Hi,

So pre was clearly a steal (the blinds dont seem to utilise their chip position to bully short stacks from what i observed). No read on SB's range for calling pre OOP.

Questions:
1) Is cbet obligatory? i could probably only fold out small pairs / KJ without diamond / maybe other random hands he called pre with, but then not even sure if he plays small pairs pre that way..

2) if flop's fine, is turn bad? looking back i suppose b/f is better coz he checked twice?

3) if both flop/turn are fine, should i bluff river? not much hands he could call me with right (unless he played Kd or mayyyyybe things like 4x 4d that way)?

i was very lost during this hand coz i wasn't able to put him on a range. So please enlighten me

What c bet size would you use here with ax qx 2 pair even sets. I think you would bet bigger with all of your value range apart from maybe a flopped flush which is such a small part of your range, maybe q x where x is a decent diamond?
But over all i would c bet bigger barrel turn as you can put pressure on all of his ax qx hands and give up if called.
anyone just giving up on the flop? or checking the flop and repping the turn if checked to again?

Its difficult readless but :-
When i said bet bigger on flop i was thinking like 55-60% pot but maybe a whole pot bet or even just over something like 1750. Really tring to rep the ace high. I think this could be good if we think villain will sometimes let weak Ax hands go. All of his aces are weak and he could give up putting you on stronger ace he cant really call and evaluate as he could be facing a shove on blank turns and he cant raise his ax hands as will only get called by better. Having bet pot we can obviously give up when called or raised. Lots of ways to go with this hand but as we have no hand no drawer if we are going to bluff we need to tell a story betting 1/3 pot on this flop just screams stab.
We do lose more if he c/r you but he will of showed such strength we can gladly insta muck our trash hand.

This board hits a defend range super hard. Typical defend ranges consist of many Ax, broadways and sc's. Without hardly any backdoor options, I might just give up this board. No need to get fancy in a bubble fase. In the 3,5's people make enough (ICM) errors to just let this one go.

Only against the right opponents I'd try to stab once. But when I get called here, I'm 100% done with the hand.

yeah i dont mind the give up here. i almost always c bet 2 way when in position and checked to but dont mind the give up on flop here. if your only going to stab once what c bet sizing would you go for foldz

That's what makes this board/hand combination suck so hard and I would rather give up now. If I'd know SB's stats/tendencies i would go for 45% or so, can't see any reason what would fold to a larger cbet.

Would you also c bet 45% with your Ax range?

I don't hate the just giving up now line btw.

maybe somewhat bigger, but 45-55% yes

I think I agree with the bolded part a lot - many players either fold too much with short stack or in other cases you simply couldn't bluff them off their hand.. I suppose I now like giving up flop more - given readless I would not assume many smaller sc's in villain's defend range. Is that fair assumption though?

Now for cbetting, I suppose it's true that i would more likely get weak Ax to fold by making it say 55% pot (yea i think villain can really call my existing cbet with any Ax). That would cost me another 1bb vs my existing cbet and i suppose the consequence of losing that extra 1bb when the play fails is close to nil given the stacks of the remaining players..

anyway, thanks a lot both for your comments