I'll try to keep this post from being too long, but there are a few hands that led up to the hand in question.

V1 - involved in each of the below hands. He is definitely a regular, very solid player and i perceive to be quite tough to play and a winning player. has about $1k in chips.

Some preceding hands (which I definitely didnt play excellently)

<Hand 1>
UTG limps, UTG+1 limps, fold, Hero raises AJ to $17, V1 calls on the Btn, all else folds.

$40 - T58
Hero bets $25, Btn Calls.

$90 - 4x
Hero checks, Btn bets $65, Hero Folds.

I think I'm holding basically the bottom of my range here and should probably fall into my check/fold portion of my range on this flop.

<Hand 2>
UTG limps, fold, fold, Hero raises AQ $15, folds, V1 in button calls, after asking to see my chip stack for a count. all folds.

$34 - KJ9

Hero bets $25, V1 folds

I bet the flop as it hit my range harder than his, particularly with the asking of chip counts which i take to mean his range can include more drawing hands and mid pocket pairs.

<Hand 3>
UTG $10, fold, EP calls, Hero 3! to $40 from MP with JJ. V1 on button calls again, UTG calls. 3 ways to flop

$134 - k85r

UTG checks, Hero bets $60 (as i would with AK, AA, KK on this dry board), V1 folds, UTG raises to $120, Hero folds.

THEN - i notice that V1 in seat 1 seems to be discussing my play quietly with friend (also reg and solid player) in seat 2. It is at a volume i am not supposed to hear. i am 90% sure i heard comments to the extent of - "yep next time im playing back" or "hes not raising with much"...

onto main hand maybe an orbit later

<Hand 4>
Hero UTG+2 has JJ again and opens $10, V1 in CO raises to $40, hero has ~$250 remaining.

Flatting OOP here feels like its going to put me into a world of hurt a lot against this Villain. I also have listened to his conversation about my apparent wideness and view is 3! to be much wider than standard.. but even with a range advantage assuming this, i dont really want to play OOP.

I 4! to $140.

I also viewed this as a chance to play back and say "stuff you", but having said that it would make more sense maybe to do this with say ATs, AJs, etc with blockers to AK and AA and perhaps I'm just committing myself if V jams and im hoping for AK.

V mucked.

Thoughts on play very much appreciated, sorry for long post.

1st hand
preflop is ok, but with 1 caller am happy
flop is very wet and smacks the button calling range a lot harder than you.
I dont really like the cbet then give up as I think villian will peel light here a lot of the time too see the turn and see what you do scenario.
you say you are at the bottom of your range here which is kind of true but you are oop which will make this hand 100x harder to play against a thinking reg and dont really think a cbet in this spot will be overall a winning bet here.

2nd hand
seems pretty straight forward.
I guess it hits your range harder but what was the plan if he peel one of again and a brick somes on the turn again? check/fold
this hand seems to be at the botton for your range for cbetting

3rd hand
no reads given on UTG villian but could go either way on call/3b here.
I am not a big fan of the cbet against 2 players here with a dry flop like this. only better will call or raise you and everything you beat folds anyway.
just seems like you are cbetting for the sake of cbetting no real plan on what you are trying to achieve here.

4th hand
I think your reads are right going V1 trying to put you too the test.
I think the sizing here is a little too big as really you just comitting yourself to call a shove.
I think a bet of 90-110 just give you a little more room to move.

overall I feel like you are just betting for the sake of it and not really having a plan.
I feel like you are levelling yourself aginst Villian, which is easy to happen when they just start to run you over.
ways to beat this are watch villian and try ti get a read on his habits.
does he always bet when checked to on the turn?
is he always applying pressure in LP or just IP?

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I wouldn't cbet any of the first 3 hands with the hands you had. With a decent reg IP on me my flop checking range is protected by some reasonable hands ready to X/call and this means my cbet range has to be smaller.

