UTH Stategy vs 2 player Texas Hold 'Em

I was reviewing hand ranking for 2 player Texas Hold 'Em and noticed that Q/5 suited had win percentage of 50.71% , lose percentage of 45.17% and draw percentage of 4.11%. In UTH, since you are playing only against the dealer I would think the correct play is to bet 4 times and yet basic strategy says to check. I know there must be something I am missing, can anyone enlighten me.

Thanks in advance,

Chuck

Dealer can't make the decision to fold facing aggression that a human player can.

When hands are poor or marginal, you can gain more equity overall by selectively making 2X flop bets or 1X river calls based on board texture instead of the 4X bet.

Quote: chuckfinn

I was reviewing hand ranking for 2 player Texas Hold 'Em and noticed that Q/5 suited had win percentage of 50.71% , lose percentage of 45.17% and draw percentage of 4.11%. In UTH, since you are playing only against the dealer I would think the correct play is to bet 4 times and yet basic strategy says to check. I know there must be something I am missing, can anyone enlighten me.

Thanks in advance,

Chuck

This question has come up before on this forum.

The basic answer is that, while it would be +EV to bet 4x pre-flop, the EV of checking and then making your decision after the flop (with a lot more information) is even higher.

Remember that your goal is to make the decision with the highest expectation, not to simply make the first positive-expectation play that you find. In other words, you should be comparing the expectations of various decisions against each other and picking the highest one, not comparing them to 0.