2/5, 7 handed, $700 effective. Villain is pretty much a complete unknown. He's been at the table for 1-2 rotations, I saw him call a 3x raise from BB three ways and x-f a KT9r board, and I also saw him open 3x OTB and both blinds folded. That's all I have.

OTTH

Hero opens Q T $20 HJ, villain calls CO.

Flop ($47): 4 4 2. Hero bets $15-villain calls. I do a shitload of checking OOP, but I feel like betting is right on this board? Paired flops tend to be some of the better boards for our range. I feel like this c bet is profitable versus the population.

I plugged a few ranges into Flopzilla for CO. I started by giving him the GTO CO v HJ range 3 betting range that just flats, but took out the top of the range (JJ+, AKs, AKo) since the population is very passive pre. Going off of the population I doubt he's this tight, but with that being said this range shows his K high or worse to make up 31.96% of his range otf, which I feel like the average unknown would fold here.

I tried giving him a little bit of a looser range by adding in the rest of the suited As, pairs, suited broadways, and all offsuit broadways besides KTo, QTo, and JTo, and now his K high or worse is 34.22%.

Without getting too crazy, I loosened his range to include most of the suited connectors, the better suited gappers, K9s, and Q9s. This range has K high or worse 51.71% of the time.

It seems going off of this, that a c bet is most likely profitable. In your experience, do people flat with K high here?

Turn ($77): Q. Hero bets $25-villain raises to $85 and hero folds. I chose a small size again, because I expect most players to call 55-TT, maybe even A high here versus a small size, but to probably ditch these hands versus a large size. I could see an argument for checking, but I preferred going for value in the moment.

Turn raises are super nutted at LLSNL. Versus the small size I suppose he could be doing this with Qx, but the only Q that I think is for sure in his range is AQ. If he did float with KQ as well that's ahead of us. I don't see the population ever flatting 55-TT otf and now bluffing the turn. This seemed like a bad spot to call.

Thoughts?

Call turn. He will float flop with a bunch of hands vs your 1/3 sizing that have air OTT. His line looks bluffy and he doesn't have much 4x + you block his Qx.

Flop is an OB spot.

If I'm V and you bet 1/3 flop & 1/3 turn I'm raising here even with zero equity other than FE as you've shown no interest it the pot thus far

Exactly

That makes sense. It was definitely an exploit fold as turn raises tend to be super nutted. I can see why you're arguing to call turn though.

Really? I thought his response made no sense and was really bad advice, especially considering how stationary the population is. I mean I would've played QQ+ the same way.

Fishy players hate small cbets since they don't want to fold + they don't really want to call with air. So they just conclude that raising is the best play.

You should try this line for value a few times and see how it works. It might be higher EV overall as an exploit.

Yeah but he doesn't know that.

we both said the same thing
I just said it from V's point of view

had you made a real bet on the turn and got raised that's different

I'm saying I wouldn't advise raising with zero equity in this spot. DooDooPoker didn't say to raise here with zero equity in his original post.

Yeah when I said exactly I was referring to how I think a standard 2/5 player would think about this spot.

No we shouldn't be raising OTT with air.

If villian is gonna bet his whole range on the turn because we have not shown enough interest then check calling seems to be pretty cool.