5 ways to a pot, 2 overs

Poker Strategy Hand Review
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It’s a difficult situation when a flop like this happens and I know I’m likely beat.
Losing to queens at showdown makes me wonder if I could have done better.

Preflop: ISOing is a must with jacks, we don’t want a bunch of limpers with a hand like this. I used a tournament sizing, but it’s perhaps too small for ring games: people call often, and we need to fold out hands like Qx and Kx.

Flop: It sucks to bet into a likely losing pot, but the board sure does smash my ISOing range. (I think that theoretically a calling range should be stronger than my ISOing range, but my experience on the site says that’s not true.) If I don’t bet on a board like this, I can easily get pushed out of the pot. I go small to keep my range uncapped, but the small I bet, the harder it is to push out Qx and Ax with weak kicker. I wonder what the optimal sizing is.
In any case, I figure if I get folds, I’m happy, if I see a raise, I can snap-fold. Annoyingly enough, I get two callers in position on me.

Turn/River: If I knew it was a queen I was facing, I’d barrel it off to try to get it to fold. As stands, I think it’s likely someone is holding an ace and unwilling to let go of it. I decide to cut losses and give up.

Is there any way I could have done better? Obviously in this specific situation, checking the flop would have lost me less money (and checking is better in general in multi-way flops), and barrelling would have likely won me the pot. But I’m asking what the correct play is in general, not knowing the opponents hands.

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After raising pre flop and calling, checking on the last 2 streets wasn’t optimal play so they stayed in and you lost

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I consider your postflop bet a mistake. I would almost always check/fold with two overcards to my pair after 5 people see the flop, especially given the lack of decent draws on this board, which is made by worse by the fact you have JJ, blocking straight draws. You want your opponents to have hands such as KJ and JT that might call or attempt a bluff themselves.

By betting into 4 other players with an underpair you’re bluffing. With some low frequency I may decide to turn my underpair into a bluff given I have range advantage on this board. However the sizing would need to be much larger, around 1-1.5x pot, with a plan to give up if called or raised. But it would need to be big enough to get folds from random ace rag and queen rag hands. Your sizing was perfect for these hands to continue.

I agree with your decision not bet turn and river. Even if I could see my opponents cards in this situation, given the loose-passive play demonstrated by calling your raise with Q8o from LJ then also calling postflop with second pair no kicker, I expect him to call down any sizing a lot of the time. To exploit this player you simply have to wait for stronger hands.

Honestly your biggest mistake was playing a 9max midstakes ring table on Replay. These should be avoided, favoring 6max and smaller.

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