KQ strategy when you hit top pair

Okay say I have position on villain and am holding KQ off suit. The flop comes Q 7 4. Villain leads out with a bet......do you raise his bet to see where your at or call and see the turn. If you call what do you do on the turn?

i call because a raise blows off most of his range that we beat. In fact, i will actually never raise his bets with this hand, unless i have reason to believe he's drawing

I tend to agree. I had gotten myself in trouble in the past with inflating the pot by raising TPGK hands to early. You don't want to 3 bet and have him call and be playing a 30+ BB pot on the turn with a hand like this. If he 1/2 pots the turn where do you stand?

Reads, table image, preflop action and stack sizes are all very important. I sometimes call and sometimes raise. I raise "alot" here with air, so I will often get played with by JJ, QJ and AK here even if I raise. If my raise is called I usually smooth call or check behind a blank turn and play the river accordingly.

But the standard play is to smooth call.

And we smooth call to the river, right? If not, when do we fold or raise? Should we be okay paying off a solidly played AK in the hope that KJ, KT and Kxs will pay us off?

probably


against strong players we can fold the river

i've been raising in this spot lately. if they fold fine. i didn't really want to play a big pot with TPGK anyway. if they call they seem to check the turn a LOT. i usually check behind on the turn and get a cheap river decision. if they bet big on the turn i'll usually give it up.