Give-Me-The-Dead-Money-Hand

UTG opening means most of the time strong hand.
Folding AJ there is quite normal for me.
3 bet bluffing is mostly done against steals.
When I 3 bet i would go 4x so 12 (will do the same imho).

All that said, you HAVE to cbet here especially with that flop! You have a gutshot and two overs. Maybe even bet the turn.
But 3bet and then check fold is spewing chips I think.

Edit: I don't think you can call that dead money by the way (but I'm not sure about that :))

The UTG player seems tight with only a PFR of almost 12% and I don’t think it’s to profitable to change your hand in a bluff against him and your 3bet sizing against 1 raiser and 2 callers is fine to me. I would just call and give up if we don’t hit top pair or better multi way.

Cheers,
SDK1987

Hmmmph..
Preflop I think the worst play would be to call. We would be 4 way with off-suit dominated hands and OOP vs everyone. Not a great spot to be in. So you could either squeeze or fold. This is not a bad hand to squeeze. Your sizing is fine. If you would go smaller you would give too good price for everyone to join.
And OTF don't cbet. UTG opens with tight range and he calls your sqz with even wider, probably full of pocket pairs. If you hit an ace, you might be dead. If you hit a jack you might be dead. If you hit your straight you might only be splitting.

OK. I think I misjudged this hand.
I missed the squeeze (of 3 players) and am too much into 3bet/float/shove/bluf experimenting mode myself ( with 'some' success ).

I agree, 99 TT JJ QQ might call. Still think I will Cbet here (and I do not cbet much in standard raised pots).
It is relative cheap here.
But I'm probably wrong.

Our hand is basically air. As I mentioned above we are so dominated and even if we hit our straight we either split or then villain won't give us any more money.

So if we have very little equity here, we can bet if we generate autoprofit. If UTG calls pre with about 88-QQ,AKo,AQs+ I think he will have hard time folding anything. Any Ax has that gutshot and 3/4 of the suited ones have backdoor flush draws. And would he really fold an overpair against one bet? And what if he calls and we hit an ace for example? Are we then just giving up because villain very likely doesn't have any weaker aces in his range? Or do we check twice OOP and let him bluff with 88? Same thing if we hit a J, how much money are we willing to put in when villain could have QQ or JJ?
If we decide to bet about half pot here, villain calls, you hit an ace OTT. You are in almost 80bb pot. You are committed.

I just honestly don't see any reason that would make cbetting a good option.

I read all posts in detail!

Thanks for the great discussions here!

Don't ignore the other players. True is that UTG is the major factor, but if it is then anywhere near being close, you have to take into account that the others will call some percentage of the time, especially CO since you are a bit deep and he has position. At the meta-game level, a standard defense against squeezers is to just call with some strong hands in late position.

Originally posted by la55i
I just honestly don't see any reason that would make cbetting a good option.

@Ia55i It is no discussion. You are right.

I am having trouble with the squeeze OOP against 3 ops as YohanN7 writes too. That's probably why I want to defend that squeeze. When you squeeze and then check fold, meh.

Lately I am defending my blinds much more against re-steals. I had some really good content about this which says that one should have a fold to 3 bets only
about 67%.. I forgot the exact number but it should be in that range otherwise one is exploitable.

So now I'm calling with all my hands better than say 9T off (so A2 suited, pocket pairs etc) with the intention on a boards like A72 rainbow to float and bluff turn when checked into.

What I mean is that on a table with good players you almost always get at least one call with this AJ squeeze.
I would call with 76 suited when I would get a fold fold and am last to act.
I have to call 13 in a pot of 27 (am I right here?) with position, last to act and SB has max 40% to hit the board (with top range!).
That's not too bad as a starting point.

Anyways. Still learning to crush 2NL... wining is easy. Crushing is a challenge!