ChipsArePawns

The value from suited connectors comes from post flop. in a game where your getting played back at a lot pre i would opt to see a cheaper multiway pot rather than thinking about how much to raise. if the button is bad then hes going to play bad multiway too.

this is different if you are on a table that is call happy. and also theres a time and a place for suited connectors so if the dynamics dont allow you to play them profitably then a fold is fine a lot of the time

I note this post is quite old but im going to respond anyway.

I think your thinking about this the wrong way. you dont need action from him when you hit. You make instant profit here every time he calls; AQ plays well vs the range you give him and you win every time he doesn't hit a set. If you are very confident in your read/range then when he does hit a set and continues you can get away easily.

So i would say a 4bet for value is optimal but flatting and playing the hand in position should also turn a profit if we play well on the flop.

As an after-thought- betting also leaves your range uncapped which is an advantage we lose over villain as soon as we check.

I think once he calls the check raise you never have enough equity. If we think about the range that calls a c/r here a K may not be a clean out considering Q10 with a heart is now a nice hand on OTT. More importantly you have the blocker to the nut draw which discounts most of the calling range we are ahead of.although i think it could be wider than you think because of the turn card. Something like; A10o,AJ,A5,A9, J5,J9, 55,99, Q10h,Qh10 ,QhJ,QJh,QJhh, Q10hh,10h8, 10h8h,6h7h,7h8h. So basically a combo draw or a hand that beats us. we are 35% against this range.
This is obviously player dependant but i think its reasonable considering he is in late position with a bigger stack, you don't always have a flush here when you shove. Against this range you have

His whole betting range probably looks similar to that plus Ax, maybe 1010, 88. Its not a great card to stab at with no equity.

There are definately player i would want to bet/get it in or check shove but with little to no read I think its rash.
I think i would go ahead and bet here, something around the 290-330 mark. Which gives room to fold to a raise.
Taken into account the earlier hand where he bets the turn it is similar as the turn gives a second draw again. If floating the flop to stab the turn was a tendency i spotted it could tip this to a CRAI but one hand isn't enough and the hand before was BVB which is a very different scenario.

Raise larger pre, the blinds are tiny and no antes + hes raised from utg+1 so should have a hand he will continue with.
i think c-betting flop is fine as you are getting floated alot. i think if you are flatting his turn bet here we need to be calling his river shove nearly always. Otherwise why call the turn? wer not expecting to improve and it doesnt check through often enough.

i think the best line with stack sizes is to check the flop. hoping to x/c flop, x/shove turn. if villain checks back on the flop we can bet out on the turn and river and if he checks behind on the turn we can value bet river.

if it goes x/x on turn i like a over bet on the river to polorize our range on the double paired board and get value from bluff catchers like 66,77,88 or a high, k high.

i don't think the third barrel is doing any favors here. we gets called by Qx or better pairs. I suppose he might get sticky with worse pocket pairs too but that's less likely.
I don't mind the first two barrels, if you think your ahead in this spot on the river why not x/c, this keeps in villains bluffs with Ax and worse pairs making it a more profitable play imo.

Overall though i think checking the turn is best.

Interesting

yep i agree. Thanks.
Didnt free roll him though, raised the turn, but still.

turns out he has Q4ss btw.

Raphael I do agree with you, he checks back all those hands. A bluff in this spot would be horrible for him but so would a call.
I guess I believed at the time that he bluffs more often than calls with those type of hands. An oversight perhaps. My first case of fancy play syndrome maybe?

My mistake; turn bet was 2400 from utg+3

No I wasn't checking with the thought that most hand that call beat me, just most flushes that he has do. They also bet though and by checking we keep in bluffs.

And yeah I agree live players are still calling alot with a 10 here, wasn't sure yet about this guy though.

@vastifini11514
http://www.pokernews.com/news/2014/11/pros-comment-on-stars-rake-increase-19706.htm

Im clearly missing something. Why are people making the transition from HM2 to PT4?
Some people seem to not like it yet want to use it.

I agree that 99 should be a 5 bet jam here.

Once he starts 4-betting you, you need to be aware of his range to do so. If it truly is any two cards then 5betting your whole value range is obviously the way to go.
I would adjust here by splitting my 3bet range firstly into a 3bet/5bet and a 3bet/fold range. This is obviously going to be polarized, this stops villain taking advantage of our 3bet because he will either run into the top of our range and a 5bet or he will fold out our weakest hands where he was actually ahead. We obviously win in both of those scenarios.

