Quote Originally Posted by rpm View Post
@boris

raising the flop is ok if we get value from villain's calling range. raising the flop because we probably have the best hand vs his total leading range (while ignoring his lead/calling range) is not ok. raising "to take it down" before any scare cards come is also incorrect, as best i know.
Good point that it's not a reason to bet "because we have the best hand", I probably didn't word that right.

I think we can raise for 2 reasons:

1. We often take down the dead money now, and make the other players fold their equity share with weak draws and pairs. We can't ever bluff here, as better isn't folding, but it's not so bad that worse folds since we have a hand that is quite easy to play right now but isn't on the turn.

2. We can extract value from worse. TPTK for example here, in a 5NL game, is likely calling a raise, and the turn will kill our action in that case.

I don't believe he has a lead-call range that is ahead of us, if he's ahead I think he'll always lead-reraise as he's already chosen not to slowplay a monster, so if he 3bets it we have an easy fold, if he flats a raise I think he's nearly always on a flush draw, sometimes an oesd and rarely a very loosely played tptk.

I don't believe it's wrong to raise to take it down now - if we do raise, we often do take it down and we get pretty solid value for our unimproved low-mid strength hand - we really don't have a hand that is likely to win if 2 other players peel another street and possibly two, so if we can fold them out now I don't mind making them fold worse hand that have outs to improve if we let them peel for cheap.

Other opinions on this definitely appreciated, I don't post this as a statement of fact, I'm quite open to the idea that this whole line of thought might be bogus, but I really don't like flatting this flop so if I am wrong I'd like to learn why.