9-handed 8/16

Villian is top 10% of 8/16 players in this casino IMO.

Pre-flop: hero BB
Villain open-raises AA MP, SB calls, Hero 3-bets, Villain calls.

Is this superbad not to raise?

I think so, villain is good around 70% of the time here against two players guaranteed to call. The value of slowplaying his aces here is low, too; there's a good chance he can get 1st/2nd pair to call him down to the river whether he 4 bets here or not.

it's not the worst thing ever but it's less than optimal in games filled with meh/bad players (like the commerce 8)

I wouldn't make the play; however, an occasional exception could be made depending on the sb's tendencies and for balancing purposes if anyone but you is paying attention.

Yeah I think BBB is pretty much spot-on (but when is he not?)

Agreed, I'd save the r/c PF, raise flop in position line for a stronger set of opponents.

I don't know. How many extra bets did his deception cause you to put into the pot that you lost to him when he did this?

/fixed

What does he think your 3b range from BB is when SB is in?. If he can correctly peg you at TT-AA then the fact that he got 7BB from you is a good indicator that he's on to something.

A cap against a BB 3b 3 ways screams AA to all and he would probably gets less from your range if you always have a big pair here.

I'm not advocating the play as standard but it certainly has merit in spots if he has an image that makes us spew a bit postflop (and if we always have a big pair there).

Tough spot, take solace in the fact he obviously respects your play enough to level you like this. There's times he has aq here too. Don't worry about it too much or you'll be missing bets left and right in the future.

The reason I asked the question wasn't just to see how the hand turned out, but to really answer your question. In general, yes, it is pretty bad not to cap with AA. However, like most situations in poker, there are exceptions, and in this case villain knew his opponent and was able to make a suboptimal play preflop more than pay off after the flop.

Like Lancy Howard said at the end of The Cincinatti Kid: Gets down to what it's all about, doesn't it? Making the wrong move at the right time.

Villain is top 10%...and you put in 7 sb on the flop? Don't raise so much until he only has hands that beat you.

After you 3bet the flop, when he caps, he's saying he doesn't care about your AQ+ hands. If he was a bad player, maybe he goes ape*@#& with his Qx; but given description, his range is already converging to AQ/flopped set/strange 2p-types. Against that range, you're not beating 66%, so don't 5bet. If he "likes pumping flops", was this a board where his range could include more draws? If so, then go ahead and 5bet. But it sounds like the board might be dry, that his mid pairs wouldn't go nuts with the Q on board, so there just isn't enough hands in his range for you to extract value from.

After he caps, c/c down. If he cap-checks a lot of random crap, go ahead and just call flop 4bet and lead turn/lead river.

How much differently would you have played if he had capped?

In the heat of the moment I was biasing his range to AQ, KQ , and discounted AA.

I 3-bet the flop and then 3-bet the turn when I should have called his raise.