Re: Checkraise semil bluff? NL 25
i call flop, call turn.
villain is a lagfish and donkbets into you on the flop; i wouldn't give him much credit. you have middle pair, top kicker and the nut draw. you're not folding.
why raise, though? a raise would be a semibluff, i guess, with the goal of folding some kind of crappy ace (which you have about 50% equity against on the flop). can you really raise for value? i guess he might shove with something like JdTx, which you have mashed. i think raising is kind of thin on the flop, and i don't expect a guy like this to dump top pair, so i just call his flop bet.
on the turn, it's clear that he's not folding an ace. lagfish don't fold trips no matter how much strength you're repping (your turn shove represents a good ace, a boat, or a flush). sometimes he has something weird and your queen is good. and your nut flush draw is almost always good.
getting 2:1 with big implied odds and position, i call the turn bet. if another diamond peels off, i try to stack him (guys like this will turn their hands into bluffs often and he'll probably bet lower diamonds for value). if a blank (any non-diamond, really) peels off and he checks, i check behind. if he bets, sometimes call, sometimes fold. pretty read-based. with no read aside from the numbers, fold to a reasonable bet, i guess.
note: shoving the flop is alright. it makes the hand very easy to play and it prevents you from getting bluffed. but i suspect that you only have fold equity against the hands that your queen is ahead of, so i'd suggest doing some hand reading and trying to take the most +ev line (rather than the easiest). i like shoving much better if you have something like Kd5c (ignore the fact that you probably would've folded this preflop).
edit: 55 is in his range, and it has you drawing to two outs on the turn. but i think the villain is fishy/crazy enough not to worry much about it.
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