As played check/fold the river.
I don"t really like how we have played this hand against this player. I have no idea who he is but assume he is a good thinking player who we are playing OOP too 400BB deep.
I assume there were no caller"s of his raise preflop. I would probably just call here as I don"t want to bloat the pot against this player OOP, have a look at the flop and go from there, if I hit I don"t mind check calling the flop and going from there. Also if he 4-bets me I have to fold (reverse implied odds Vs AK) and pretty much hate that.
If I do 3-bet Vs this player I am probably planning on betting the flop whatever and expecting to get called and also betting the turn mostly and expecting to get quite a few folds. It also depends on your table image and how he is seeing you. Is he going to believe the 3-bet really means a big hand? I doubt it and just a flop bet is not going to be enough to convince him. If so maybe I will give it up on the turn but this would be very read dependant, my default setting is bet flop and bet turn. Fold if he raises either levelling wars OOP are just bad.
When you check to him twice, his bet feels like he pretty much has to bet here (I would bet ATC obviously) but I don"t see what we can do about it, we have nothing and he can have all kinds of hands here. The flush draw is in his range, although I would have expected him to bet it on the flop really, but you would have bet it if you had it as well so I am certainly not putting you on it if I am him. I think once we have checked twice we have effectively given up and should fold. I know we can potentially get worse hands to try and bluff and in certain spots that is fine but that is just to complicated here. We just have no idea where we are. As played I am folding the turn as I am going to have to check the river and he can easily bluff me off the pot.
Our hand does not look like a flush draw or an overpair to me on the river.
If we had flopped an overpair then surely we would have bet the flop. Same if we had floped a big flush draw. Not really any flopped sets in our range and even if we did flop a set we would have to protect it on that board with 88. We could be playing it cute I suppose but the check on the turn pretty much makes that almost impossible. Our hand now looks like what it is. When we call I guess we could have a little mid type pair or a flush draw of some kind but the flush draw is such a small part of our range (I assume he is seeing you as a thinking player here as actually flush draws do get played like this quite often but I doubt you would play one like this).
I would check it OTR and hope he checks and we are good. If he bets I insta fold. I think he would call a lead very wide here as other than an unlikely flush draw or very strangely played flopped monster I don"t see what we represent. A check raise might work but again it is a complex line, there are so many easier ways of getting to the same result.
What does he bet that we beat that folds to a check raise? Based on his previous bet it is possible but you would have to be right a lot to make this profitable.
Personally dont see the need to call his turn bet, you are basically trying to out play the best player at the table, no?
Get in as few spots with him as possible, and when you get in them ,make sure you have the equipment to fight back.
I check and fold.
If we don"t test ourselves occasionally we don"t improve.
I agree, but we are not testing ourselves here, we should expect exactly what we got. Why have we called the turn bet? What was the plan on the river? Thats why I fold the turn because I know I am check/folding on most rivers and I don"t see much other option. This is not a spot to test yourself. You test yourself by playing the entire hand against the player and making the correct decisions. I would have played the hand very different but as played I fold the turn and check/fold the river. Sometimes I will fold the best hand, so be it.
