Hi there teh_colonel_saigon, thank you for posting your hand! Are you playing vs a passive fish? Have you ever seen this fish fold to a c-bet flop of 1/3 pot before in position?
Look, if this is a passive player this check-raise is pure value and we must fold 100% of times, with no second guesses! Passive loves to call, when they show aggression is simply value. If you have the HUD display look to its Aggression factor and verify it.
However, if this fish in position is an aggro fish we should not have made a C-Bet flop, because this player is likely to bluff us a lot when we check! And AK is nothing in this flop but a very poor equity for turn/river (runner-runners)
Third and finally, we know that players rarely check-raise for bluff so high a value like this at the micros. Every check-raise, indeed, either they are overbluffing or overvaluing their hands, in both cases is a clear case of polarized range.
I understand your line of thought in this hand, you saw SB deep stacked, and you have nearly 120 blinds of stack size, so you raised 3.4x IP, which an abnormal sizing and get called in position, which should modify your previous gameplan.
This flop is very dry, and there isn't many bluffs right now on Villain's range. J9 is one of those hands but even so, it has to be a pretty wild player to be check-raising OESDs like this.
We believe this board hits more the BTN's range, considering it called not a 2.5x or 3x open raise, but a 3.4x, consider it, it changes a little but it changes.
I don't love this kind of equity for bluffing, we have runner-runner straight and runner-runner flush plus two overcards. No fold equity and many turns and rivers will simply destroy us.
Our 1/3 pot C-bet is okay if we want the Villain to fold all of its trashes, but we know they are hard to fold. Once again, when I get check-raised in a spot like that, I will fold very easy, because our hand has a little potential to realize some turns and rivers and we know that after this check-raise the players will continue pushing trying to hold us turn/river.
Again, I would never C-bet this turn just because I have the blocker of the flush nuts and mostly because I am out of position in relation to V.
Players at these limits barely understand it. They will call with a trips in a board that has a straight and flush easily, so they will call easily with worst flushes.
The possible value hands here are just a few such as T8 with two pair, and the sets with 88, TT and 33, and JJ, QQ that decided to cold call in position, which are hands that could follow this line of check-raising flop. The check-raise flop could also be a flush draw of diamonds that it realized in the turn.
IF we were playing higher limits such as 50 NLHE and 100 NLHE (real thinking players), I would either just call the turn to go all-in river, or check-shove turn right off the bat, because at those limits many players will never pay a shove river if they don't have the blocker of the flush nuts, so they would easily fold second and third flush nuts. At the micros I don't know many players capable of folding flushes in the river, even 8th flushes
Let's not even get started of weak players folding Two pair, sets, straights, it is so rare that I don't even count as a possibility.
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa
