When you are pretty sure you have the best hand. example JJ on a AJ5 board. how would you play it from the SB and button. Would your action change depending where you sit? is it best to check and let someone catch up or try to bluff?

It really depends on the situation, the villain your competing with bets every time you check to him, you want to check a lot of the time. If your the button, you Get to see what happens In front of you, and you can make a more educated decision no matter what the other player does, which is why position is so important, and why the small blind is much less profitable than the button. Your going to have to learn your bet out and check raise patterns from playing, but they both have a place in the game. Good luck!

Jbessy is right, if you are in the SB and so out of position, whether or not to lead out is all opponent dependant. If your are up against a player who continuation bets alot, you would definetly want to check and give him the opportunity to throw a bet out there. If you are against a loose passive type, who likes to call bets rather than make them, donk betting for value here makes a lot of sense.

From the button we have the benefit of seeing what our opponents do ahead of us. If it checks round to us, at the microstakes, I would probably just put out a raise as slowplaying at these stakes tends to be a waste of time and only allows your opponent a chance to draw out on you. On the AJ5 board, assuming it was a rainbow flop, there is not a ton of draws, in fact, really only a potential straight if an opponent has QK. On a two-tone or monotone board with cards of the same suit, this would be a completely different story and we would definetly want to bet to protect our hand.

Hope this helps

The board texture and the number of/ and nature of your opponents is very important. The more opponents, the more important it is to bet - because it is more likely that one of them will pay you off. The more likely the board is to have hit someone's range, the more likely they will pay you off - the better it is to bet.

Remember - a check/raise is a sign of great strength. You don't necessarily want to give off a sign of great strength when you actually have great strength. If you bet into an AJ5 rainbow board, you will likely get paid by anyone with an ace. If you check/raise you will only get called by very big hands. Against these big hands it doesn't matter what you do - the money will (should) get in no matter how you play. You want to extract as much value as possible from the top pair type of hands - and often leading out is the best way to do it. If someone raises you - then you can decide whether or not you think they will call a re-raise, or if you want to leave them with the initiative and let them stack off on their own. That will depend on stack sizes, etc.

Too many things that dictate how I would play the hand in OPs post (things like past actions (did v. raise and we call?? Or did he limp/call etc), stack sizes, villian, texture, image, even things as simple as the stakes and so on).

However, at the micros, I would default to betting for fat value (so long as im not donk betting - I dislike doing it HU. If a bet would be a donk, then I would go ahead and x/r) - this is how you beat the micros - betting for fat value.

At the nosebleeds, there are a massive number of factors that change the most +ev line. But they are lost upon your average microstakes reg who are thinking "Loz, I haz top pair" and will proceed to call down 3 streets of big bets.

With JJ on a AJ5 board you pretty much always want to bet/raise whenever possible. You're usually only going to get paid by players with an Ace and you don't want to lose any streets of value by giving them the opportunity to check behind if they're passive/nitty.

But as others have said, this is highly situational. If villain is prone to overshoving flops when it's checked to him then by all means, check to him. OTOH, if villain open raised with a very wide range than includes a bunch of non-Ace hands you may not want to donk into him and instead let him make a very standard cbet so at least you get that out of him and don't give him a reason to fold when he doesn't have an Ace.

At 2NL, I'm check-raising oop (I've never been a big fan of donkbets with monster hands) and re-raising in position with that flop (which is damn near perfect for fat value imo). It is amazing how often players don't give you credit for a monster when you check-raise. Many villains can't fold top pair (let alone 2 pr) or the gutshot with KT or QT, and often they'll call off their whole stack on later streets.

nice info about check raises. thanks