I concur with Winadil that you're 4bet in the last hand is big and you are putting yourself in a tough spot if he does shove - probably you'd have to call it off but against JJ+ AK you're nearly a 2 to 1 dog so you're not super happy about it.

At the same time a lot of Villain's light 3bets will have 30% equity against you and an over card is coming to your JJ a bit over half the time. Given villain is tough and you have good reason to think he's light here I don't mind you just going big to shut it down with the intention to call it off if the rare times he actually has it and shoves.

Alternatively you could opt to flat here with all your JJ+ AK and some suited Broadway. Flop SPR will be 2.65 to 1 so you'll have a relatively simple job of constructing a balanced CRAI range that's going to put villain in a lot of horrible spots where he's facing a mixture of overpairs and high equity semibluffs and not so high equity semibluffs. Yes JJ isn't the absolute best hand for that task but if you step back and think about your whole range and consider you could also have QQ+ and some speculative hands you should feel more comfortable about throwing JJ into the same preflop line.

JJ will flop an overpair or set 50% of the time - that's the 4th highest flop-hit-rate for any hand in holdem. Ok so you'll be in some difficult spots when you flop an overcard but a lot of the time you get to CRAI with an overpair+ with this hand AND that means you get to flat a few extra speculative hands preflop too. If you only flatted QQ+ to trap you'd be more limited as to how many speculative hands you could flat preflop intending to semibluff CRAI on the flop. That means your overall defence frequency Vs his light 3bets in this spot will be too small if you are taking this trapping route and of course the trapping route can be quite profitable vs a light 3bet in a low SPR pot.

Hand 1: you played okay but I'd probably raise bigger pre and x/c or x/f the flop, depending on villain's bet size.

Hand 2: Looks fine.

Hand 3: There are 2 strategies you can use on this flop: you can either cbet polar with a small selection of hands, or cbet small with a wide range of hands. If you want to bet JJ on the K85r flop, then you should choose the latter strategy and downbet to $40. Otherwise, you should check the flop.

Hand 4: 4bet jam $250. You're too shallow to pick any 4bet sizing that isn't a jam.

^ Yeah, 4bet-jam is OK as long as you're doing it with QQ+ AK too. You'll be put on AK and TT+ but many will discount your QQ+ thinking you'd flat to trap or minraise and this may lead them to make some calling errors with TT-88 and AQ.

Only downside (and it is same for just a big 4bet TBH) is you're creating a problem for yourself constructing the rest of your 3bet defence range. Against this size 3bet you need to 4bet at least 1/3rd the time against a potentially light-3bet if you're only 4betting. Depending on how wide your open is this may lead you to shoving (4betying big) with some fairly weak hands where you're exposing your stack to too much risk vs the potential reward.

I guess if you're 4betting and flatting you need to defend about 45% but that route is fraught with difficulties OOP vsa tough reg who can read your flatting range quite easily.

Personally I'd prefer a flat only defence here. It's easier to get the whole defence right and I think it's probably the most profitable long-term.

This is all true and correct but just note that on this board OOP vs a tough reg we're making our checking range near impossible to defend if we go down the wide-small-bet-linear cbet route. We'll have next to nothing to continue with after we check.

Maybe we can just monkey X/R air and underpairs if it looks like V is exploiting our weak checking range or we can switch to the lower cbet% bigger betting polarised approach when we detect we're getting exploited on our checks.

Alternatively we can have a 100% small sized cbet range on this type of board and only switch away from that if villain picks up on it and adjusts appropriately.

I'd also add that when using the polarised cbet range strategy we don't really want to go too big on our sizing on this type of dry board because we aren't going to have many suitable bluff combos so unless we're prepared to cbet big with air we're going to end up too value biased on our cbet and villains can exploitatively over-fold against us.

Since every hand posted has you playing OOP to a very solid deep player, my suggestion would be to consider a seat change.

As played given this dynamic / history / overheard conversation / non-deep stack sizes, I'm fine with playing for stacks preflop however you want to do it (i.e. could consider a shove too, imo).

GcluelessNLnoobG