I'm teaching my cousin (not a complete beginner) some mid level concepts on range construction and such.

We discussed a hand he played where he opened QQ from UTG and got flatted by the bb 100bb deep.

Flop was A84r

I advised him to split his range against weaker players (check back flop and bluff catch or value bet turn) but I suggested he would want to go ahead and cbet vs strong players who can hand read to avoid being too face up.

Does that sound like good advice?
How might the situation change if he were out of position?

Dont cbet.... if ur getting blown off ur hand too often checking ur o****usly not checking ax enough

Because we want to cbet our air on this flop, I thought we would want to cbet all but our worse Ax combos here and (if we are playing against a thinking villain) either not check our QQ, KK, and such or add some slow plays to our check back range that can raise the turn after checking back.
Is this a matter of opinion/preference? Or is it the consensus that we ought not cbet a very high % of our range in this spot? Or am I missing something else?

you never want to c-bet "all your air" because that would mean u never have delayed c-bet bluffs

typically hands that can be strong enough to x flop or turn and bluff river are okay, or hands with like 0 equity going for them, like 23o on a AJ8r board or something u might check to river and bet that as a river bluff

I'm guessing an optimal line will mix in some cbets with KK-99 on this board with some small frequency (potentially more cbetting the lower the pair), but yea as broken said you don't really need to do that in the real world.

Not sure why you want to bet all your weak aces and not bet some sort of air like gutters, back doors, etc on this board. You can choose betsizing appropriately based on the number of bluffs you think is appropriate given positions and villain's range vs your range.

Is this full ring or 6max?

I'd check the flop with QQ in either case, but I'd play the rest of my range differently.

I'm not checking most of my aces
I'm checking back only the weakest aces IF I'm going to have a balanced check back range, I'm not betting all my air but def all gutters and stuff like BDFDs.

It seems there is a consensus that we want to have a check back range even vs skilled opponent, right?

I'm thinking something like;
(Full ring, opened 3x UTG $2-$5 live) called by bb...

Checking back 99-KK, ATs, AJs, AJo(weakest Ax in my range, if table dynamics allow me to open A2s-A5s then checking back all of those instead) and I'm checking back AA. If I have both 88 and 44 in my range I may check back 88 some of the time as well.

I feel like having just a couple nutted value combos will go a long way toward protecting my check back range because I can then raise for value vs turn lead and also have bluff raise range on the turn.

I think I want to use weakest Ax combos so I have hands that check flop then call down/delayed cbet w and really I feel as though the main reason I have to go to these lengths is to protect the parts of my range I most want to check back like 99-KK so I'm always checking those hands IF I'm balancing a check back range here at all.

So..
2 parter;
Could it make sense to just cbet my entire UTG range on A84r?
and plan to check back a lot of turns w weak Ax and 99-KK planning to call river lead w KK and all weak Ax?
Or.. If we def want a check back range (something like 99-KK and our worst Ax combos) then how many slow plays (sets and maybe A4s) do we need to check back to stop villain from bombing turn and river super polar and wide and crushing our check backs?

Vs good opponents probably not. Vs calling stations probably not. Vs players that think about the game but not very well it can work depends a lot on how you think they're thinking about defending their BB vs an utg open in a full ring game.

The problem is if you cbet that board you eliminate pretty much any bluffs from a river leading range. Not many people turn pairs and other weak made hands into bluffs when you cbet.

In theory you need to defend with frequency Pot/(Bet+Pot) so for a pot sized bet you need to defend with 50% of your range that has the correct equity to call.

So if you face a turn and river pot sized bets you need to defend 25% of your flop cbetting range on the river.

In reality it doesn't need to be anywhere near that often if you're checking nut hands and/or villain isn't bluffing nearly often enough to make calling with bluff catchers correct.

Also you need to make sure that moving your nut hands to a check has the same EV as betting them. For example AA is probably a good candidate because it would be difficult for your opponent to have a hand to pay off any bet, but 88 and 44 should be 100% bet imho since there are too many Ax combos now in villain's range.

It's very poor estimate especially on flops/turns bc continuation frequencies heavily depend on ranges and textures.

Apparently you didn't read the rest of my post?

You should not be teaching anybody.

cbet 100% because this kind of flops are hit by your range superhard

even tho you should bet often here, a good size would be 1/2 or even lower, because there are no real draws

You can definitely c-bet a high proportion of your range IP on this flop, but it depends on your position and the worst hands in your range, along with just how often villain defends his BB.
If you're in EP, checking back AT or worse Ax, along with KK-TT should be good. You have such a range advantage UTG that I think you can bet all your "air" (Kxs, QJs - you don't really have many unpaired hands) to balance the value combos, but in practice I might check back some Kxs hands, as "nut air" hands with BDFDs often do well checking back IP. Top set is probably a c-bet tbh, and middle set definitely is.
While the GTO solution might involve betting KK-JJ at least some of the time, checking back will work better against all types of real world opponents I would think. By checking back some Ax, it means your KK-JJ aren't totally face up and vulnerable to being barreled off on the turn and riv.

why not barrel them off of their A5o or whatever crap they called?

