Say you are playing a reasonable thinking player who has shown the ability to be able to raise dry boards or call with A high on dry boards etc... You raise button with 45 suited and the flop comes 2,4,T rainbow. Obviously this board is quite dry and doesn't smack his range a whole lot (maybe some 10's but meh). You c-bet and he raises - You call knowing full well he is capable of raising here with air. Turn is a blank and he checks.... Are we betting here nearly 100% of the time?Obviously this is opponent dependent and he could be playing it tricky with a set or 2pair, but unless we have a clear read do you guys feel it is bad not to be trying to take the pot down right here on the turn?
If you call flop raise and he checks the turn, usually he is to giving up on the pot though sometimes he is trapping or he thinks he overplayed a hand like T8 and now wants to pot control a bit. With a hand like 45 on a 24Tx board on the turn, you really can't bet for value since he can't have much worse for that he would call a bet with and you certainly don't want to be betting as a bluff as he won't fold anything better. I usually check back the turn in a spot like that and hope to just get to showdown free OR bet like 1/3 pot or so just to protect your equity (assuming you don't think he will spazz out just because you bet the turn small). The problem with checking back the turn though is that he does get a free card with likely 2 overs and he also could try to bluff the river since you now showed weakness checking the turn. A read is useful to figure out if you would call a river bet or fold.
Taking it down sounds good, as most of their stronger range should probably value bet the turn readless, checking there is probably a bit fancy without any reads and you'll get action more often (from your opponent's view if he has something like KT) on this dry type board from weaker hands when you bet (Ax, 2x, 4x, weaker Tx hands sometimes and some draws).So I would bet quite often, it's probably similar to a semi bluff, where you are happy to see a fold but you have some equity when called (and position in this case, which should make things nice and easy more often than not on the river).Don't forget that you'll often be facing bets a lot more often when you check the turn than when you bet it, so it's not like you're really putting that many more chips in than you would be by checking (similar to a small flop reraise versus a flat call of a check raise by your opponent, which often leads to your opponent betting the turn. They bet the turn a lot less often if you reraise the flop, you take the initiative, so to speak).
You really need to know how often he's CRing the flop here, just saying he could have air doesn't really tell you a lot, let's say though that you put him on that more often than not. The problem with your hand is that if you show it down you're only slightly beating a random hand and ideally you want to take it down now if you can, if he ends up raising you then you're going to know more about where you're at, if he calls well he's more likely to check the river where you can check back and show it down, and if he folds well that's a good result for sure. If you check back here though he'll be often leading the river and now you've got a third overcard to contend with, he may sense this as weakness and pounce on it, the difference between the two is that you're probably putting a similar amount of money in the pot, but by doing it now you have both fold equity and one less card out there for him to make his hand prior to making his decision. So I'd bet out here against most opponents, if he played the river very passively and I could expect him to only lead it with a hand that I'm behind I'd check but most players don't play this weakly.