Your call.....

[colin_147]

Playing a tourney last night

Pot is 500 from blinds and limps, 2 players left

I have Q7os in BB

flop is 2 5 Q. Other guy bets 300, I call

Turn is a Q. He bets 500, I raise to 1000, he calls

River is a 3. He checks

What do you do?

 

[F Paulsson]

If you bet, will he fold a better hand than yours?

If you bet, will he call with a worse hand than yours?

 

[t1riel]

Well, I WOULD bet another 1000, since he obviously doesn't have that strong of a hand if he is checking on the river. But, he could have a Q too and not sure if his kicker is high enough. If it was me, I would check.

 

[tenbob]

So he has to have limped with a weak queen to even be tied with you at this stage. Unlikely but possible, id figure a bet here takes down the pot. People love limping with baby and mid connectors. Id figure him for a busted straight here, playing with 34s and flopping openended, or the possibility of a mid pocket pair. Oh yea id bet at this one all day every day, and if i lose, then i lose. Plus a good bet here will get him off a weak Q most of the time.

 

[robwhufc]

Well, I WOULD bet another 1000, since he obviously doesn't have that strong of a hand if he is checking on the river. But, he could have a Q too and not sure if his kicker is high enough. If it was me, I would check.

LOL, so you'd bet, no check, no bet, no check, oh i dont know!

 

[robwhufc]

So he has to have limped with a weak queen to even be tied with you at this stage. Unlikely but possible, id figure a bet here takes down the pot. People love limping with baby and mid connectors. Id figure him for a busted straight here, playing with 34s and flopping openended, or the possibility of a mid pocket pair. Oh yea id bet at this one all day every day, and if i lose, then i lose. Plus a good bet here will get him off a weak Q most of the time.

Yeah, but if he has got a Q, he's not going to fold now he's got 3 is he? And it's a Q with a weak kicker? Well that's what you've got!. I'd err on the side of caution and call, and hope you can just call on river too. And why bet, if you're ahead anyway? - if he hasn't got anything he'll fold, if he has he'll call or re-raise.

EDIT, AND...... if he has got a weak Q, then 2,3 and 5 on board should set alarms bells ringing - you're only ahead of Q4 and Q6!

 

[F Paulsson]

If you bet, will he fold a better hand than yours?

If you bet, will he call with a worse hand than yours?

Let me expand on this a bit.

If he has a better hand than you, he will hardly fold. I don't see him laying down Q8 to any raise on the river. So no point in betting for the sake of "bluffing".

So the only point of betting would be to lure him into giving you more money. How many hands could he have that he would both call with and that are worse than yours?

Q6, Q4, were mentioned. Would he call any bet with a pair of fives? Deuces? Treys? Ace high? Could he be holding a pocket pair? No action pre-flop, so it seems unlikely, but it's possible. In that case, you're looking at adding 44, 66 - AA.

Does he think you are bluffing?

I don't see much value in betting the river here. Seems to me that most of the times that you bet, he'd fold, and the few times he calls, you'd lose the majority of the time.

 

[colin_147]

Rob calls it right. Well in this instance anyway

He checked the river. I figured my hand isnt that great and if he has a Q he will either call or check-raise me, and if he raises me there isnt that much I can beat, which means I could be bullied off the hand or lose more of my stack

I checked and he flipped KQ. I can only figure he would have check raised me, or maybe he thought I had AQ, Q2 Q5

Even though I lost I got satisfaction out the fact I didnt lose my whole stack. But looking back I thought I had played the hand badly by raising on the turn. Although had he not had a Q that raise would have surely have made him fold. And as it was minimum raise it let me know where I was in the hand

 

[Dorkus Malorkus]

Raise the flop - basically this allows you to get information earlier and cheaper. If he calls then checks the turn you bet, if he bets out on the turn then things get very awkward and you have to use your best judgment according to the reads you have. If he reraises your flop raise, it's usually a pretty easy fold. Hard to put him on the hand he had considering that he limped in preflop, though his play throughout the hand suggests he's an incredibly passive player (him not reraising the turn and checking the river here makes me giggle).

The way the hand played out, checking behind on the river is probably best - as a player who seems passive has bet out on the flop and turn, and the 3 is not going to be a scare card for him (if say an A came on the river and he checked I might value bet, but not here).