Quote Originally Posted by XxStacksxX
C/raising the flop is horrendous. Especially under the pretense of "narrowing his range". Any worse hand (QQ-KK, bluffs, etc) are very likely to fold to the c/raise. And in most cases, they have relatively little equity against you (QQ-KK have less than 10% equity). Better hands (JJ/AK/AA/AJ[unlikely in his range]) are obviously not folding. So a check/raise just builds a larger pot against a range you are massively behind.
Stacks is almost never wrong, and he's not wrong here. This is actually a big difference between limit and no limit, and one I am aware of keenly as a limit player.

If you check-raised this flop in a limit game, you wouldn't be spewy at all, because the check-raise doesn't cost you a lot of money, it does tend to buy you some useful information, and it doesn't commit you to the pot. Further, you can get lots of worse hands to call.

But in no limit, a check-raise on the flop in a raised pot pre-flop is costing you quite a bit of money and is putting you in a position where the hand becomes very hard to fold. It also makes you vulnerable to a bluff or semi-bluff re-raise from a player repping a stronger hand. And all you are really doing is folding out all your worse hands.

If you must be in this hand (and you shouldn't be), you want one of two things to happen-- (1) to be able to cheaply call with decent implied odds on improving your hand on the turn (2 pair would be really nice about now ) or (2) ideally, for villain to slow down and check the turn after his c-bet doesn't fold you out. If (2) happens, you have a much better chance of being ahead and even if you are behind, you have controlled the size of the pot so the hand isn't going to cost you as much money even if you end up calling or making 1 more bet.

Essentially, when you are behind a lot of the other guy's range and have little fold equity, you want to (1) control the size of the pot (and your potential losses / reverse implied odds), (2) if you are going to stay in the hand, give yourself some decent implied odds if you do improve, and (3) give your villain a chance to slow down so that you can take down a moderate size pot if you are actually ahead. Note that none of these options are all that attractive, as they all either involve losing money, winning a small amount of money, or getting really lucky and hitting a 3-outer. Which is why you shouldn't be calling 3 bets with AQ to begin with.