Red Rock poker room on a Sunday afternoon. Villain's stats over roughly 30 hands are 18/4. Hero has played 25/17 up to this point. For this table we are the two tightest players. I've observed one other hand that villain has played and he made a big raise on the turn and took down a decent pot.

Hero raises to $10 from UTG + 1 with KK. One call from MP. Villain makes it $22 from CO. Folds to hero, who makes it $60 to go. MP folds, villain calls. Flop Q J 5. Hero ?

Considering both villain's tight play and his perception of hero's range, this seems like a pretty bad situation. Since his call closed the action, I can't entirely rule out AA from villain's range. It's more likely that he 3bets/calls with QQ/JJ, and those two hands just made sets. Which line do we prefer to take when we run into these spots? Bet/fold? Check/evaluate? I talked about this hand with a guy later in the session and he mentioned check/raise/fold...but that seems like an expensive option to me, esp with $60 in preflop and villain holding about $150 behind after the flop. Thoughts?

With $120 already in the pot and V having $150 behind, our only options here are to either C/F, or C/C.

Betting commits us to any raise he may make, even though we're likely behind his raising/calling range of JJ+. C/C allows us to rep a missed AK, and can allow us to get value from his own missed AK, or TT.

Also, the relatively small 3-bet followed by a flat of the 4-bet makes AK much less likely to be in his range.

The real question is whether or not you think he will bet with TT/AK when checked to. If he will, then C/C is the right play. Otherwise C/F would be optimal against his range.

Regarding whether or not AA is in his range, I think his flatting of the 4-bet doesn't tell us too much, since many tight Vs are afraid of having their opponent folding when they have AA, and will flat the 4-bet anyway ignoring the fact that we're already committed given his stack size.

@Corto Montez Thank you for your response. On one hand I feel like such a nit to build a pot like this and c/f, esp given the low SPR, but I'm beginning to think that it's a viable option in situations like these when villain's range crushes us.

As far as results go, I lead out for 1/2 pot, he frowned at me, thought for about 5 seconds, then pushed out a $100 raise (I think he left something like $30 behind). I mucked while getting 3.4 to 1 and contemplated whether c/f was a better way to go, esp given that I was willing to b/f for these odds. B/f only really gives me value from AQ, which I shouldn't really put in his range that much, and charges AK to draw to a gutter and overcard.

I definitely didn't have room to check/raise/fold, but as I stated before, I have heard that line given as an option for spots like this with deep stacks to get value from hands like AQ/AK while folding to better hands. Not sure if I totally believe that yet, but I'm considering it.