Is it always a 4-bet pre here? Given the Villain"s stats and the stack sizes, smoothing his 3-bet feels like the best way to maximise your value.
Does depend on player dynamics, did you feel he might stack off light vs an UTG 4-bet? If you were later I"d be 4-betting away but from UTG it looks to me like your range gets pretty narrow.
The stacks are shallow enough that you shouldn"t be put in many awkward situations post flop if you call. Pot would be 25k, effective stacks of around 110k - still only need to get value from two streets to get the lot. If you check and he fires, you"re getting as much in as if he smooths your 4-bet. From your description I"d say he doesn"t 5-bet stack off or call the 4-bet often enough to justify it.
For me, the disguise is worth the risk in this particular situation. As played, prefer a 1/4 pot lead or a ship - whatever you"d think he"d do with JJ in that spot in essence.
I like your thoughts about smoothing the 3bet,there are a multitude ways of playing this out.. Like you when i first read AMRN"s post i thought his 4bet from utg would look strong , i"ll be interested to know if Steve factored this in and if you had 4bet light and led small as a bluff then i applaud you sir...
George mentions leading small as a bluff for balance but again you need a 4bet light range, so really
you need your opponent to suspect this to call or raise your probe bet to ""as you put it, maximise value"" or else the probe bet just looks like a strong hand wanting action [after the way the hand has played upto now] to someone who can read the game.. Look how many replied lead small? is this really the most effective way of disguising the strength of the hand?
Marty suggested 28k 1/2 pot and that it looks like there is FE, to which you said there is not? WHY? i think your missing a trick in your overall game if you cant bet/fold in certain situations when at this sort of stack depth..
