Situation: Unremarkable cashgame. I only observed a few hands with the CO so far. He seemes to be one of the better players at the table. I'd say he is solid, if maybe a bit on the weakish side of things.

You could/should have a leading range when you have a range advantage on a certain board. Here you do not (you are calling roughly as tight from SB as he is raising from CO), thus I wouldn't lead any hand.

On the turn you could just go bigger, but nothing particularly wrong with your sizing.

River you could either bet for value or check intending to call a bet. Check/folding is bad IMO simply due to hand strength and your hand is way too good to be turned into a c/r-bluff.

Against villain's chosen sizing folding would be just a disaster.

Thanks.

I try to understand.
Let's say, I'm facing a rather loose player that raises ~50% of BTNs
and the flop comes K47 with a flushdraw. Would this be a board, where I should lead
* TPTK + NLD
* P + NFD + LD
* Two Pair + LD
?

Yes, I think if BTN raises and SB calls, on LLH-boards SB has a range advantage. I haven't seen anybody decent lead there though, and I think it is because it's so hard to realize your equity OOP on a dynamic board and putting many of your strong hands into a leading range makes you very vulnerable overall (think how having a leading range affects your checks). All this is way beyond micro limits, of course, and no worries if you don't fully grasp the concepts.

It is good to understand that when you always check, villain gains no info. When he checks back, he is capping his range (i.e. you gain info). So these check-check scenarios are overall favourable to you, even if sometimes he "gets a free card when you are ahead". I know that at first it's extremely hard to see the big picture when you "get outdrawn because you failed to protect your hand".

Also regarding the actual hand, IF we had a leading range on that flop, I wouldn't advice leading bottom 2, simply because it's too mediocre. What do we even want to do when raised?

I just want to say: You are an incredible teacher and these words are really encouraging.

Fold against almost everyone. From my experience most players in micro cashgames only ever raise a set, the nutlow or the stonecold nuts.

This is actually one of my major leaks. Even though I know it, I still call raises way too often, thinking they could have hands which in reality they simply do not raise or talking myself into some implied odds thing, when my opponent doesn't even have the proper stacksize for such considerations.

Thank you.

That is probably correct. In a way you can gain info like this too, if they just play a very value-heavy strategy and have barely any raises that could be defined as bluffs. Against a more balanced strategy you need to be more balanced yourself.
I am still struggling with this after 13 years of poker.

This flop is a good lead candidate because you do not have a low redraw and your hand is not strong enough for a check-raise, in this situation we are happy to win now

That being said, this is not a bad flop for a strong opening range, the hand you lost to had reasonable equity

If you do lead this flop and are called proceed with caution as you will frequently be only a small favorite on the turn vs akxx for example and have poor visibility assessing your relative strength, also as the board is dry villain can flat his entire range including when you are drawing dead


I do not have a strong feeling on pre-flop, this hand is probably too strong to lay down 5-handed to a single raise in any context

I do think a bluff-raise on the river might be better than a call - villain not raising the turn greatly reduces the chances of him having a good boat

Edit: re amok's range advantage comment, pre-flop raiser range should have more equity on this board than hero defending range BUT I view hero's actual hand as having a small range advantage over villain, thus I prefer a lead

That's a better way to put it.
I don't like check/calling, because what am I going to do on almost any turn? I don't like check/folding, after all, I have a decent made hand and people cbet air often.
Check/raising is imo even worse than check/calling.

I also thought, that having a leading range gives me the option to bluff at certain boards sometimes (eg. 998 rainbow) aswell as getting more value from some of my best hands. I didn't concern myself with balance too much though (what this does to my check/calling range), aside from the fact, I can't really bluff, if I never lead.

Now, both of you make good arguments.
Does any of it change, if we take into consideration that the better players in my games fold on the flop to very small bets pretty often, if they don't connect strongly.

One extreme example (probably a good example of bad balance, too) is this one reg, who actually crushes the game. He simply pots whenever he likes his hand. He gets payed by worse so much that the times, he pots into the better hand don't really matter.
After a while, I started to minbet, whenever he checks to me. He folds more than 80%, no matter the size of the pot.

