WA/WB flop situations and the merits of checking

[hackers238]

First of all, thanks for the help and analysis here. I do agree that betting is better.

All of the insight here is great, and I'll add my analysis now: The problem with going for pot control here is two-fold: there aren't enough hands you are behind, and there aren't enough hands you can milk extra value out of.

There aren't enough hands you're behind

The limp call preflop line looks like either a baby ace, high random cards, or a PP (excluding JJ-AA). If we assign this as a general range for villain, there are only 10 combos ahead of you. This includes 3 combos of each flopped set (excluding AA), and 4 combos total of A8s and A3s. The total number of hands that are behind you but will probably allow you to build the pot here is much greater: Assuming at this level Aces will call multiple streets of value, There are 75+ combos of AQ- and PP behind you. So going for pot control is catering to 10/85 of the villains range.

and there aren't enough hands you can milk extra value out of

My main argument before was that hands are more likely to pay off turn+river with an ace than flop+turn. This has huge holes! What about the flop+river line? What about the higher number of chances for opponent to get frisky and put a raise in somewhere when you start on the turn? At this level it's important to give villain as many chances as you can to make a mistake, and betting the flop accomplishes this.

What about hands that would fold the flop but lead/call the turn? There are some of these imo... many PP, especiall >8 would go for a cheap showdown because you skipped out on the obvious CB. They may even lead the turn. And even though PP are a rather large part of villains range, it's much more valuable in NLHE to get THREE streets of value from AQ- than ONE extra street of value from a PP. Because of the ever escalating size of bets, you may miss out on 40BB if you pot control against AQ where you are gaining an extra 10 from a random PP.

Thanks for all the responses!

[Talking Poker]

I'm glad you've seen the light. I think the key factor you were missing is that the WA/WB scenario only applies when we have a MEDIUM STRENGTH (ie, second pair) hand.... a hand that if we bet the flop will get called only by hands better than ours and will fold out all the ones worse. the KK on A92 example above is a good one.

In your example, we've flopped a very strong hand (albeit not the nuts), so we need to be betting for value and building a pot. A more extreme example that will reinforce this:

We have 33. Flop comes AT3.

Now, we certainly don't have the nuts here, and chances are we are WAY ahead, but if we are behind, we are WAY behind (drawing to one out). But this is not a WA/WB example! Our hand is just far too strong, and there are a ton of worse hands villain can have that will still call if we bet. Yes, it's very unlikely he will improve to beat us, but that also has nothing to do with anything. By checking behind here, we are going to get a max a two streets of value (which I know was your plan), but that will often times cost us the third street of value, which is often equal to the first two streets of value combined!

Bet bet bet. ABC.