Alright, this has gotten a pretty good number of responses, and most of you guys gave really good answers. You should be able to figure out what the correct response was just by how everyone else was answering, but I thought I'd give my opinion on things.
I tried to put these in order of difficulty. The first two scenarios should be pretty straightforward, with the last two being a little more murky.
1) This should be a very easy check behind. We're going to get check/raised very often by this aggressive player, and our hand has showdown value, so the closer we get to showdown the better. Additionally, any diamond, king, ace, or 6 improves our hand, so there are a lot of turn cards that can help us.
2) This should be a very obvious bet. We are out of position, against a passive player. So if we miss a bit, we lose the ability to get all in by the river. The fact that villain folds often to c-bets should not deter us from betting & building the pot.
3) This situation is a bit trickier, but I believe checking with the intention to raise is the best line. Its hard for our hand range to hit this board, and villain called in position, so his range hits this board pretty hard. If we check to villain, most aggressive regs will bet almost 90% of the time. We'd have to be bluff-raised a huge amount of the time to make betting a better play. Additionally, if we bet out, we will often get floated, and be left with a lot less equity on most turns. So in this situation, I really like check/raising the most, but its not tremendously better than c-betting.
4) This is by far the trickiest hand. We're going to be check/raised quite often by this aggressive reg with a wide variety of hands (flush draws, overcards, gutshots, as well as his nut range [8x, 66]). And getting check/raised on this board sucks. We'll essentially have to stack if we get check/raised as well, since there are a ton of turn cards that are going to make our life suck. Given that most regs don't check/call OOP very much on the flop, I think I like checking behind here and playing a little postflop poker.
hands 1 and 2 I certainly agree. hand 4 i don't mind checking back and c-betting sometimes also, I guess that hand mainly comes down to specific reads and history vs villain.
hand 3 I disagree with "
and villain called in position, so his range hits this board pretty hard". When I asked you what are the positions, you said assume villain is the button. This villian play 25/21 and is on the button, players like this love playing back wide ranges on the button, he can certainly be flatting 88,66,87,89 but that's a small part of his range because he is also calling us with many other hands in position. I'm assuming by this villain's stats that he is decent and he knows how to float and play back, so this brings me to the point why I feel like c-betting is a better play in the long run. Let's see what each of our plays accomplish.
Ok let's start by looking at your check-raise, in my opinion, when you check raise you basically make his air fold, even in position he is going to fold most of is air type hands and shove back his monsters and are we going to fold when he shoves? do we know if he is capable of 3-bet
bluffing the flop? and question for you, let's say you do the check- raise and he shoves are you calling it? So I feel like the check-raise only wins you one c-bet in the long run so like 5-6 bb's.
Ok now let's look what my option of c-betting accomplishes. Ok so we are still assuming he is somewhat decent and like you said our range doesn't neccesarily hit this flop very hard but a decent villain should know that right? I also disagree with "
We'd have to be bluff-raised a huge amount of the time to make betting a better play" because I feel like this villain will be floating us a lot knowing our range misses this flop so to him correct play is to float us and take it away from us when we shut down on the turn. So if he is good, we don't even need to care about his fold to c-bet % because this is just a situation where he is in position, he is going to float with a lot of his hands to try and take it away on later streets. Like AG said, if he does raise our c-bet on the flop, I'm just shipping it in, unless I know and am 100% sure he doesn't raise with nothing but monsters on the flop and plays his draws passively and only hands I really am worried about are the 4 I listed 66, 88, 78, 89 and other than that we really aren't worried all that much about over pairs or underpairs since we show profit the times he folds and we will be about even for the times he shows up with over pairs and underpairs (meaning he makes a hero call).
I'm pretty sure he is going to be floating us a lot more than raising us, because too many people at 50nl c-bet once and give up on the turn if they have nothing, so lets see what we can accomplish on the turn. Say we do miss our draws on the turn, now what do we do? I feel like after we c-bet and then check on the turn we look really weak so he is almost always betting the turn to try and take it away with a huge range of his hands, over cards, he could be even floating us with like a 9T and after he raises I feel like after he bets we can still ship it over the top with fold equity. We raised to 4bb, he calls 4, 1.5 sb and bb so pot is 9.5 bbs, we c-bet 6.5bb he calls, pot is now 22.5 so his turn bet is going to be somewhere around 15-20bb and he still has left over 65-75bbs which leaves us with plenty of fold equity when we shove, even if he does call us when he hits like a pair or something or over pair we still have outs, and we show a nice profit of 10-12bbs when he folds.
I do agree with your statement "
If we check to villain, most aggressive regs will bet almost 90% of the time" and that is certainly true but by check raising only thing we win off him is a c-bet when he has air, but by c-betting we get him to float us with his air and win a lot more when he tries to bluff us on the turn, even though my way of playing is more variance I feel like it's better in the long run, thus is why we should have a decent enough brm to be able to support these kind of plays where we take that small edge we have.