Harrington advocates in his book that you should "value bet" in a situation where you hold a reasonable hand and believe it is ahead due to the betting paterns but that your opponent will call with a worse hand.

Is this always correct though?

Perhaps you have made a 3-4BB raise from the button with AJ and your opponent on the BB calls leaving you heads up.

The flop comes down Js 7h 6h

Opponent bets/ You bet 3/4 pot / Opponent calls

Turn 3s

Opponent checks/ You bet 3/4 pot / Opponent calls

River Qs

Opponent checks...

In this situation I would usually expect I am ahead and check to see. Harrington would say you should place perhaps a 1/2 pot value bet. He doesn't say what you then do if you face a raise. What if your opponent has AA or trips and since you have bet every other street checks into you again? Or perhaps he was holding A7 of spades, called on 2nd pair and has infact hit a backdoor flush draw, or was calling on AQ and now hit - again he checks believing you will bet into him.

Given that this is referring to tournaments, even if your opponent calls 50% of the time, folds 45% of the time and raises 5% of the time, do people think it is worth gaining an extra 100 chips here and there, if 1 time out of 20 you are raised all in and forced to make a decision on your whole tournament?

The flush would have me a little worried, but operating on the basis that if he's bad enough to call my bets with Qx then he's not good enough to check raise the river with a Q I might well bet it, though it would depend on what info I had on the guy. In the absence of any information I may well check. Overall state of play in the tournament would also be a factor.

Its a matter of whether you believe your ahead or not...with an overcard, a possible flush and a possible straight on the board i would probably check the river here...

__________________
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? for he wants to perish.

When you get reraised you lose 1/2 pot bet (you would have lost what was allready in the pot anyway by checking down).

When you don't, and get called by a worse hand, you win 1/2 pot bet. So long as the times you win and get called is 51% vs the times you either get called and lose or get re-raised, then it's valuable to bet here. If your opponent makes a huge re-raise... believe him and be wary next time you're in a pot together... but it doesn't make sense to pass up solid value bets because you're afraid your opponent may bluff you out.

__________________
-You may not know this, but poker is a game of incomplete information.

Good point PJ, a reraise is more often than not going to what it appears to be (a sign you are beaten) so it wasn't your pot.

But I'm playing like a donkey today so far so what do I know

I thought that Harrington made mention to Sklansky's theory on playing this type of hand and what to do when reraised. Meh...Merry Xmas...

__________________

I think this is a difficult decision, and I think that a lot depends on the opponent and how loose/tight you think he is. Overall, though, I think I'd tend towards checking here.

First, what hands might he call (but not reraise) a preflop raise from the button and then check/call thereafter?

Recognizing that an opening raise from the button might not indicate great strength, the range of calling hands therefore doesn't need to be tremendously strong, either. Still, I wouldn't expect to see my opponent have a pocket pair of TT or better. I would expect those to be reraising hands on at least one of the earlier streets, especially given the two flush draws presented by the turn. I also wouldn't expect to see a hand like KJ because the opponent should have lead out on the flop with such a hand (if he's not willing to lead with those cards, then why call the preflop raise in the first place?). Finally, I wouldn't expect to see a hand like AQo or AsKs because the post-flop betting doesn't make much sense for those kind of cards.

What makes sense to me is if the opponent has a hand like QJo, JTo, KhQh, or a middle pair (like 88 or 99). You win some of these matchups and you lose others. However, if those are reasonable possibilities, then I guess you can do some math to figure out the percentage of times that your opponent will have one of those combinations, add together the percentages where you win, and then determine if it is more likely than not that you are ahead.

I'm not good enough to do that kind of math in my head at the table. However, the combination of (1) an overcard; (2) a backdoor (if improbable) flush on the board; and (3) the 0% likelihood of getting called by someone who had only a busted heart draw would all lead me to check behind the BB on the river.

It DOESN'T matter how often you are ahead here. It matters how often you will get called by a worse hand. If when you get called, you have the best hand 55%(leaving the possibility we fold to a bluffraise) this is a good bet.

__________________
“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann

I think that we are saying the same thing, only with slightly different emphasis. If you look at the range of hands that your opponent might have after calling you down through 4th street, there are some with which he will usually call on the river (e.g., some kind of made hand) and some with which he will never call (e.g., a busted draw). If you focus on the range of calling hands and estimate the percentage of those which have you in the lead, then you have likewise estimated the percentage of times that you will get called by a worse hand.

I didnt really get to your post. I was referring to his OP's "when you are ahead a reasonable amount of the time."

__________________
“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann