Q9 on Q88x board

I like it.

If he calls the turn I'm checking back the river, and if he raises the turn I'm gonna fold.

Looks good. If he calls, it's so river-dependent if he bets, but probably checking back.

So far, so good.

How much was the checkraise?

I would bet pot or more OTT.

Looks good now check back most rivers.

That donk size is weird. I'd guess it's some weak value, or maybe a draw. We can treat it as a check, and raise, but it's hard to figure out what weaker Qx he's likely to have that will keep paying us off on later streets.

8 on the turn muddies the water a little bit more. Wondering if he ever donks flop with some 8x that just turned trips. Betting 1/2 pot doesn't seem bad, but I think I might check back here, to pot control, and let V bluff the river.

As played, if V donks huge on the river, I'd likely fold. If he checks, I'd consider checking back. Just hard to see what worse hands are going to call if we triple barrel, and this line from V smells a little fishy.

If you wanna control the pot, bet h/p ott like the OP did, and then check back the river (or evaluate his bet). If you check back the turn, it just gives him the green light to over bet bluff the river and possibly fold us out. My goal is to get to SD as reasonably as I can.

I'd raise the flop larger, and bet the turn bigger. Most likely you have the best hand but you have an easy fold if he raises your turn bet. The good thing about your line here is you really can't get raised by a bluff - you're uncapped and can have all the FH's. Generally I think these small flop leads are draws - I can't imagine an 8 calls the flop raise here but maybe it happens every now and then.

Or we can check back the turn, and bluff-catch river, since there are scant few players who are going to come out blasting on the river with a huge over-bet as a bluff, on this board, the way this was played.

We're likely way ahead or way behind. No reason to keep bloating the pot. If we check back turn, and V wants to bluff river, he isn't likely to over-bet, when we're likely to fold all our missed draws, and weak showdown value, even if he bets small. Any hand we fold is going to fold if he so much as breathes on the pot.

But if we bet turn, and V wants to bluff river (which seems unlikely), or bet with thick value (more likely), he'll be betting big, and we'll have to fold. Checking back with our showdown also value protects our check-back range. If we bet, he's probably only folding hands we're beating, which are hands that might want to stab river when we check back turn.

We started $1k deep. There's $120 in the pot. Our hand isn't that strong, in absolute terms, nor in relative terms. There's just no reason to bet half pot on turn, bloating the pot to $240, with $890 behind.

Say we bet $60, V calls, and then he does come out and donk river for $400 into $240. Now what? Call? Fold? Is he betting for value? Bluffing? Hard to know, but I'd say he's most likely not bluffing, and we need to fold.

We don't need to worry about getting to showdown as "reasonably" as we can. If V bets river, his bet size is likely to telegraph the strength of his hand, so we save a bet when we check back turn and fold river to a huge bet, and gain a bet when we check back turn and he bets river small with his bluffs.

Of course I would have to fold, but if he's bluffing we're folding the winner whereas If we bet the turn, he wouldn't have a reason to think we're weak (but we kind of are) and not decide to bluff us out with his missed FD.

And if we bet h/p ott and then he leads out for pot otr, I would also fold (we were the original raiser, raised his small donk bet, then bet for two more streets. If he leads out big he's not even worried about AQ).

This is exactly why you shouldn't vary your bet size depending on your holding. Any observant player will notice very quickly if you are betting large with value and small with bluffs. It doesn't make any sense to bet small as a bluff; betting larger vs a capped range is higher EV due to the increased fold equity.

I like your proposal of checking back the turn here though. After villain has donked tiny and called a raise, he's pretty much capped, I imagine with a lot of Qx, smaller pairs and flush draws. Betting the turn too wide in order to check back the river is a major leak in the game of many players, and immediately obvious with a cursory glance of their stats when they're playing in position (for example cbet flop-turn-river 70-80-40). This type of player is usually over-value betting and not bluffing enough, which results in inflated barreling stats due to barrelling with medium strength hands, such as weaker top pairs, second and third pairs etc (and as a result their river betting range is often value-heavy, allowing you to get away cheaply if they fire the third - and most expensive - barrel).

Checking back turn is even more attractive when villain has effectively check-called on Q84 and the turn is an 8 because this hits his check-calling range a lot more than it hits your bet/bet range. However that's not absolutely the case here as villain min-donked flop and I would guess he's not likely to do that with 8x - but as a general rule this is definitely something to note.

You're not getting three streets of value in any case with Q9 here; I'd argue it should bet, check back turn and (against an aggressive opponent) call pretty much all river probes, or go for a second street of value on favourable rivers if villain checks to us again. Yes, you miss value from not charging flush draws to draw and smaller pairs to peel, but you gain that back when they miss and decide to probe the river (which happens a lot more often than them hitting their draw/peel). When you play the hand this way, most aggressive opponents are going to vigouously attack the perceived weakness that you showed on the turn. There are many hands worse than Qx that are going to check back the turn once they get called on the flop; that range of hands need protection and the weaker Qx in your range are good hands for that purpose.

And one more thing - it's a disaster for Q9 to get check-raised on the turn, which is another good reason to check this hand back.

Yeah, it's starting to look like you and I are just going to be on opposite sides of every debate.

Checking back turn with showdown value to bluff-catch the river is one of the most profitable lines in poker, full stop. If you don't know about it, you should learn about it. This is a prime spot to apply it.

