This happened today. I move over from the must move table. I sit down and after a few hands I look down at KcKh. I raise out of position to 100 and get 3bet to 310 by villain. Villain is very loud and arrogant. Has like 10 to 15k stack. His demeanor made me think he is probably a winning player.

I 4bet 600 more. He tells me very aggressively to move my hand to see my stack and decides to flat my 4bet. Before the hand I have 4k stack.

Flop comes 9c2h3h -pot is 2000

I decide to check the flop. He donk bets 460.

What would you do?

After a few replies, I will post results. Thanks

Bet the flop, as played shove.

Why the F are you checking? I guess make it 1400 or just shove.

bet the flop
as played c/r to 1400 and shove any turn.

Cbet flop, crai on turn.

I decided to check raise because I assumed he 3bet, flat called 4bet with a middle pair type, set mining type of hand or maybe AK so he would make a protection bet on the flop (and become committed after the bet) and call a shove hoping I am spewing with AK or bluff bet me if he happened to flat with AK in position. after the hand, I really think he 5bet folds-calls with QQ in that spot pre.

When I checked and he bet like that. I thought he was inducing a bluff because he put me on AK with a hand like 10-QQ but when I thought about it after I realized he would probably just bet 50-80 percent pot with these hands 10-QQ.

I ended up shoving and he snapped with top set of 99.

the guy made a negative ev flat call pre and he went on being arrogant thinking he was so great and not just luckbox. Some of these guys get really haughty when they are on heaters.

Anyway, can we ever play this hand differently and preserve our stack given that the bet was to induce a bluff (and not for value or a bluff itself) and we can put him on top set or other set and not any other hand when he is doing that?

^ I think I'd just cbet flop. Its really hard for us to have bluffs in our range when we check/raise... meaning we make it easier for villain to release his hand (for example TT if he had them).

Btw, its common for 4bet sizing to be a bit less than 3x. So against decent players I would have gone with ~760 or so. But.... you got called anyway so just keep jamming up the pot when you're against these whales.

It's completely fine to stack off 200 BB's With KK when you get 45.5 of 'em in pre and only lose to a flopped set. It would be bad to not try to get so much in pre or to find a fold post.

I'm not good enough to get away on this board for 200bbs. Maybe if I bet the flop and he plays bad I might be able to. But if I check the flop I don't think I can save money the way I play.

I would c-bet but I'm never good enough to fold here unless I have a ton of the right kind of history with villain.

+1, but you seemed to want to induce, so just stuff. There are 2 hands that beat you and most people aren't flatting AA. I got 3-bet the other day by nitty grandpa and he showed me 44 when I folded, and I wish I had a dollar for every time I couldn't get JJ to fold for 100+ bbs. When you are losing/running bad you start over analyzing these fairly basic spots, but there is nothing you should be doing differently.