It seemed you outplayed him oop post flop when he was just flatting your 3bets. why not adjust as above and also just flat his steal attempts with cards that play well post flop? or if your insistent of 3betting all good hands, use these hands to 3bet/call.

i think this hand is very well played. totally agree with the line that once we have under-repped our range on 3 streets we need to bluff catch a tonne. if we don't have a fair bluff catching range on the river then we are basically calling out of position with a draw (although a nice strong one).

similarly if a high card doesn't drop on the turn and its say 7c his continuing range doesn't change too much, he perhaps doesnt barrel KK, QQ, but i think most would bet 2 streets and certainly will bet top pair hands again most of the time.
And if for some reason he doesn't lead then we have position and can put a bet in.

If he is isolating a fish and looks and sees you as tight behind him could his range not be a fraction wider? maybe just a few combos but i think this makes the call ok when we assume the fish is coming along too. Villain does also have to act before us. we are also quite deep.

I feel the same as others that it is a standard call on the flop to keep in hands we crush. when the Q falls on the turn its interesting. We lose to AA, QQ, however hands that he continues with also are AK, KK, (maybe jj, not sure if he ever has jj here though) which have all picked up a gutshot and AQ.
Q could scare villain if hes at the bottom of his range as the board gets more wet but if he does see you as tight he cant really range you on a hand the Q completes.

No prob. Same to you.

My uni had a poker society but i didnt go as they were just getting drunk and playing badly- and not with enough money to make it worth going when I had a casino 20mins walk away.

As you wish;

Sorry this turned into another essay, first time iv penned all of this.

I would never had called myself a professional however i did spend just over 2 years supporting myself nearly solely through live poker. Whilst at uni I had loans also but after uni i spent a while just playing live, travelling into London and around the poker clubs nearer home.
Then I got approached by a backer and was limited to where I could play. I was playing 5-6 nights a week £1/£2 cash and making a decent hourly rate. I was doing some shift work 1 or 2 days a week at my old job because I enjoyed the job and I was quite close to the boss- he was urging me to become a manager, which is a role i had done previous to uni but i just stuck to the 1 or 2 shifts because i couldn't justify playing less poker. i effectively had a limitless poker bankroll as long as i kept to 1/2 at this particular club.

After a while i made the choice to end the staking deal for various reasons, everyone was still making money however i wasn't happy with some of the arrangements, mainly being limited to play and the times I could play; I didn't particularly like the game or some other aspects of the card-room I was playing at.

That went OK but due to a few non-poker life events some of my poker money was used up elsewhere. I still had a roll to play with but it was not as comfortable as before. I kept playing poker and I was still making money however with the uncertainty of the reduced roll and some other factors I decided to take the management job i was offered and play part time.

(Honestly the 'out of balance life' i mentioned in an earlier post was the main reason for this, I felt unhealthy and always looked tired. I never had any time for my gf, friends, family ect.)

This did not work! It is a different ball game to grind when your mind has been focused on other things for the day, working 40-50 hours then trying to put in hours at the table is near impossible for me let alone adding in analysis off the table. My solution was to try and up my online game (which I somewhat suck at) but the same is true for this online.

Currently I am still working however I have discussed with my boss and I am planning to move down to part time to (3-4 days a week) and gradually move back into poker full time. I have been grinding online a significant amount and my game is getting better. Iv made an effort to play live again in the last few weeks to see if i could still hack a through-the-night grind at a casino and completely fell back in love with it :)

So basically atm i suppose im a recreational player, i plan to shift that back towards semi-pro in the coming few months :)

I could talk about this forever as there is a lot of hours of live play and outside circumstances that happen throughout that time but this is already too long and im meant to be working. i used to actually draft down some anecdotes from time at the tables in hopes of starting a blog as i was basically a prop-player but i wasn't sure there would be interest. 

I think this is well played. I would bet for a couple of reasons; 

1, I feel we are not getting two streets of value out of this hand against most hands that we beat by river and since we are in position betting the turn seems favorable as this gives us the betting lead and may make villain check to us with most of his range on the river.

2, some combos that 4bet pre and cbet the flop picked up equity on the turn in terms of a gutshot or flushdraw and may now be planning to see the river and didn't want to get raised.

3, close to my first point, i feel that if we check behind and get lead into on the river we are in no-mans land as to what to do. if we bet turn and get x/raised we can make a decision.

Basically if i check this turn i am calling the river regardless, unless perhaps a J falls or he open shoves.

Notice his cbet size is the same as his 4bet size- does anyone think this kind of thing effects ranges and consider it into thier decision making? Iv had mixed experience in this regard.

I agree with CobatCarl and Ducky. I don't feel betting big holds much value as there isn't enough hands we get a call from that we beat. Because of this a check back isn't bad. Considering a smaller bet though is interesting; this is obviously very player dependent (and i could be well of the mark in which case I'm open to learn a new way of thinking), but I'm inclined to say that by betting 40 vs say a shove would:-  

-1.widen his calling range, and 2.widen/create a bluffing range. 