I'm not sure, I understand this sentence. Do you mean, the dry board makes it easy for my opponent to slowplay/trap with big hands?

What would be an appropriate sizing for such a bluffraise?

Can't edit anymore, I'm thinking a lot about this and somehow it's getting more and more theoretical.
I'm reminded of Phil Galfond: Poker Philosophy 5 - How to exploit a villain's range

* Having more options available seems to be better than having less options. Thus I think, having a leading range is better than not having a leading range.
* This is offset by the fact, that the range has to be well balanced.
* Since we are out of position, mistakes on our side are more costly than usual, so if more options just means more ways to make mistakes, than not having a leading range is better after all.

In summary: If confidant that we can induce more mistakes with a leading range than we are going to make mistakes, it's better to have one.

A concept like this, is probably too advanced for my level of play. But I should at least work on having a check/raising range which is also non existant right now.

Yes, the dry board means villain can slowplay all of his strong hands, including top set slowly because there is not much to protect against, especially with a good redraw like a2/a3

For checkraising, against this particular sizing, I would probably start at 5x

I think this is a solid argument on why this hand is good to be led. IF villain never raises here with a hand we are currently not beating (i.e. we can happily bet-fold) AND we have a leading range, I agree that this is a good hand to lead.

I don't think this is a good approach. Yes, our actual hand is definitely ahead of villain's range, but that shouldn't mean we should be leading IMO. If we start leading when we are ahead of villain's range, we start to have leading ranges in most spots, which will just mess up our ranges and probably cause more trouble than good.

Anyway, I think I understand what you mean. This hand benefits a lot from leading, if certain assumptions are correct. I'd just be very wary of trying to implement something like that into my strategy.

You are correct that c/r:ing is just too ambitious for this hand at this depth. With lower SPR we happily c/r ship it in for value/protection. At this depth I think it's purely a protection raise, which doesn't achieve much, especially if villain flats his whole continuing range (which involves a lot of hands that a stronger than our hand).

You are missing something quite obvious: you can always bluff. When you always start with a check, your bluffs are going to be raises. You don't need to go overboard with the sizing.

Yes, it's a good example of bad balance and unstickiness (not sure if that's a word).

I see nothing wrong with trying some things and sticking to what works, for now. You don't need to play a very theoretical style to beat micro stakes, but at the same time it is important to learn to understand theory, as that will always be the backbone of good play.

OK. I'm a simple player. I don't have a leading range on that board and I don't have a leading range after I have check-called the flop (that is another subject, but the arguments are more or less the same). For our particular hand this strategy is a bit unfortunate, I agree, since we fail to protect our hand (especially when a L turn is checked). You can think of it as a sacrifice for a coherent overall strategy.

Instead of only seeing the downsides (we are not protecting our equity!) try to see the good things that happen when we have such strong hands after check-calling the flop and checking the turn. This also gives us the ability to bluff with the weaker parts of our range on certain runouts.

What I said earlier, that people cbet HHL boards often, isn't really true. I rechecked my perception the last two days (and tried to make check/raises for value). Opponents check behind often and frequently pick up enough on the turn that bluffing becomes a bad idea.

This is a general thing, I'm not certain. A lot of hands there is no preflop raising. If there is say 2 players at the table, that limp/call any 4 cards, should I raise hands like (AJ)4Q, (A2)K9, AA67? I think, they are much better than any 4 cards, but play bad in multiway pots. Right now I limp behind ~60% and fold the rest, mostly depending on my position at the table.

Maybe, my post was ambigous. I'm not trying to be a big micro-winner. I want to understand the theory. The more I learn, the more I become aware of how little I know though.

Yes, I understand this much better now.

All things considered, I'd conclude as follows:
* Against normal players, we sacrifice something for the overall gameplan and just don't have a leading range.
* Against super passive players, we can't really have a check/raising range, thus most of the hands, we would C/R with, become leading hands.
* A hand like this, would normally be sacrificed, but when up against passive dudes, it becomes a good lead.

I think you should push equity with those hands. Yes, maybe they play bad multiway, but so does their range (=100% of hands).

All this sounds very reasonable.