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So this past week i was playing at the WSOPc in Biloxi. I was getting into an all out battle with a pretty well known pro that i don't want to name. He is a very good player with an extremely impressive resume. Although he may not be a high stake player or a household name he is very well known around the circuit.

The situation:
We are 4-5 players from the money and i'm sitting in seat 1 with about 110k in chips with blinds at 1.5k/3k.
The Villain is sitting in seat 9 with about 190k.

- On my button the two blinds were extremely nitty
- On my cutoff the two blinds were extremely nitty
- On my HJ the blinds were just trying to wait till the bubble burst and the button was nitty.

Over a couple of orbits i notice the Villain is raising every hand in these spots being that the only other agro players were in EP and on his right.

I decide this is perfect timing to 3 bet a polarized range.

So i start 3 betting and he starts folding.

I then decide to 3 bet atc but flat my big hands.

It works for a several more hands.

Villain then begins to 4 bet me

I give up every time he 4 bets.

I then decide to depolarize my 3 bets and only 3 bet if i plan on 5 bet shoving.

He takes a couple orbits till i finally get the hand and i 3bet 5bet shove and he folds.

The next two hands is where i get lost.

I pick up AJ and i 3 bet, he FLATS!?!? This was the first flop we saw together. The board comes 10 high and he check raises all in. I fold.

Next hand I pick up KQ and i 3 bet and he flats again....very odd. The board comes 8 high and he check raises all in again.

What am i supposed to do here??? Do i check back on boards i miss? What is my plan on the later streets? Should i call a check raise all in this seems spewey. Do you agree with my logic? My friends tell me i need to not get involved in these kind of pots when there is so much equity in the rest of the tournament but i feel like giving up is just giving in to what he wants. Suggestions.

i mean game flow wise i would probably check a lot of flops unless i was ok with getting it in otf bc if we cbet too much he will read the board and try to exploit that

So isnt playing fit or fold pf with both our strong and junk hands just playing into what he wants?

well it depends. You know he is noticing what you are doing. So because of this, we need to start predicting what his response will be. When he flats you OOP it can be one of a few things and you need to try and estimate which is more likely:

He is either

A.) Calling OOP with a marginal/ decent value hand where he will decide if he is going to bluff/ semibluff you a lot on specific flops varying on the texture

B.) Is calling with a few very strong hands to get you to cbet and stack off a lot on flops. Doing this with say AA and c/ring on boards where we may think he could have FD's could be a nice way to stack you off or at the vary least collect more chips from the weak part of your range

C.) Is calling with marginal to bad hands planning to either semibluff or just airball you otf expecting a cbet from you.

Basically you need to ignore the board an ask yourself why you are cbetting. Are you trying to induce? collect the pot if he has missed? (does he fold if he missed?) and then evaluate how this board does against his range and yours.

From the stand point of if something is a good poker play, cbetting in an aggressive dynamic with very little is a pretty shitty play bc we get shoved on a lot. We have position. We have decent equity. If we cbet 100% the time here we basically give up our positional advantage because it isnt very significant that you did this because he was likely expecting it. Just have a plan. Not saying don't cbet, but we need to pick and choose our spots.

seems like he is not really looking at his cards and just exploiting the hell out of how predictable you were playing. Not saying we can call or we need to go insane playing back but we need to adjust our ranges accordingly