hand I would have either caused villain to fold or opened myself up to being bluff raised by villain repping Qx. But I used my positional "disadvantage" to my advantage and allowed villain an opportunity to bluff and then analyzed what his bet sizing meant and if it made any sense (which it didn't).

That hand alone turned what would have been a miserable card dead -150 BB session into a break even session and the only meaningful hand I won occurred with A high because I allowed my villain to make mistakes rather than folding him out with a bet and allowing him to play perfectly versus me.

if you are going to raise for value, you should have CRed the turn. to like 155.

as played, just check it to him and hope that he donks off another 65 or something. but if you bet out, he is always just going to fold and you are not going to make another dime.

I love to bluff raise lolbad blocker bets.