It was a $10/$20 game in my local casino. I was dealt 2 red KK in UTG and RFI for $60, with an effective stack of $2.5k-ish. My immediate left was a LAG who had not been picking much spots against me and on the whole had been playing a seemingly honest game with me. He had me covered and called. Heads-up OTF of 865 r. How do we play the hand from here?
In-game, I c-bet $100 into $150 for value and protection. I'm not sure if my sizing was optimal. I've spoken to a top pro before and he has told me not to use small bets on such flops as I would be exploited by a raise and not know where I would be in the hand, in other words, a small sizing would fuck up the hand. So I chose a 2/3 sizing. And he had told me against a raise if I had c-bet big, I could jus exploit fold cus villain is often not gonna bluff raise against a big sizing on such flops. My friend told me that if the flop was more coordinated like 456, there would be more reason to check the hand. But since the flop was 865, it would be quite unlikely for villain to have 79s,74s, 86s type of hands. So I listened to my friend's advice and c-bet $100 into $150. The likely value combos would be 65s, and all combos of 88, 66 and 55 as well as semi-bluffing hands like 78s, and maybe A7s with backdoor FDs.
Then again, on such coordinated flops, I feel uncomfortable with such holdings as well, cus I can't stand a raise, and I feel that bet-folding is like getting exploited too cus we are often not gonna be nut-heavy on an 865 flop cus we RFI-ed UTG. Yet, we also cannot c-bet for 3 streets with our particular hand. So honestly I'm torn between checking or c-betting big.
I plugged my hand into PokerSnowie which I have been using recently. Snowie recommended a high frequency check, which I think is ok, just that I feel it caps my range on such boards. Snowie did recommend a half P bet 14% of the time. I haven't learnt how to use PIOsolver yet, so I have not plugged the hand into PIO.
How should we approach this hand? Thoughts please guys. Thank you!