This means that when we bet 40 we are planning to always call a shove even though we will sometimes be beat. Effectively we get value from his bluff catching range and his bluffing range if he has one in this spot. we are not getting shoved on by every hand that beats us. I would imagine the top and bottom of his range shove and his middle range flats polarizing his shove.

maybe its the games I play in or maybe I'm deluded because as I type I'm leaning more towards a check but I do initially feel that the value from betting and getting called by worse and bet/calling outweighs the value saved from when we are called with better or bet/call and are beat.

Looks good Max, iv been doing something similar for a while and it is really motivating- I would recommend recording your feeling/mood before and after the session too. This is because when looking back you could identify some meta-game leaks.
Would be interested to see how this develops. 

OK so i typed out an answer to; do i play professionally now? but it turned into an essay- i can post it if you want but didn't want to bombard you with a wall of text again.

Short answer is not at the moment

the longer answer can be posted if you like.

You have a student poker club there? have you looked into the UKSPC (UK Student Poker Championships)? if not then i suggest you do.

leading enables a better spot for us when he 3-bet; by check raising we have to fold to his shove as played but by leading we should be able to call a 3-bet profitably when we consider implied odds with such a hidden draw.

this line makes the turn a whole lot easier to play also as the villian still has the initiative and we can comfortably check fold a bad turn and there is a possibility of a check behind giving us a free card.

@Snowman; ahh im waay more south, cut my teeth at Luton Grosvenor
     I finished uni and moved back in with my parents, I was playing live full time, they were worried about it at first. then I had a nice bit of variance and paid them 6 months rent in advance which seemed to ease thier worrys :) they were still worried about my sleeping pattern and social life ect. To be fair they were right on the money with that one, Life balance is important,it took me a while to realise this even though i had read it a hundred times but i sorted that out- thats a lesson to learn asap btw.

After a while i was approached by a backer and once I wasnt playing with my own money (and the deal was with no make-up) they couldnt worry too much.

I absolutely agree with @ZenFish also for what its worth- I absolutely would keep any talk with my parents and non-poker friends away from poker and if you cant keep yourself from trying to explain a bad beat to them then its time for a break :)

this initially reminds me of things I here bad players say in live tournaments "i know im behind but if I win iv got a big stack and can probably make the money" (not calling you a bad player as you are thinking about it rather than using it as a justification)

I never gave it too much thought because of this. my initial feeling is that in a situation where you know you have poor equity especially against multiple all-ins where our equity will always be even poorer, I don't think there would ever realistically be enough of an advantage to the stack you would gain.

the reasons for this are that as the situation in which it is likely to occur as you describe would be very early on in the tournament and probably have the worse players still in at this point.

with so long of the comp left stack sizes are going to change and the table dynamics will also, lets think about the outcome scenarios; 

I am thinking of a hand like 910ss with 2 or 3 all-ins in front.

We can fold, in which we keep our 20bb stack- if we are in the first few levels of the comp im assuming we have been coolered once or twice to have this small of a stack (in which case i suggest a tilt/spite-call ha)

We Can call and lose, obviously in which case we are out

We can call and win, in which case we have 80bb ish- this outcome is obviously not a bad one, however this early in the comp are the chips gained worth the risk because of the value our stack size now has? I would lean towards no. of course the stack size will be an advantage over smaller stacks but it isnt by any means going to guarantee a win or even close.
    There is plenty of the early stages left to pick up chips and certainly better spots to stack off, especially if your table is full of bad loose players which the 3/4 way all-in suggests, it would seem in this situation you are likely to have someone willing to stack off when you have the best of it even if that is soon in the first few levels. That being said our 80bb stack now wont have the desired affect of more utility; by this i mean that against these same players fold equity will be no higher because of a bigger stack as they wont fold hands or adjust their play in a way that benefits us.

Obviously the 80bb stack is going to be favourable other to 20bb stack, i just don't think the immediate profitability (at this level) is worth the risk of busting.

which uni/casino btw?

Snowman I was in a similar position as you a couple of years ago; My job was near my home rather than uni, a 90-120 min drive. In my second year of uni I decided it was unprofitable to travel back 2 days a week for the work as I had been making decent-ish money from poker (a big factor here was that most of the rent and bills was covered by student loans so was not dependant on the money)

after a while my parents were asking me what i was doing for cash- my mum had a similar reaction to yours, my dad showed concern but didn't react so severe. After I explained to them how I think about the game and how I don't feel the need to gamble on other games (and lied through my teeth about how much time I was spending on it) they decided ultimately said they trust me but were concerned.

This didnt last long and concern was often aired during visits home and over the phone. i done the simplest thing i could think of;

taught them the rules, and made them play with me! it was a way to show them that you can be a constant winner over time when you have an edge. my edge here was obvious but it left them open to accept other types of edge you can have.

I recommend this, introduce the game as a family game and don't talk too technical at first- never know they might be your opponents on stars in a few months.