This hand was played at Zoom HU. I'm not an experienced HU player, and despite the fact that villain played literally 100% of hands, I couldn't seem to get a grip on him. I didn't run very well, but I guess it says enough that even after 100 hands I had no idea if he was a great player, a terrible player, or somewhere inbetween. Don't really think all of that is too relevant though, as I'm mostly interested in a general approach here, not only in a HU game but also if this were to happen in a 6-max game (SB vs. BTN or BB vs. BTN).

At first glance it seems kind of standard to go ahead and just c-bet, but upon further analysis I'm not so sure about it. If we bet and he folds, obviously that's a good result. But if we bet and get raised we probably have to fold, right? We're in bad shape against two pair+ so we really don't want to play for stacks against those hands, but we could be folding incorrectly against a semi-bluff, which would suck, right? Just seems like a terrible waste of our hand to b/f. And if we bet and he calls, I don't think I would feel comfortable on a lot of turns. To me it seems like our hand would be just too weak to get called by worse hands, while we're surely not folding out any better hands. Kind of an awkward hand where I wouldn't even know if I were bluffing or value-betting on a lot of run-outs.

Overall it just seems like a hand that doesn't really want to inflate the pot, and also has some very usable Q blockers and backdoor flushdraws, and therefore no real need to bet for protection either. So maybe we can check (intending to call)? The problem I see with that though, is that it so obviously caps our range, and it's hard to stand a lot of heat with it. Or am I seeing ghosts, and won't I be facing agression on multiple streets, most of the time? Lastly - if checking is indeed the way to go - how would you balance in order to avoid being vulnerable all the time when checking A high boards OOP as the pre-flop 3-better? Surely we need to bet all of our money-makers on the flop, both to extract max value and to balance for all of our light c-bets, right? Or does the key to that lie in the hand itself, by putting the Q blockers and backdoor diamonds/spades to good use, while c/f vs. 2nd barrels on like, any non-diamond/non-spade turn below an 8? Anyway, looking forward to some thoughts on this topic, any help is appreciated!