No offense Tom but c/c seems terrible both from GTO and exploitable perspective. He gets one street more from like a straight, he gets no value from 88+ since if they catch up he's dead, totally wastes the opportunity to stack 5KKJ type hands + it weakens his c/r range and also raising turns looks much stronger. It's potentially losing 1 street against a draw that has no outs, and not stacking a five. And even against aces it's them betting flop and turn, folding to a raise, betting flop checking back turn calling river, or bet bet check back river. Either way he only gets 2 street from that, might as well get it by raising flop. And i think even that is the most likely way he could get a turn call on a blank for a third street of value or maybe stack them. Seems to me it's pretty one sided what the move should be.

I think we are looking at this situation from very different positions (although our conclusions don't diverge that wildly given we both stated a preference to raise early, I merely said I don't hate the c/c). You are looking from the angle of, "what's the best way to play this hand on this board?", whereas I'm thinking more, "what errors do I expect 5PLO villains to make most often?"

My basic belief is that most guys at these stakes will probably struggle to fold a straight or big flush if they make it, but may get away if we c/r flop big (maybe not). Meanwhile, I doubt I risk too much money vs. a 5 'cas they will probably decide they're going to showdown regardless. That isn't to say I think c/c is the best option, but I don't think it's the disaster it would be against a player pool with an average skill level that's higher.

I'd also point out that I think you might be overestimating your upside against a villain who would see this c/c and see you have a weakened c/r range - I would be very surprised if someone thinking on that level is blindly going broke w/ KKJ5 for 140bbs unless you have a f*ing aggressive dynamic (not that this changes the fact that I'd want to be aggressive early on against them).

Note: I think there are two other things that weren't mentioned earlier. 1) This is almost certainly a losing defence given the rake (and the hand is shit) and 2) against a lot of micro villains, leading flop may be best (basically, I would strongly prefer not to let draws x back).

I would reasonably strongly disagree with some of the implicit assumptions behind this - playing GTO is all well and good, but at the micros/against bad players, it's usually not the best approach (not to mention people often use the phrase to justify horrible play, although that isn't the case here).

What I'm saying is, just because you want to be able to check/raise bluff does not necessarily mean you need to have check/raising value hands (or at least be check/raising the top of your range). Yes, against someone thinking this would obviously be essential to not becoming outrageously exploitable, but against an assumed terrible player, I'm perfectly happy having lines I would only take for value or as a bluff. Therefore, for me, using GTO as a justification of a line inherently assumes certain things about my opponent, certain things that I don't believe to be true in this case.

Think it's a good defend fwiw against a minraise. Just raise next time :P improve, adapt, evolve and make more $