2nd decision:

The blinds are 500/1000.

A player just sat at the table with a 43 BB stack. In middle position, he limps in.

Everyone else folds to you, in the cut-off.

You have 37 BB in front of you and A♣7♠ in your hands.

You raise 2.6BB.

Villain calls.

Flop:

J♦ K♥ J♠

You both check.

Turn:

A♥

Villain checks.

What do you do?

So I've raised this guy pre-flop and he's called, we made it 2.6k which was a great size against this limper to fold out those behind us, but also not bloat the pot too much as we were likely going to the flop with a good but not great hand.

Here's a reminder of what the pot was like pre-flop when we raised

We expected a call preflop as we thought he more than likely had a marginal hand that he wanted to see a cheapish flop with so far so good.

Then this flop comes

J♦ K♥ J♠

We have got an overcard to the flop which is nice, but when we think of the hands he's calling with preflop we either have them pretty much beat now (smaller sc's) as there's no flush draw here and the cards are high - and these hands are not going to call a bet. Or we are beat, by some weak kings in his range (KT, K9 maybe), very very rarely KJ... and weak pairs that he had preflop 22-66, which we are also fairing badly against now.

(even if we discount him having a pair of 7's meaning our 7 still has potential of improving us we are a 39% dog to 22-66!)

When we consider his potential hands versus this flop and that he only calls with hands that beat us on the flop there's no real value in betting here, so we check!

The turn

A♥

Is a good card for us obviously as we now have top pair. If he had a jack we would have expected a bet definately here on the turn, because we checked the flop and he's going to want to get some value from a possible weak king that we decided to pot control with on the flop, and also protect his hand against draws but he checks. There are now more draws on the board as the turn has put three to a straight out there, and a flush draw, so we definately want to bet to get value from a weak king, a flush draw or a straight draw. So I decide to bet.

The pot is 6.7k, i've got 34.4k behind and he has 40.4k behind.

I make it 4.4k (2/3 pot) because we don't need to bet anything more to accomplish what we want to here. Get value from worse hands and protect our hand.

There's another great reason for betting here, if we check there are a number of river cards that damage our perceived holdings. He could be tempted to take a stab on the river, and if it's a large bet and the river is scary we will be faced with a tough decision.

This is something @Andrew Brokos speaks about quite well.

"Even in no-limit hold ‘em, there are situations where betting for protection is appropriate... The central consideration is whether the turn and river action is more likely to favor you or your opponent. If your hand is vulnerable, [and you bet] your opponents are unlikely to bluff... it is often worth betting simply to take down the pot and avoid giving a free card."

You can read the full article here if you're interested!

When I make my bet he winces and then looks like he's kinda mad