blonde poker forum

DTD 300 at the weekend. Still at our starting table, we have a veritable plethora of different styles, Barry Neville , George Geary, Roberto Romanello, James Browning.

In seat one is a young guy who I didnt know of. he was certainly not short of attitude, having already called the clock on George Geary, and I was getting the impression that he thought he was better than he was. anyway, the blinds are 100/200, I have about 14K, young guy has about 10K in the small blind. I am UTG and get dealt  7h 8h. To mix it up a bit I raise to i think 650, and it is folded round to the SB who calls. GG folds the big blind.

Before the flop comes down young guy extravagantly bangs the table and annouces "check in the dark".

Flop comes  4h 9h Qh.


your move ?

Bang the table extravagently, announce "bet in the light" and stick about 1k in the middle.

With a bit of luck you might get a raise out him if he thinks you're taking a stab with AKo. In this situation he's either coming along or he isn't.

No need to slow play and risk him making a bigger flush or anything.

You want a big pot here and if you check to move on the turn you're hand looks too strong to ever get paid.

Btw love your raise pre. Nice.

Bet very quickly and splash dem chips at aggro kid. If it's quick enough to look like a challenge to his ridic check dark strat and cocky attitude rather than a reaction to the board watch him sail back over the top with lots of hands.

followed by the dealer saying "im sorry sir, you're first action was a check..."  ;D

i make a standard continuation bet here, hope he fancies himself to CR you off the pot or that he checked blind with 44

bet in the dark obv

Stare him down for a bit then cbet as said he will raise it with a wide range due to his ego alone

You can't do anything other than bet out here.

Oh, and why do people check in the dark? Other than trying to look a plonker I can't think of a good reason. Was he wearing crap sunglasses?

Phil Hellmuth does it, and it makes them look cool.

I'd be interested to know if Hellmuth does it when he is not on telly. Thats the only reason I can think of that he does it. Same with that ridiculous snap push-allin of his.

So com when he does this and he's crushed lolololol,also not a fan of checking in the dark

I have always assumed people do it with weak holdings, hoping to reverse position.  i.e they're trying to make the opponent act first.  They seem to often do it after making a dubious check call on the flop with a draw.

i used to use it a fair bit when i played live 1-2 a lot with more speculative holdings pre-flop (SCs, PPs) with the intention of trying to get a free turn card or in the hope of giving my check-raises less credit when i smash the flop to bits. i rarely use it against good players as it can be quite transparent, although perhaps check-raising after checking in the dark could get through more often against good players.

If he's young "AND a solid online player" then his range for calling an utg raise from sb is going to be very narrow. Something like (22-JJ maybe QQ, AK/AQs+ and some 89ss/JTss hands)

So what part of that is he going to continue with?
Bare A/K h; 44/99/QQ(lol) only 2 pair can be a spaz call pre with Q9s though I cant see that.
He's pretty much always check raising draws/sets or c/c Axhh that flopped the over flush.

That is a very narrow part of his range so i'm not that against checking back the flop as he will then be adamant that you CANNOT have a flush or at least that's a small part of your range and when a 4th heart hits he will never give you credit for a big h having expected you to bet it on the flop as a cbet having raised utg.

If you check back flop and it's a brick and he leads you could ghay raise small, if a heart comes i'd look to call the turn slowly and re-evaluate the river.

Bear in mind that i'm not very good at the pokerz :lol: And would prob just bet flop 100% of the time in reality in this spot because we haz a flush innit.


EDIT - I think our hand means that he has to have the K or A of hearts or JJ with a heart to really continue and put any money in on the flop so slow playing (I literally have only ever slow played about 3 times lol) may actually be the most +EV, regardless of whether we hate the idea of seeing a free turn.

edit- 2

Checking in the dark as has been said is great against weaker players, but against strong players who know when they need to peel and when to bet it doesn't work aswell, I dont like it as much in tournies because it removes your donking range which in alot of instances combined with stack sizes is a great play and can be very profitable.

I check dark preflop when first to act in multiway pots because I am going to check anyway and I think that it gets me less credit as again has been said before when I just c/r huge with the nuts.

Checking dark with strong hands doesn't really make much sense but could be interesting against better players to balance when you call and check dark with 45s.

lead 40% of pot then call his reraise if reraised
on turn if he leads i would reraise him small
or lead if he checks in the dark again
i would also not be folding

why 40% of pot? what if he checks in the light? this is not a complete strategy! until it is i'll hold back my criticisms  :-X

because u want him to reraise you. you could bet smaller but he might call with  Th or a  Jh

if he checks in the light then
maybe do a rounders overbet
or do a bet that looks bluffy

i think he reraises a more standard looking c-bet (1/2 - 2/3 of pot) more often than a weird 40% bet. then again if he's decided he's taking this pot off of us our line might not be that important