Too strong to check back on turn?

bet turn and non king river

What do I gain by a bet?

• At this point he has Ax,77 that beat me. A ****-load of Ax when I think about it.
• He has 88/99, maybe TT that I beat.
• He also has xx with no or few outs that will fold to a bet.

Only the K is a bad river card. Bluff induce + light river call induce + saving 1 BB if he has me beat seems better than betting, hoping he has a pair that he is willing to call with.

I'd like to see more opinions on this. Can you motivate your standpoint more Ava?

In my little head, it looks like a textbook way-ahead / way-behind situation at first glance, but it may well not be, especially since your opponent was playing poorly.

I think the decision depends on two main factors:

1) Just how drunk (loose) this player was today. Is he raising UTG with stuff like 86s, 87o, Q7s, K3s? The more 3x, 6x, and 7x he has in his range, the more likely I would be to bet again on the turn.

2) Would your opponent normally x/r an overpair or top pair (or even a worse pair) on this flop? If your opponent would usually x/r a hand like 88 on this flop, then I would tend to check behind the turn, since most of the hands we might think we're getting value from with our turn bet (pocket pairs lower than our QQ, 7x) might not even be in our opponent's range anymore.

Against a standard TAG-ish opponent, I think this is a check-behind. If he started with something like:

55-TT, A7s-AJs, K9s-KJs, QTs+, JTs, T9s, ATo-AQo, KJo+

and even if he x/c's his entire range on the flop, I don't know if we do too well against hands that will continue after we fire again on the turn.

- We gain nothing from his nothing hands (all his K-high or worse; he has no draws that can call a bet profitably)

- We gain 1BB from: 55, 88-TT (24 combos)

- We lose 1BB to: A7s-AJs, ATo-AQo (37 combos)

Since we get called by a better hand more often than we get called by a worse hand, a bet looks to be -EV in this spot.

I ran this through Equilab. Given that he is a 30/13 4-betting player that

1. open raises from UTG,
2. does not 4-bet preflop,

we can be pretty sure we are huge favorites on the flop. But the turn card is an extreme change in equity, from 75% to 40% if my assessment of his (sober) range is correct.

@Snakeman, I agree, versus a standard TAG, the check-back is a viable option. Even if we were a 55% favorite, the check-back is justified because we pretty much can't let QQ go if we are check-raised on turn.

I don't really know how to explain it but sure he has many Ax but if he only calls then his range of Ax is less and less likeable. If he calls down Top pair take a note and next hand.. But yeah A turn and K river sucks really bad. I can't really explain it well you guys know the math better, I just do it by instinct more than proven math. (my way works well for me)