Quote:
Originally Posted by commas,are,funny
I used to love when my opponents would do stuff like this (no offense, just honesty). Through their eyes I guess it looked like savvy poker, but the reality is it just ends up being chip-spewing in a very small pot with a weak hand and little to no chance of success.
The preflop raise is weak in my opinion, and I'd chuck it unless the blinds are money sieves. Sure, Q4s might have an equity edge straight-up through the river against random hands but you never get to the river straight through and on the internediate streets it plays much worse than say a low suited connector or semi-connector.
Flop check doesn't accomplish anything, the reason you raise in the field against the blinds is to take it down when you both miss; you missed, now bet to take it down. If you're going to check something back it's A3 on 9TJ flop, not this one.
Turn raise is terrible. He's expressed an interest in the hand now by betting into you, so he's either outright bluffing or protecting what he thinks is the best hand. If he's bluffing, there's a high chance it's with something worse than Q high, so you're basically committing three big bets between turn and river to confirm this, the last of which he won't call.
If he's betting to protect what he thinks is a made hand, and you're trying to bluff him, you need him to believe you somehow have a piece of all this, that you checked back A2 or something and are now raising 4th pair and betting it on the river too. If he's got a hand he thinks is best, there's not a single hand you are realistically repping with a flop check and turn raise that beats his holding, whatever it may be. So he'll call you down and you lose the maximum with your line, and in a super-small pot to begin with no less. Waste of chips.
Your unspoken premise is that you could have gotten a hand he's betting for value/protection on the turn to lay down. Look in your heart and ask, does your line and the dry board texture look at all convincing to your opponent for this to happen?
I mostly agree with the above.
The main exception involves the Q4s. You definitely don't chuck that when folded to on the button. Offsuit I would fold. Suited, no way.
The rest of what you wrote is pretty close to my thinking in the situation.
Regarding checking back the flop against one opponent, the question you need to ask yourself is, "How likely am I to be check-raised here?"
If the answer is, "Not that likely", then you should always c-bet, because the upside to doing so is threefold -- you may win the pot right there, you may run into something on the turn and allow you to get 3 streets of value, and you can check the turn back and basically get two cards for the price of one small bet.
Too many people these days are checking back the flop too often, because that seems to be the sexy play in LHE nowadays (if there is such a thing).
One other problem with checking back is that it exposes that you don't have a big piece of the flop (most likely), and this allows people to exploit you on future streets when you do actually catch something.
For example, let's say the board is T74, and I have T7 on the BB. I attempt to check-raise, and the BB checks behind. If a big card hits (Q or higher), I can pretty reliably check-raise the turn, because I know that my opponent either hit top pair or is going to try and represent he hit top pair. (On a side note, if you're against a guy who checks behind boards like that often, it's probably better just to fire out on the flop.)
In general, I don't like telling my opponent I missed, unless the possibility of being check-raised on the flop is high enough to where giving away that information is still worth it.