OP says he's taking a stand vs 3-bets and he has QQ. He's likely a nit. Taking a stand is 4-betting Axs 89s, etc.

We would have to ask OP, but obviously he shouldn't be 4 betting QQ as a bluff and folding to a 5bet. I read this as he is taking a stand by 4 betting QQ for value and calling a shove, while 4 betting some of those other hands as a bluff.

What hands are you 4 betting here and not folding to a 5 bet?

Either way the checking back line still makes little sense. If Hero is so nitty that he only 4 bets QQ+, why would be check back on this board?

I think we should start by figuring out what our Hero's 4-bet range is. Work our way from there.

Doodoo gave you a suggestion for a GTO like one. If you want to change that to a nitty one and then draw some conclusions then go ahead, you're the one calling OP a nit. Didn't you already do that though when you suggested a range check?

Oh I have an idea what he's 4-betting.

The best way to maximize value with our nitty 4-bet range will come from checking a lot IP.

We want to induce some poor play OOP. What do we accomplish with having a betting range here vs a rather snug reg who is OOP. He can just play his hand vs our Hero unless hero is going to be 4-betting AQ, etc..

Then we need to start betting.

I have a feeling hero's minimum is AK

We win the pot a lot.

So then 4-Bet wider and CBET more.

If you are ahead now what do you want to bet for if we are not 4betting much.

Hero show us your 4-bet hands IP vs regs who 3-Bet you

Thats fine, but we can't cbet wider in hindsight.

Winning a 4 bet pot on the flop when Villain folds is a great result given how much money is in it. Why do you think we should check when we have tighter range, because we lost value by not 4 betting wide enough so we somehow have to make more money here by luring villain into committing more money?

Because I want to maximize the EV by keeping the range wide and allowing villains to misplay OOP. You’d check back your entire 4-bet range if a nit. Betting only on boards like 345hhh and no hearts.

The wider we 4bet the more we should c-bet

I get why you dislike the "we must play GTO" crowd, and I agree to some extent but GTO is a useful tool for learning and understanding. Your "I don't need GTO" hot take of range checking was wrong in this case, but there's not much point going round in circles if you're gonna clutch at straws to try to defend the indefensible.

More as a %? Why? I think you have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding about why we bet in poker tbh. Why are you cbetting in any situation?

If we are a nit and a capped range in a 4B pot.

Why do you want to allow our villains to play perfect?

It’s going to be hard to be exploited by a villain OOP in 4B pots.

Who's range is capped?

Your issue is our range is face up and tight because we are a nit, say we have QQ+ AK+. How does checking change that? Checking doesn't add hands to our range that we didn't 4 bet preflop.

In this spot, versus this opponent, I would say I'm 4 betting JJ+, AQ+, and A4s-A5s. I didn't even realize that this is tighter than equilibrium.

I'm usually just flatting QQ here BTN v BB, because I want to have strong hands in my calling range, and because the population 3 bets way tighter than equilibrium.

On the flop I honestly bet because all I could think of was hearing "you bet your whole range for 25% after 4 betting." It wasn't a very thoughtful move. In hindsight, I can totally see why we'd just x here. This would probably be my only hand in my chair checking range. This spot comes up so infrequently, that it seems ludicrous to think villain will exploit us.

The idea of having a checking range here, from my perspective, isn't "**** GTO" its "how do we play optimally given that both hero and villain's ranges have already deviated from GTO preflop ranges for this spot"? With what OP just told us his range is {AQ+, jj+, A5s, A4s} it might still be a range bet because he has 24 combos that want to bluff (while he's probably perceived as having slightly fewer than that), but the more we take out the A5s/A4s combos or even some of the AQ the more we're looking at a range of "hands that want cheap showdown" and "hands that want to get it in and can do so even with a flop check because of the low SPR" so having a checking range starts to increase our EV -- you can bet enough of your strong hands (starting with the ones without the Ah as they're most vulnerable) to balance out whatever bluffs you have left, and check the rest. And if we pare the range all the way down to {JJ+,AK} then checking range totally makes sense.

It's not so much that we're trying to play exploitatively postflop, its that from the OP and now his confirmation we know hero playing an exploitative/exploitable tight range preflop -- and thus we can guess that villain might also be playing an exploitatively tight range, though we don't know that for sure. So trying to use GTO flop strategy based on GTO preflop ranges will not lead to an optimal result, either from an exploitation perspective or a GTO perspective

I'm not saying we should never check here, I'm saying that if a GTO strategy has this as a range bet, then we likely need to really change those range assumptions a lot to make this a range check, which is what Selim was calling it.

The reason it's a GTO range bet is because of our range advantage, and you have to really change the ranges in an odd way to make it so we don't have range advantage. I'm struggling with your second point tbh, if it wasn't a 2tone board then I would agree, but protection is important here. We are never "way ahead way behind" on a 2tone board.

Yeah I definitely agree about the two-tone thing, in my first post yesterday when I said I could see the merit of checking range if OP's range is tight enough I specified "especially if the board were rainbow" -- might never be a range check with the flush draw out there