Pair + gutter raised on flop vs tough reg.

I thought JL posted an interesting hand (A8hh one) and it reminded me of this spot I was in yesterday versus a good reg. He's generally been abusing me and has also run ungodly as well (1.5k>EV over 2k hands lol) which I think means he's going to expect me to fold less than usual. He's been raising my c-bets regularly, his stats are 29/22/9 40% fold to c-bet and 21% raise c-bet (these are 5 max games).



No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (5 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB ($407.30)
BB ($221.80)
Hero (UTG) ($377.50)
MP ($200)
Button ($213.50)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 7, 7
Hero bets $7, 1 fold, Button calls $7, 2 folds

Flop: ($17) 8, 4, 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $13, Button raises $40, Hero feels like if he calls he's going to c/fold most turns, if he folds he's getting owned, and if he raises he's getting it in pretty meh?

I would never call just to c/f most turns.

don't really think folding is getting owned? I'd also MUCH rather have 67 or something, if I wanted to float oop with a weakish hand.

His raising range is super wide here since it's a flop good regs will attack (i.e. scary and coordinated). So I don't think our hand is 'weak' since I think I'm ahead on the flop a bunch but vs his getting it in range it's pretty weak. I guess it's just a matter of determining what % he needs to fold if I shove the flop to make it profitable.

I really think we need to make our decision on the flop though, unless we're gonna blindly get it in on a low nonspade turn.

Has he been raising this big?

I suppose lets start with call and then show how the hand runs out. Certainly don't raise.

Now that I relook at the hand and you mention it ISF, his raise size was bigger than usual. The converter is strange though, he raised to $40 TOTAL, not $53. He does a lot of 2.8x your c-bet size raises in position that annoy me but this one was bigger probably making it a clearer fold. And so I obviously shoved.

call or fold, dont get too stressed about it.

Is check call a possible line to take? If hes popping the flop up so much we can expect him to raise here with a decent amount of combos which puts us in this spot. If he keeps betting then hes basically polarizing himself right, and our perceived range looks decent too so we could call down on good run outs. With a solid hand sample his show down stats and barreling frequencies would help us make the right decision a lot of the time as well. We might even be able to widen his bluffing range by checking to him as well because he will expect us to x/f this flop with a decent part of our UTG raising range.

If this were one of the lines that we take in this sorta spot how often should we be x/c'ing relative to the times we are b/f'ing or b/c'ing?

yep def like c/calling because midstakes regs cbet close to 100% of the time here, then re-eval.

otherwies feel like im b/f here, dont like b/c oop or b/shove either

c/calling flop is interesting, but i mean let's assume he's going to fire about 70% of turns (many of them relatively scary for us) and then the river is uglier since I'm not going to have a great idea how often he's going to run a 3-barrel when I've taken this type of line. Definitely something to try out though and see how the regs react to this.