Game 25/25/50 NLH;
Mid-session;
7 handed;
Hero (LAG) UTG;
Villain (LAG), breaking even, BB; (4775 effective stacks)
1st time playing Villain, very solid player. Hero and Villain and 1 other player (not involved in the hand) solid regs, rest of the table are recreational regs.

Hero (QJ)opens 150
HJ flat
C/O flat
Villain (BB) flat
Straddle flat

Pot 775;
Flop Q 8 7

Villain checks;
Straddle checks;
Hero bets 400;
Fold/fold;
Villain flats; Straddle fold;

Pot 1575; heads up
Turn 9

Villain checks;
Hero bets 1025;
Villain raises 3000; (1225 behind)

Hero action + reasoning?

My questions are; what would flatting the 3k achieve and what would 3-betting all in achieve?

Had a few discussions about this hand amongst peers face to face, there are various arguments for different lines but would Love to hear what the 2+2 community has to say.

Thanks, guys

seems like a trivial fold v someone described as really solid. Also think this hand plays better as a check back on turn.

I'd delay cbet on that flop depending on how the rest of the flop plays out and the turn card and actions to hero.

5 ways, at leat one aggressive opponent, connected flop and we have close to the bottom of our Qx range from utg. No reason to bet flop imho. I guess the one advantage is clearing some equity but that equity is split amonst the remaining players any way so we don't get all of it.

With regards to the question jamming now has to be worse than calling and deciding how to play the river since at least you manage to leave villain's range as wide as possible and it will be easy to overbluff here given how few you need for the jam, if bluffing/balance is even necessary there. Folding is probably better than both.

Edit: Also preflop should be bigger with the straddle on which in conjunction with your stack size means your preflop range should probably be tighter. I think QJs is still an open just pointing this out.

Agreed.

Turn is a fold for me.

First thought though (I'll get to the as-played below, 3rd paragraph): continuing to bet turn here mainly only serves to charge draws than get value. Its hard to think of a worse value hand villain can call turn with. QT, JJ might flat but most other hands will be drawing or already beating us, the draws are going to be quite temped to check raise, and there tons of them.

Because of that, I am almost always checking turn. Once we face the check raise we are in a weird spot (hence this post probably) because villain can have many strong hands along with the many draws. If my opponent is passive maybe I could get behind a bet, not sure ... generally I think this falls better into 'check back and bluff catch rivers' territory.

I lean towards folding vs the raise because a) this has got to be our lowest turn cbet value hand, and b) I think there are too many value hands possible for Villain (and my guess is not enough equity against them). I think we only remove one combo of JTs. Villain will probably remove some bluff combos from his range because we *should be* quite strong with our line and the action: we opened UTG, got called in 4 places, cbet flop into 4, and cbet turn into 1. Admittedly, its hard to know exactly what his bluff frequency looks like here, hence my dislike for the turn cbet.

To answer the other part of the OP I dont think it makes much difference whether we jam or call turn. Is there something I am missing here?

The turn is not a good card. Why are you betting it?

It's odd that no one else had this comment. Sometimes the best conversation is not, "what do I do here?", but instead, "should I have gotten in this situation in the first place?" The answer here is: no.

This is a clear check otf for me. There are so many pre flop calling hands that hit this flop, either as pairs and draws or strong draws that we will be called or raised in at least one spot almost 100% of the time. If you don't check this hand, what do you check here?

If you had checked, someone will most likely bet ott. Then the pot will be a manageable size when he bets again on the river, and you can comfortably call if the river is a blank, or a T.

Pre is too small don't see the point. Flop is a check and turn is for sure a check back.

On flop its fine to check since we have two backdoor draws (we can call on lots of turns) but its not a 100% check for me. Maybe 50/50. This is a very connected board that we can get tons of calls from draws on, and our hand is still very vulnerable despite the backdoors. Our flop bet here may not get a lot of calls from worse Qx but it definitely will get calls from the huge number of possible draws which makes up for that. We also can discount the hands that beat us, like AA, KK, and to a degree AQ.

With a connected board and several people in the pot you have a very complicated situation. This can result in very different answers depending on your opponents ranges and tendencies.