Was this new line merited or should I have done it the ordinary way?

ballboy

On this hand I made a fairly standard reraise UTG with AJ; its folded round to Mistaflop who calls with position to me.

As you can see on the flop I completely miss. The standard move would be to c-bet here, but I tried something different and decided considering he only had £3.20 anyway to check and see if he would bet the flop in an attempt to make me fold. This I think can be useful because it pays to know who bets when the pre-flop raiser checks to them, which can make it a lot of fun when you check all your monsters to him. The pots £75p and he bets out 56p so little over 2/3s of the pot. I decide to then raise it here and put him to the test with a £2 bet with a view to call any shove he makes. He chucks the rest in and I call. I was well ahead and sadly he makes a straight on the river.

The question really is- do people think this check raise was merited? Should I have just done a routine c-bet and probably took down the pot? or was it right to essentially put a carrot in the other guys face where he was probably always going to chuck his remaining money in the middle even if he was beat and expose his failed bluff. This is all baring in mind that i only have Ace high at this point and he could have hit the flop dead in the face and called anyway.

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
xstuart	Small blind		£0.05	£0.05	£12.27
maruff	Big blind		£0.10	£0.15	£6.51
	Your hole cards	A J
ballboy	Raise		£0.30	£0.45	£9.68
HewJanus	Fold
MistaFlop	Call		£0.30	£0.75	£3.25
xstuart	Fold
maruff	Fold
Flop
		6 5 Q
ballboy	Check
MistaFlop	Bet		£0.56	£1.31	£2.69
ballboy	Raise		£2.00	£3.31	£7.68
MistaFlop	All-in		£2.69	£6.00	£0.00
ballboy	Call		£1.25	£7.25	£6.43
ballboy	Show	A J
MistaFlop	Show	A 8
Turn
		7
River
		4
MistaFlop	Win	Straight to the 8	£6.70		£6.70

Poker_Fail

If oppo had a bigger stack i'd try a check/raise or a float, but with him only having £2ish behind i'd just give up.

grantorino

are u c/r for value or as a bluff?

Against a shorty I really dont like it, and in general I dont think c/r as pre flop raiser is a good line either with monsters or bluffs

Dudeskin8

I'd just make standard cbet and fold if raised.

If you do this with AJ you have to do it a lot with AA/KK/AQ to balance.

Of course against bad players who don't think that deeply it's useless balancing so keeping it ABC makes sense.

Also hope you made a note on this one .

jugglegeek

I don't like this line. It looks to me like you have 78c or a big combo draw. With the stack he has you are basically shipping on the flop with ace-high and 3-outs. He could easily have a queen and you have no fold equity here either.

It's a bad flop for a c-bet because in possition the villian will call with any draw and any queen as well as 77+. Just check fold the flop here.

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