Line Check with KJo in the HJ and an Open-Ended Straight Draw

They take $9?

I'm most likely checking the flop 5 ways to avoid getting raised/c/r'd. Checking the river was fine, again it would suck if we bet and got raised (he's already shown strength otf, so unless it's a chop I'd be happy to take it down at SD as is).

If I bet this flop into four players (which I'm usually not doing), I'm betting $35 or even $40. $20 lets them call with anything and raise with anything. Turn and river are fine.

6 up to 60 rake + 3 for promotion. Dealers work for tips only so it's actually a minimum 10. I do not think I can beat the game, but more on that in another post...

10% to a max of $6 rake isn't terrible.

Flop seems like a clear check to me.

3$ promo's terrible.

It's EV neutral unless management is skimming, and it probably makes the loose-passive games even better.

Pure grunch:

PRE - Have we considered a larger raise in a game where all but two of the players are loose-passive? Seems like we'd benefit from raising bigger, and playing most of our range as a raise-or-fold, such that KJo may not make the cut to be a raise from the HJ, and just ends up being a fold.

Otherwise, whatever, I don't hate it.

FLOP - I kind of hate the c-bet on this flop, five ways, with our exact holding. I'd rather check, to let BTN stab, and / or see what the others want to do whether the BTN stabs or not, and the action checks through.

AP, facing the BTN 2.5x raise, I'm not folding, and I'm not raising, so I guess we just call. But I'd have much preferred check-calling here, assuming the BTN would have stabbed at it.

TURN - Obvious check is obvious.

RIVER - Weird spot now. I'm struggling to think what hands V has that raise flop, check turn, and call a river bet that are worse than ours. I can't think of any.

So I guess check, and hope he checks back. Not really expecting to win very often, even if he does check back. Just not sure he's folding a better hand if we bet out.

If we're certain V is capable of making a laydown, I might check-raise if he bets small, because we do have AK in our range, and we have a good blocker to AK/K9, and because our image is ABC.

He probably didn't raise flop and check turn to fold 2P if we bet out, but he may fold 2P to a check-raise.

That's a tough rake / drop structure to beat at 1/2. It's higher than what I see in my local 1/3 and 2/5 games (10% up to $5, $2 promo drops).

Have you considered moving up?

Either way, I think in heavily raked games, it's critical to take down more pots pre (assuming "no flop, no drop"), by raising larger, and to make sure we're raising with hands that can play bigger pots post, and then to actually play bigger pots post.

I don't think I've seen enough of your posts to know for certain that you've got leaks, but I think it's fair for me to say that you probably do. Just looking at this hand, I think you'd improve your win rate by raising bigger pre, not c-betting into 4 opponents on the flop, and taking some more aggressive actions on flop or river.

I probably wouldn't 3B the flop, but I might check-raise the flop, and if you're NEVER check-raising the river here, I think that's a mistake.

V had QTo. Hero mucked. V said, "he could have a straight."

Thanks for the advice. My preflop game improved a lot. My errors still lean toward playing post-flop too aggressively. When I played NL5 online and ran a leak detector, my flop aggression was two standard-deviations too high. I'm way better now, but old habits die hard. I check-raise too infrequently. I’m looking forward to checking more and opening my check-raising range.

I'm still up four buy-ins after 400 hours in high-rake casino games. I see that as success, even though such a small bankroll means I may go bust anytime.

check/calling flops postflop is underrated. you can always bluff them off their hands later as the board gets scarier and their range gets more defined. something im slowly getting ingrained.

Yes and no. Unless villains are too stupid to adjust, one never gets the same value OOP vs. being IP.

Against an evenly matched villain, one can almost negate the positional disadvantage by being perfectly balanced--but LOL expecting most people here to be anywhere close to balanced when needed.

obviously being in position is better than OOP

my point was that c/c is often a very profitable line because people like to stab when checked to. esp on rag boards but sometimes on any board.