vanquish
Legend
Silver Level
In NLHE: Theory and Practice, Sklansky's section "bluffing the Turn and River" deals with a hand where hero calls with 97s on the button, floats a J85chh flop, and semi-bluffs turn Ac after villain checks (the rest of the hand is not important in this discussion).
We will switch roles, and be villain in this case. For the sake of this discussion, we open 4x from MP with AJo - effective stacks $2500, blinds $10/$20, villain calls OTB, blinds fold. The flop hits Jc 8h 5h. We bet $150, villain calls. Turn comes Ac. We have top two against a relatively draw-heavy board. Standard procedure here seems to be to bet something like 3/4 pot to price out any draws and get value out of lower two-pairs, smaller Js, and As. However, we lose a TON of value to slow-played sets, or slow-played AA. When the roles were switched in this scenario, Sklansky suggested that the button should make a standard, almost automatic bet, if checked to on the turn. This makes sense, since as the hero (AJo) in this position, we could very well have been c-betting flop with almost any hand in our range (assuming that this is our established image), and could be giving up on the turn. However, in this scenario, we could make the argument that villain could semi-bluff (make the automatic steal bet) if checked to on the turn (rather than check for pot control with something like a weaker J, lower two pair, etc). Thus, it almost makes more sense that villain plays a much weaker hand (draw of some sort) for a bet if checked to on turn, rather than take the free card that would almost telegraph the strength of his hand. Thus, I conclude that it is more +EV (against a thinking villain with our table image) to check-raise the turn (rather than bet/fold, which we would most likely have to if raised after leading turn), and get value out of draws that would have otherwise been priced out and folded to a reasonable turn bet. This action would also enable us to get some value out of a weak J, a weak A, a lower two pair etc. that had been pot-controlling on turn and would consider calling our river bet if river blanked.
Thoughts?
We will switch roles, and be villain in this case. For the sake of this discussion, we open 4x from MP with AJo - effective stacks $2500, blinds $10/$20, villain calls OTB, blinds fold. The flop hits Jc 8h 5h. We bet $150, villain calls. Turn comes Ac. We have top two against a relatively draw-heavy board. Standard procedure here seems to be to bet something like 3/4 pot to price out any draws and get value out of lower two-pairs, smaller Js, and As. However, we lose a TON of value to slow-played sets, or slow-played AA. When the roles were switched in this scenario, Sklansky suggested that the button should make a standard, almost automatic bet, if checked to on the turn. This makes sense, since as the hero (AJo) in this position, we could very well have been c-betting flop with almost any hand in our range (assuming that this is our established image), and could be giving up on the turn. However, in this scenario, we could make the argument that villain could semi-bluff (make the automatic steal bet) if checked to on the turn (rather than check for pot control with something like a weaker J, lower two pair, etc). Thus, it almost makes more sense that villain plays a much weaker hand (draw of some sort) for a bet if checked to on turn, rather than take the free card that would almost telegraph the strength of his hand. Thus, I conclude that it is more +EV (against a thinking villain with our table image) to check-raise the turn (rather than bet/fold, which we would most likely have to if raised after leading turn), and get value out of draws that would have otherwise been priced out and folded to a reasonable turn bet. This action would also enable us to get some value out of a weak J, a weak A, a lower two pair etc. that had been pot-controlling on turn and would consider calling our river bet if river blanked.
Thoughts?
