Hello everybody.

Here I am again with a pretty standard spot. Villain in the hand is playing rather nitty, 15/13/1.3, with a 3bet percentage of 6.9 on only 154 hands. Not a lot of history going on.

I think the preflop call is rather borderline since he wasn't overly aggressive so far so I wasn't really sure if I could (semi)-bluff him profitably very often.

When he checks the flop, he either has completely missed with AK or something that he bluffed preflop with, is getting a little trappy with QQ+ (although I don't think that's in his playbook), or has some small showdown value that will at least call one street (JJ-88), maybe more.

Should we
1) bet flop, give up
2) bet flop, barrel
3) check flop behind, bet blank turn and barrel most rivers (even safe cards)
4) check flop behind, bet blank turn and give up.

If I have Qx, KK+ here I am always betting this flop, so maybe I should bet here as well because this is perceived a little stronger?

But if I check behind he will put his hand face up very often (I don't think he is the type to get tricky on the flop very often, so that's probably irrelevant), and if he peels one with JJ-88 on the turn and folds the river, I get one street of value.

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer
SB ($50)
BB ($34.90)
UTG ($50.75)
UTG+1 ($125)
CO ($52)
Hero ($50)

Dealt to Hero 8 9

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $1.50, SB raises to $4, fold, Hero calls $2.50

FLOP ($8.50) Q 3 5

SB checks, Hero checks

TURN ($8.50) Q 3 5 4

SB checks, Hero bets $4.50,

Thank you.

edit: omg I wasted my 1,000th post on this.

Barell this twice or give up. When he checks the flop he has a pocket pair under Q. Barrelling this once is pure spew since he is always calling one bet.

If you're calling the 3bet definately bet this flop, and probably pretty big, so it's less likely he's gonna peel one with JJ-99. And since none of my double barrels work at the stakes i play, i'm probably giving up when called, don't know how people play at NL50 though

Which two streets are we betting then? I think betting flop and turn is slightly superior, I think we'll see a lot of herocalls on the river after we check flop behind and bet the turn.

And connected to that, say we have Qx here, which two streets are better to get value from? Flop and river or turn and river?

Since we're going to be playing super exploitatively (and therefore exploitable) the best streets to bet as a bluff are flop and turn because we both threaten a river bet and represent a Q. For value we should be either betting flop and river or turn and river. I prefer flop and river because it balances out our flop bluffs. By the way sometimes nits are going to be checking sets here and betting everything else here(even 99-JJ). Make sure he is not one of those trappy nits.

I like this. Thanks.

Checking the flop and betting most turns/rivers is fine imo. His flop check looks like a monster, or a JJ type of hand. Now when you check back and he bets the turn you can just happily fold having probably saved yourself some money vs his slowplayed monsters. But when he checks the turn he's basically telling us that he a JJ type of hand and we can bet big on the turn and again on the river and expect to get a lot of folds.

+1
I like firing flop and turn as opposed to turn and river. Looks more like Qx or better to me.

That's what I considered when I played the hand, but there's a couple of things against that. I think that after we check the flop behind he'll look us up very light on the river, plus I think it's safe to assume that a 15/11 is going to play pretty straightforwardly here, meaning he will probably only slowplay exactly QQ.

If villain was a 20/18/3.5 TAG with a 3bet percentage of 7 and we had some history (he 3bet a couple of times already), I think checking the flop behind is a little better, maybe even best. Thoughts?

I don't think a nitty villain will be able to c/c the turn and the river with worse than Qx. Possibly if you bet somewhat small, but if you close to pot the turn and make a relatively big bet on the river, I think you'll get him to fold a lot.
He probably doesn't expect us to take a check flop, bet turn/river line as a bluff since most players will just bet their air on the flop when checked to. He'll often talk himself into calling the turn with the intention of check/folding to a river bet, which is why we make our turn bet larger (we stand to win more when he calls the turn and folds the river, and we also get some extra fold equity).

Also, even though he might not be slowplaying very often, betting the flop and turn will lose us like 40bb (depending on our bet sizing) when he decides to slowplay, whereas betting the turn and river won't lose us anything vs his slowplayed monsters because he'll bet them on the turn.

EDIT: Basically we're playing against a weaker range when we bet the turn and the river, and even though he might be more inclined to call down with JJ, the fact that he can't have monsters makes up for this imo.

Well, he might actually check the turn again with QQ+ sometimes and these type of villains are usually pretty straightforward, but can get stationy imo. Kinda close probably.

It's highly unlikely that he checks the turn again with QQ+ tbh.