[EverettKings]

I like a checkbehind here, planning to call most river bets and probably bet the river myself if checked to again.

Whoa, hold the presses, checking here with a vulnerable hand on a drawtastic board? Yeah my immediate thought was "bet that, quick!" but I think that betting doesn't have a ton of value and can create a big pot when you don't necessarily want one here. Lets break it down:

A) He has a marginal hand like J9/A7/88/78
These are sticky hands to give free cards too, since not only do they have a nontrivial number of outs but they also can get afraid of scare cards on the river (imagine the Kh falling, it will be hard to get a value bet). HOWEVER, I still like a check. For one, I think these hands also fold the turn a large percentage of the time. Second, if the river bricks they'll often bet out again or check/call, and a fair number of rivers are bricks. Third, if a scare card falls, they may check/call because of the obvious chance of you bluffing in tha position.

B) He's on a draw
Yes we give him a free river and will pay off a value bet, but we also get him to fire with nothing when he bricks a decent amount of the time (and he bricks more often than he hits). Basically we can have this hand out with a bet and win 0 chips from him (but also lose 0 chips), or check and lose 500 chips <20% of the time and win 500 chips maybe 30-40% of the time (assuming he bluffs 1/3-1/2 the time he misses). As a minor point I don't think a draw is as likely as other hands given the flop action (though i guess pair combo draws like 96 or 87 make some sense).

C) He has total air
We give him a chance to stab again. If we make a strong bet he is highly likely to give up on it. We aren't planning a river fold so this line clearly maximizes for this scenario.

D) He has a better made hand (97/68/99/QQ/Q7/whatever).
Obviously we save our stack here by just calling a river bet. The pot is still sane and we'll be in fine shape.



If he checks trhe river the chance of us being beat shrinks significantly so we can safely attempt to suck some value from those marginal made hands (t4-500 or so)



So basically we keep the pot manageable and keep him so utterly in the dark about our hand that we can get nearly maximum value from most anything he can have. Intuition says to bet here but I stand by my line.



Everett