Same table as the other HH I posted, though a tad earlier in the session.

Villain is a young, suburban black guy with dreads. My reads on him are a disaster of race relations in the US. When he first sat down, I thought he was someone I'd played with earlier in the week, but that guy had been a l/c fish, and this one seemed to be a doing a lot more folding preflop.

Of course, things had been a bit non-standard and that combined with running a bit card dead could easily explain why he was less active. Earlier in the week, he was on my right, so was getting caught limping a lot more. This time around, he was to my direct left, and there was a lagtard a couple seats further to the right who had blown up the table dynamics for a few orbits with all sorts of straddles and blind raises and $17 opens and such. Since that player left, I ran into a lot of good situations to PFR, so again, it might be the same guy, but just not finding many spots to see a flop for $2.

The other guy l/c'ed a lot preflop, then seemed to kind of play by feel postflop. He adjusted to my aggression by calling moar, which is my favorite type of player to play. Even if this isn't the same guy, that means I've never seen him before, and most non-regulars play more by feel than they do by whatever "standard" they have.

Again, I've been getting in a lot of good spots to PFR hands the last few orbits, so I've been very active and taking down a lot of pots without showdown. I'm starting to wonder if anyone's going to play back at me, but I continue to be in straight-forward spots facing straight-forward action and no one explicitly hates my guts.

OTTH:

Two limpers to hero in MP. We have two red 9s, and makes it $13. Villain calls, BU calls, and one of the limpers call.

FLOP: ($51 post-rake)

544r

Checks to Hero, and we make it $30. Villain calls, rest fold.

TURN: ($111)

A (completes the rainbow)

Hero checks (THIS IS WHERE MY MAJOR QUESTION LIES). Villain bets $65.

I look at villain, who looks back with a steady look but not glaring or making a big show about it. I look away, and villain continues to look at me. Villain is shuffling chips, and I stare at his hands looking for him to falter, and give him several seconds but he rifles through them without a hitch. I look at him again when he's not looking and he's just looking at the board. Finally I force the situation by asking him how much he has. He counts his chips while making absolute minimal movements. His manners have gone noticeably more stiff and he mouths something barely audible. I lean in and say, "What's that?" He's still low and gruff, but I hear "$190" in there somewhere. I count out $65 in red and slide them in.


THOUGHTS:

Again, my question isn't so much about the call because I felt comfortable about that based on several factors (can provide if requested), but about how the logic of my check interacted with my call. This is a pretty standard spot for me to bet again, but I just couldn't pull the trigger. I knew I could get two streets by going Bet / Check / Bet, but I generally think it's better to protect on the turn (especially against 76 and broadways).

But it just bothered me how unsure I was about how he was going to respond to a bet. I couldn't even feel certain he called a big bet with 88, and 76 was the only had I would be protecting against that would even consider calling. And if he called, and I checked to him on the river and he bet, I didn't feel totally-no-doubt-about-it-good about folding, especially if his sizing was on the smaller size (which it tends to be on the river in these games). So I felt like I was setting up a huge pot in a spot where I was more likely to make big mistakes than villain was. I don't generally like this whole, "Keep the pot small with small hands" crapola, but here I just really didn't feel comfortable. When the turn went chk/chk (which I thought it would do mostly), I felt MUCH better about getting super fat value on the river.

So I check with no large part of my reasoning have anything to do with a plan to catch him floating, yet now he's bet and I think bluff catching is a splendid idea.