Betting to not look weak isn't a thing. We bet to build the pot, when we expect to win, and to prevent our opponents from realizing their equity. That's it. This isn't a spot to build a big pot, and we're not denying enough equity to warrant a bet of any size.

I don't know how to get you to understand the difference in value between betting the turn, which is just going to fold out every hand we beat, and thus not get paid off, either on the turn or river, compared to NOT betting the turn, and inducing V to either bluff into us, or pay us off when he checks and we bet thin, PRECISELY because we showed weakness when we checked back the turn.

Honestly, the more of your posts I read, the more convinced I become that you may be the worst player here.

You clearly misunderstood what I was trying to explain to you, while you were going on about balance, and how to calculate your bet size as a function of bluffs to value.

We're not sizing our river bets according to OUR hand. We're sizing our river bets according to our VILLAIN'S RANGE, and what parts of that range we're targeting, based on what we want villain to do with that part of their range. We choose bet sizes on earlier streets that help narrow their range.

So, for instance, if we think our opponent is polarized to thick value or missed draws, we don't need to size up with our bluffs, because they're just going to snap us off with thick value, no matter how big we go, and their missed draws will fold to any size bet. So we size down, to target their missed draws to fold.

If we have thick value, and we think our opponent is weak, we size down, to get called by their weak range. Alternatively, if they're capped at TPTK, and we have 2P+, we can size up a bit.

I was referring to what you said about how you think villain bets on the river in this hand:

"If V bets river, his bet size is likely to telegraph the strength of his hand, so we save a bet when we check back turn and fold river to a huge bet, and gain a bet when we check back turn and he bets river small with his bluffs."

Obviously that is a transparent strategy and villain should instead use the same size with value and bluffs.

When you size your river bets according to villain's range, you should also use the same size with value and bluffs.

You shouldn't want to size down when you have thick value, because that's part of a polarized range that includes zero equity bluffs that need to bet large in order to maximize fold equity. The idea of betting large with a polarized range is to get maximum value with value hands and maximum fold equity with bluffs. What you're proposing is to size down with value and size up with bluffs, which creates two ranges that use two different bet sizes, and villains will quickly realize that small bet = value and big bet = bluff, and adjust accordingly. The only way to solve this problem is to use the same size with value and bluffs and keep the uncertainty in villain's mind as to where you are in your range. Sometimes this means you know they're probably weak and you still use a large size with value hands; that's a necessary ill in order to implement a watertight strategy.

i think you're putting in too much money w your hand on early streets but is likely not a big deal vs these 2. i do think bb will play worse in subsequent actions if you flat the 5 vs if you raise vs it. in general id be looking to check this hand 3 ways esp vs a sb flatter and someone you think is aggro in the bb, i doubt you could go wrong pure checking this in general vs any lineup of opponents. i think if you bet too many of these hands you end up way overfolding turns and river and don't really have many great candidates to delay cbet. whether you care about any of that or not is up to you

Look, I agree we have a marginal made hand which argues for not bloating the pot, but IF, and I will stress that again, IF we are betting the turn for value, we should go closer to pot since there are a ton of draws that will pay here. Based on reads alone, our hand is better than marginal here.

I prefer a turn check here, and if he ckecks river id bet.

I have thought about the hand and read the responses and would like to check back turn.

Yeah, good discussion. You guys convinced me. This definitely should have been a turn check.

vs two players, it should have been a flop check as well.

There’s no check fold we’re in position and get to check back turn. Then we can call most rivers.

Ah. I misunderstood the point you were making. Apologies for my rudeness.

I will add that if we check back turn, V may not bet huge for value, because our turn check looks weak. If he bets huge, it's an easy fold.

But if he bets small, we can call. He may show us a better hand, but he's going to show us plenty of bluffs, too.

Checking back turn allows him to bet river for value or as a bluff, and often his thick value will bet bigger to make up for lost value on earlier streets, whereas his bluffs and thin value don't need or want to risk a lot. It also allows us to bet thin when he checks his showdown value.

Betting turn doesn't make much sense, when he's just going to fold every hand that might bluff river if we check, and only continuing with a range that mostly beats our weak TP. Betting just makes it more likely we're bloating a pot we're bound to lose.

If he checks to me ott and I bet, and then he check raises, I would just fold.

We're both trying to get one more bet in the hand, but I'd rather be the one who decides how much the bets gonna be, for example if we check back the turn then he pots the river or more, we're calling a bigger bet (if we've decided to call) than it would of cost us if we bet the turn for h/p then checked back the river (which I would do since our hands isn't that strong).

I much rather prefer contoling the pot while I still have initiative instead of letting him decide how much he's gonna bet the river if we checked. I don't think my hand is worth calling a big bet otr, but as usual that's just me.

No problem.

I don't agree it's an easy fold if we check back turn and villain bets huge on the river. We incentivize him to bluff blank rivers and - at least in theory - if he's bluffing he should use a large size. I'm snapping off anything up to a potsize bet, and making a decision if he goes larger than that. If he bets smaller then it's an easy call (although it's more likely he's value betting).

Again: on the river he should use the same size (large) with value and bluffs. His bluffs should bet large to maximize fold equity. We have "shown weakness" on the turn, but sometimes - as in the case of this hand - we will have protected our checking range with hands like middling top pairs. The only way to make those hands fold is to bet large.

We can certainly bet thin value when he checks the river, and to defend against that he should be check-raising a portion of his range (value and bluff, of course).