CO vs BB: KK on QQxo flop

I have to disagree with your thought process here, but here are my comments (as a 5NL and 10NL player):

OTF: You should absolutely be betting this flop for value. I totally understand your concern that your opponent COULD have a Q and therefore your hand is in trouble, but I feel this is the wrong mentality. This is 5NL. Your opponent could have a lot of hands that will call a bet on this flop. You want to get value for your hand, so don't be afraid that your opponent MIGHT have a Queen...after all, seeing 2 Queens on the flop makes it more unlikely your opponent has one. Make a 3/4 pot bet here. Villain will call with nearly any pocket pair and possibly any Ace (because he might not think you have a Queen either). It should be only if your opponent raises and shows strength that you can consider he has a Queen.

OTT: Again, you are playing scared of being raised. I would raise in this spot. You still need to bet this Turn even if you bet the flop and got called. Again, you are looking to extract maximum value and there are a ton of hands that are calling here. There are only very few hands that beat you here, so don't be afraid to bet. If you get raised, then consider folding, but long term thinking...betting is +EV here.

OTR: This situation is exactly why we need to be betting the Flop and Turn. If opponent shows up with a straight or a flush, you let him get there by playing too passively and you didn't allow him to make any mistakes of possibly calling bets that he's not priced for. As played, I'd probably just call the River here too. But I still think you missed out on a lot of value for this hand.

I'm sorry, but this is terrible. How can you not see the value in betting the flop? There's a huge range of worse hands which will pay you here. What value is there is checking the flop? What's your plan for the rest of the hand? You've taken a strong hand and sat around waiting to be sucked out.

At first, thanks for super thoroughly put answer! l'll try to take some reflection about it.

Originally posted by xin1575
I have to disagree with your thought process here, but here are my comments (as a 5NL and 10NL player):

OTF: You should absolutely be betting this flop for value. I totally understand your concern that your opponent COULD have a Q and therefore your hand is in trouble, but I feel this is the wrong mentality. This is 5NL. Your opponent could have a lot of hands that will call a bet on this flop. You want to get value for your hand, so don't be afraid that your opponent MIGHT have a Queen...after all, seeing 2 Queens on the flop makes it more unlikely your opponent has one. Make a 3/4 pot bet here. Villain will call with nearly any pocket pair and possibly any Ace (because he might not think you have a Queen either). It should be only if your opponent raises and shows strength that you can consider he has a Queen.

Maybe my line would've been justified with JJ? At least on the flop and maybe on the later streets as well. You're surely right in that that unless our opponent is a big nit (which I highly doubt), he would not fold 8x or let's say 77-JJ. If he does fold every time on this board, it would be super profitable to bet this board always against him, because he'd be folding most of his PF calling range.

OTT: Again, you are playing scared of being raised. I would raise in this spot. You still need to bet this Turn even if you bet the flop and got called. Again, you are looking to extract maximum value and there are a ton of hands that are calling here. There are only very few hands that beat you here, so don't be afraid to bet. If you get raised, then consider folding, but long term thinking...betting is +EV here.

If I had bet on the flop, I'd definitely have double barreled the turn due to the possibility of draws out there. But as played on the flop, I err on the side of just calling, even though the bet sizing of the villain suggests that he does not have a made hand. Well, the bet sizing tell might not be correct, because it's so odd for whatever he's trying to accomplish.

OTR: This situation is exactly why we need to be betting the Flop and Turn. If opponent shows up with a straight or a flush, you let him get there by playing too passively and you didn't allow him to make any mistakes of possibly calling bets that he's not priced for. As played, I'd probably just call the River here too. But I still think you missed out on a lot of value for this hand.

I bolded the most important point. One becomes easily blind for his mistakes when he repeats them too many times. I might have adopted this call-down attitude from Unibet's NL10 where I established a sort of a fear of playing big bots with semi-good holdings against super aggro players that populated the games last month. Now when I look this, making our overpair just a bluff-catcher by playing it passively looks super weak.

I wrote some discussion about the result of the hand behind the spoiler.

Originally posted by Lathdari
I'm sorry, but this is terrible. How can you not see the value in betting the flop?

No need to be sorry in telling the truth. Answer for the question, well, I don't know ♦

I think we can cbet the flop. We have enough equity.
We should have a solid plan and not act unknowingly...

I would bet the flop, check the turn, and bluffcatch the river, if nothing completes

It is not horribly played, well maybe it is at NL5, but you get as much money in the pot with this line (maybe even more) as with the more common "bet flop - check turn - bluff catch river (bet small OTR if he checks)". The thing is that you don't want to get much more money in (because then he has a Q), and as a balancing play to protect your honest flop check-backs, this is not horrible, just questionable.