Quote:
Originally Posted by that_pope
LHE Hand #1
I've never played as high as TC nor been as successful, but with AJ, I almost always bet turn here and then decide between checking back and betting the river. Then again in the live games I play I have a well built reputation for firing 3 bullets, which is something you can't do as often in tourneys, as well as you don't have the built in history.
If your opponent does have a hand like 74/75 etc. they will call the turn but not the river. Then again, they might c/r the turn which then you are folding away the best hand.
I think your last point is the main thing. When you start playing against very tough players, they will have a significant semibluff range on the turn here and it's much more disastrous to fold the best hand (or even worse, call turn and fold missed river) than it is to protect against drawing hands. Many high-limit players will turn a lot of 4x/5x hands into bluffs here, balanced by their turned two pairs and (less frequently) flop slowplays. Another factor is if you let the turn check through, you often pick up bluffs on the river from a junkload of hands because people usually bluff way too much on these type of boards when the turn goes check-check. You get to pick off everything from 4x, 5x, 98, QT; most non-elite players have no sense of balance/weighting here and just think "well I can't win a showdown, so I should bluff".
tldr My guess is from a GTO sense, checking AJ here is right*. In a game against weak/passive players who will never semibluff check-raise, betting is probably fine.
*I've been trying to run this by Cepheus as a HUHU hand for the last two hours, but either I inputted it wrong or the servers are crazy slow right now. Still working.