hand from stox video

[The Funky Llama]

I don't hate a bet here but I think its a fantastic spot to check. It's very unlikely that UTG has a pocket pair because he is agro and didn't raise the flop. If he doesn't have a pocket pair he is likely to either have a king or a hand like JTs that might bluff 1 or 2 streets or pair up on the river. He is even more likely to hold a K because you have 2 queens in your hand. I don't feel comfortable folding QQ here to any turn action for one bet. If you check the action goes bet/raise, you can save 2 bets the times someone has a king (assuming you were going call at least the turn) and 3 bets (assuming you were bet/calling the turn and calling the river).

Getting UTG to bluff the turn or getting him to make a river call with a hand like AT/AJ that would fold the turn is pretty huge. IMO, giving a free card to a hand like AJ is not at all a concern here for a few reasons:

1) It only matters if AJ would actually fold the turn, which it might not. It also only matters if button DOESN'T have an Ax hand that would call the turn. If he wouldn't fold the turn with Ax, which he very well might not, UTG is effectively drawing dead.

2) If button would call a river bet with an Ax hand that would have folded to a turn bet, or if he would bet the turn instead of folding to your bet, it basically offsets the cost of letting him draw (and as we said earlier, he might be drawing dead anyway).

It is possible that the passive button has a pocket pair, but he will often bet both streets with it anyway. Also, loose passive players are actually the type that make dumb bluffs in spots like this. The agro lagtags (like utg) can often realize when you are showing down and not make a dumb bluff. But I could definitely see button betting a hand like QJ here, which is obviously a coup. Also, just as a check might induce a river call from UTG, a check might also induce a river call from a button who might fold something like A8.

So basically, one of these guys will have a king an awful lot and you save one bet because (imo) you can't fold. You also induce a lot of river calls or bluffs.

There are a few possible negatives of checking the turn as I see it:

1) If the turn is checked around when you could have gotten bets from hands like AT that would call both streets.

2) If UTG bets a worse hand and button bluffraises. This is very unlikely given the description of button.

Seems like the positives outweigh the negatives in this specific spot. I've seen some of stox's other videos and he is great at picking up on spots such as these (see his old article on the "turn value check" as reference)