blonde poker forum

Pretty sure this is standard but just need a check:

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/8962169_070086CED6 (http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/8962169_070086CED6)

BB has played 14/9/2 over 170 hands and has never checked raised river at this point (only 0/3 though).

Fold looks good.

Pre might be a bit thin?

Yeh not sure I always open this tbh, would open like ATs+ and A2-A5s 100% though.

Pre is fine/good

On the flop we should really be checking here a lot. Nobody has strong bluff catchers and there is no draws on the flop. You are betting into 5 people so they are undoubtedly going to fold 88 etc a large % of the time.

Checking flop allows them to pick up straight draws, flush draws and pairs allowing us Tibet the turn and extract value .

The flop isn't a value bet.

Pre you've got the nuts.

Yeah pre is fine, river decision looks good, I like pleno's thoughts on flop.

Line looks good to me. May check flop. How often do you auto-cbet? If cbet % is high then you should prob cbet more than check.

Please stop posting this response is spot on.

When you say he's spot on, you're spot on.

Yeh discussion is bad. Pack it in

Yeh can people stop posting responses, if I wanted help don't you think I'd have posted this in a PHA thread?

At this table I had no regs I had previous hands with and I'd cb 100% of the time so far.  Agree with Pads though, think I'm probably cb'ing way too frequently atm.

Yeah, Patrick explained it perfectly. Flop is a very, very clear check. You can bet for value on the turn if the flop is checked round, and sometimes on the river too depending on how it plays out. The reason you can bet later streets for value, but not the flop, is because you are facing weaker ranges when the flop is checked through and it is checked to you on the turn. If you bet the flop you end up isolating yourself against only the very strongest parts of your opponents' ranges - and these have you beaten the majority of the time. This means you cannot bet the turn after betting the flop, which means your flop bet is not truly for 'value', it is almost solely for protection. If you are ahead, you are only really protecting against your opponents drilling a set on the turn, so there is no real reason to risk 4 BBs to protect your hand.

However, there is an argument for making a VERY, VERY SMALL flop cbet - perhaps 2 BBs, maybe even less. The rationale behind this is twofold:

1. If your cbet is very small it allows it to become a value bet more easily since opponents could feel forced to call with some pocket pairs and/or float you with backdoor stuff.

2. You are protecting your hand without risking much at all. As I explained, there is hardly any value in equity protection but there is still some value. And if you can gain this equity protection very, very cheaply then it is worth considering.

However, even if cbetting very small for protection makes some sense, it should still be weighed against the loss of EV it can lead to through not being able to a) value bet on the turn, and b) pick off a bluff on the turn (or on the flop from the BTN).

At what kicker does a flop bet become a value bet? Do we like slow playing our nuttier Ax hands for the same reason?

it was a joke/compliment obviously as it was such a good response, didn't literally mean stop posting.

guess i shoud have put some kind of wink in there to convey it properly, didn't expect people to get so emo though ;)

I think so, just a bit annoying against the small part of his range we were worried about ISOing ourselves vs with A7 we miss value vs with AK when they have AQ etc but in general we make so much more from hands that turn a piece, want to hold on for 2 streets but not 3, or decide to bluff that I don't think we can worry about it.

That said, if we aren't betting any Ax on this board we are obviously unbalanced by cbetting anything so prolly just always have a check-decide range and no cbet?

Good board for our hand. We vbet a total of like 1.5k through the 3 streets. This is why I like fold pre with Ax from this position, esp with the stacks behind which will make post more challenging.

Might be hard to get 3 streets from worse than A7 but we can definitely achieve this with AK-AJ.