2/4 B&M - Bet or checkraise monster flop that I capped preflop?

[Bob T.]

On this hand, you are not worried about protecting your hand. The pot is already fricken huge. Anyone and everyone who will eventually beat you on this hand will have the odds to run you down.

What you are worried about is making the pot that you are a favorite to win big enough so that you need a pony to carry all of those blue chips to the cage.

If you cap preflop, and check the flop, and then checkraise, everyone from this planet is going to recognize that you have pocket jacks, and just flopped top set. They will still chase, but it will probably kill your action, and you won't be going multiple bets on every street, unless someone catches a better hand. Now, you are playing 2-4 live, so that might not be a problem, because it isn't necessarily true that all of your opponents are from this planet, but they probably have seen the same play on their home planet anyway.

So why not just bet out, like you have aces or kings, and are trying to protect your one pair hand, and let your opponents think that they are drawing to more than two outs, if they even have that. They'll stick around, maybe the threebettor has aces, and will put you on kings, and will raise you again.

At that point, you could threebet the flop, or you could donk the turn and try and get a threebet in there.

Anyway, Bet the flop, because it looks natural, and the best way to build the pot is to not do anything that looks tricky.