Hi there Casey55, thank you very much for sharing with us.
The Preflop
Big Blind's checking ranges
Well, this is a very complicated subject and I'll try to put it as simple as possible.
We do check from the BB preflop when we have trash hands that are not good enough for raising, or when we have some medium-value preflop and many limpers entered into the pot.
Sometimes we are forced by the nature of the table to be checking down some hands such as 22, A7, etc, because we invested nothing to see a flop and there is already a very interesting pot.
So, we are checking with medium-weak hands most of times. What is our c-betting range on the flop when we do check preflop from the BB? This is personal, particularly this is a scenario I really don't bluff and I only bet hands that needs protection, for example, we check from the BB a Multi-Way-Pot and we have A7o and the flops comes Ah2h7s, when I flop hands like this in limped pots, I usually go "donk-betting".
We are not donking here because nobody raised, so we are simply betting our strong value hands that requires protection.
On the other hands, if I have checked A7o and the flop comes Ah3s9c, I am not inclined to bet for protection because I consider this Top Pair to be a trash hand on a scenario like this. Some passive fishes are tight with their ranges and they limp in a very high frequency hands such as KQ, KJ, AJ, AQ, AT, etc, you name it, so before labeling the opponent as a "fish" we must know its limping range, so we don't do anything strange from the BB.
I also don't like betting when I hit monsters. We do check from the BB preflop with A7o and the flops come A77, AA7, 777, AAA. Why? Because in situations like this we cover 99% of flops/ranges and limpers are not going to pay if we bet here, not very often.
When we do bet/raise/call from the BB postflop, after we had checked preflop, it is because we have very, ultra strong hands.
Your hand in question:
The Preflop
Nothing much to do here, because there are 5 limpers behind. If we raise too much situations like this we are risking all the 5 limpers to enter into the pot and we will have position just over the SB, being OOP against 4 passive, mostly Fit or Fold players, it will not be good for us.
the postflop
The Flop
Very good for our particular hand, but meaningless for our checking range, but from the BB it doesn't make much difference, because in scenarios like this we are checking almost 97% of times and calling as well. If we do try to represent a set here is very strange, because we can barely represent 44, because 77 and 99 are hands that we could be raising for stealing, although I don't like the idea as well.
If we do raise here with 99, for example, we must go for 3 blinds + 1 blind per limper, +1 blind because we are out of position, according to general theory, i.e, we are raising 9 blinds here which is generally 9% of our whole stack, when we are only 100 blinds ES.
What happens here is if only one player calls we already have a nearly 20 blinds pot OTF, and we are playing out of position and we are not going to hit our set often, only 1/7/ 1/8 times.
The UTG limper bets and here there is nothing to do but call. We cannot be bluffing here because we didn't even called preflop, we just checked which is weaker/worst than calling because we only do it with a capped range of 70-80% of range we think it is not good enough to be raising in scenarios like this.
The Turn
It open a flush draw of clubs and completes a low straight for us. Only J8o is winning from our hand right now and UTG can have tons of bad hands such as 9x, 7x, 97, T7, T9, 44, why not, flush draws, straight draws a pretty wide range where we find only a couple of combos of J8, which BTW, we are blocking part of it.
I think calling here is okay, we want UTG to keep bluffing and we don't expect on its range only FDs and SDs so the call works fine for the times it completes a flush or a better straight OTR and Villain/UTG gives too much action to the hand.
When you do raise and UTG calls, we have more reason to believe it really has some value, otherwise it would be folding right now (BB only raises with monsters, on checked preflop pots, so your raise here is representing a bunch of two pair and sets, J8 and 86, we don't have bluffs here, because we don't like to bluff any FD or SD out of position in pots that we took no voluntary initiative preflop, we simply checked so it is very odd to try to represent something here OOP, also pretentious.
The River
Yeah, now when you bet river you have all the monsters and UTG will not pay you with two pair anymore, only with a better straight.
If you just called OTT, perhaps UTG will continue to bluff its Two Pair and Sets types, because now UTG can display 55, 44, depending how passive 77, 99, the master passive ones will have TT, that it believes it is not good enough for raising from UTG or/and the recreational might look to TT as a good bluff catcher postflop and use it as a trap in the case someone raises, so it is possible.
It is even more possible a couple of bad hands such A9, K9, Q9, these hands are never paying a check-raise turn and a 1/2 pot OTR. I have the impression that some tight passive fishes really understand board texture reading and bet sizing, and some of them are never paying OTR with dominated hands.
From a passive fish like these examples quoted we can only get action when it hits a straight equal to ours or a better straight and then we are nailed. Let this guy believes it has the best hand, and let it keep bluffing your BB's checking range til the river.
Besides, if you are going to extract value on this river, go for polarization you know, because after you called flop/ check-raised turn you have very strong hands in your range and perhaps some bluffs, although IMO is not good to be bluffing here, but some players do it, so in the case you are bluffing here, or turning your low straight into a bluff,
Since there are already 30 blinds on the pot and we don't have too much behind we would go all-in here, to try to represent a bluff, where we have none.
For all of these factors I believe that when we do check preflop we must keep playing passive postflop, otherwise we are repping too much and making the lives of tight passives smooth and easy.
With 5 players going to the flop, playing that non nut straight draw more aggressively could have easily backfired if one of them actually has a strong made hand. So, although it's usually considered to be bad poker to play draws passively out of position, I think having as many people going to the flop increases the chance of a strong made hand being out there. Your check call seems fine there.
When you make your straight on the turn, a bigger check raise may have worked. Although with his fold on the river, it's unlikely he had much.