Thanks
that helps a lot.

regarding cbetting AA on this flop;
I rarely slow play in practice (almost never) but it SEEMS (not at all sure) that the bigger my SDV/bluff catcher range, the more often I want to check back, the more important it becomes to have traps in my check back range.

Seems like AA would be the best trap check back by far and having just a few such combos in my check back range will allow me to value raise the turn after checking back the flop and having potential value raises allows me to toss in bluff raises (both of these turn raising ranges would seem to temper my opponents ability to blast away on turns abd rivers)????

Does that make some sense?

If so, what hands should I check back in this spot and raise vs turn lead?

Lets say my UTG range is heavily weighted toward; 88+, ATs+, AJo+, KQs. Maybe w a few combos of A2s-A5s and a couple smaller PP combos w, say my red QJs, JdTd, 9h8h.

split or protect a range??? #waitwhat

The ones that bink 2- or 3-outers.
You probably won't have many combos that raise the turn, since the board is so dry/static. You have a couple of hands that might pick up combo draws, and you can also turn top two pairs with hands like AJ/AT/A9, but there aren't many turn cards that radically improve the relative strength of your flop-checking range.

If the turn is a ten in the same suit as the 8 or 4 (let's say diamonds), you could raise TT and AT for value and balance with KQdd, KJdd, QJdd and maybe some of the lower Axdd if those are in your range, or it might be best to call with the combo draws and 2prs/sets most of the time. If the turn is a total blank like a deuce that makes a 4-card rainbow, you should probably have no raising range at all, since the turn changes nothing about your range strength.

Is it safe to say, then, that you dont agree w my understanding that slow plays are in a range mostly to protect the show down value/bluff catcher portion of that range?

There definitely are spots where slowplaying very strong hands (e.g. top set) will be part of the GTO solution, and part of the conceptual reason for checking back will be to protect the weaker parts of your range and/or allow you to bluff-raise more turns. I'm just not sure if the spot you described is one where top set does best by checking. (I don't have the GTO solution just lying around, but you can use a solver to find out if AA is a bet or a check in that spot if you really want to. I suppose a lot depends on how many Ax combos villain calls with pre-flop).
I'm almost certain that 88, however, is a bet on A84r in that spot. It might even be a more profitable hand to bet than AA, since it doesn't block the top pair combos that can give you action, so it's probably a blunder to check back middle set.

It's actually good practical idea not to split your ranges into betting and checking ranges in some spots, and just do one with 100% frequency. This just makes life easy in some spots, even though it might lose few bb/100 against GTO, compared to a perfect strat.

Basically we get to skip a gametree branch and jump into turn, where we only have 2 streets left so way easier to balance stuff.

I agree.

Do your best though obviously. Difficult to use an RNG and play enough tables, but you can certainly do stuff "sometimes", just do yo thang.

QQ I would tend to usually check back, however I balance this by betting TT 99 type hands.

Probably balance aces by betting with runner runner flushes, or straights otherwise check.

The thing with slowplaying sets is that simply checking back something like AJ or even AQ and calling barrels is usually adequate to protect your checkback range. The main danger of having your checkback range being too marginal (as in rarely a set, unless its a turned set) is when your opponents do stuff like overbet or checkraise turns. Its a pretty rare breed that is capable of recognizing the situation and willing to go that route, for good reason. When getting value from players with "just top pair" is basically the bread and butter of any good poker player, they're going to be extremely reluctant to put in expensive bluffs when someone has "only top pair".

So really, you can get away with checking back QQ almost all the time against good players while simultaneously betting flops with sets almost all the time.

On a more general note, usually you want to cbet less against good players. Cbetting is really just the habit of exploiting the fit or fold tendencies of weaker players. The better your opponent is, the more likely they'll be to fight back with bluffs and they'll have a stronger preflop range. So you really should be cbetting less.

that all makes good sense to me. Cbet less than what though? Just less than you would vs fit ir fold players? Or does it seem like im describing a strategy that is c betting too often in this spot if my opponent is competent?

Thanks for the help ArtyMcFly, I would also be pretty sure that 88 is a much better bet than AA in this spot.

I play about 80 or 90% of my hands heads up online where protecting yourself from massive exploits like turn overbets/turn check raises do definitely become a problem if your check back range is too face up. I wasnt sure what advice to give to a guy pkaying a lot of live cash games.

I, myself, have been toying w the idea of not splitting my range so oftenvs thinking players but this thread has me thinking I was on the right track and just have to think a bit on balancing my check backs.

This has been very helpful to me, thanks all

Sorry for the dumb questions in advance... but what does having a 100% betting and/or calling range in a certain spot accomplish ik you said it already but i don't get it :l (where we are betting our checking our entire range OTF)?
Random guess to not be exploitable OTF or later in the hand or something...?

Basically you said "we get to skip a gametree branch and jump into turn, where we only have 2 streets left so way easier to balance stuff."
okay so are we always going to be choosing to play "balanced" OTT-OTR after betting/checking our entire range OTF...