I play $5 4mans, so keep in mind the stakes and the players... I run into this situation somewhat often. Assume effective stacks of 50bb Your reads are pretty clear that villain isn't aggressive with his draws and is aggressive with top or mid pairs. You're on a strong straight draw in position in a 3bet pot and you call villains flop and turn leads. Your straight draw misses but the river completes a flush. Villain checks. I'm never quite sure when villain checks these rivers, is he scared of my holding a monster or is he planning to c/r? I'm left on the river with complete air and never positively sure what to do. I'm very aggressive so I almost always bet these for about 1/2 pot and get folds but I'm not sure if this is spewy. I feel checking is gross at the river with air, betting too small will get a call, and shoving risks too much if we're deep.There are other situations where this line comes up as well, and when I bet, I tend to get folds more than calls or raises. My question is basically if villain leads/leads/checks and you have no showdown value, does it usually mean weakness on villain?
At $5 tournies, I think villain will very often have a hand he is afraid to bet because he doesn't want to get raised. I think he will very often call a reasonable bet on the river, making your bluff attempt potentially very expensive.Notice that with a decent hand here at these stakes he should be bet-folding in this situation quite often get value. Instead, most villains at this level will be value betting the flop and turn and bluff catching on the river. And against some opponents at these stakes, it's not a bad check-call, as they may be floating weak hands and decide to bluff the river.
There are also many players that will bet very small with these stronger pairs when a bad card comes, in hopes of getting value from weaker hands and somewhat indicating that he fears that card. However, in my experience folding isn't often what they do vs a raise (varies by opponent, it's really tough to generalize this well).I would suggest not bluffing low stakes players at a high % without reads that they will fold a hand, you just don't end up folding out pairs often, let alone top or mid pairs, and that's generally true across a wide variety of board textures.Now, once you pickup some reads (like the opponent leading small with a stronger pair, or folding to aggression on scary cards/when they check) you can go ahead and bluff them in these spots mercilessly. But by default, I would play more of a preflop, flop cbet, turn double barrel aggression/bluffing strategy early on by default, with your aggression lessening with weaker hands as the hand progresses (high PFR, high cbet %, lower turn bluff bet %, lower river bluff %). You want to slightly adjust early on if you notice the flop being called a lot, by betting the turn a little more often without a hand, but really just start out in an aggressive strategy and adjust accordingly to each opponent. The key will be picking up on the little things your opponent does that indicates the way he'll play in other areas. Watching videos and playing games should really help you with that.