If you flat the 250, you can't repot if V1 goes all-in for 320 because the raise isn't large enough to reopen the action.

I'm fine with playing this hand multi-way. It's live PLO. If you are uncomfortable playing multiway pots, you are in the wrong game. I am not comfortable playing AA heads up OOP against an opponent who will put me on exactly the hand I have unless the SPR is such that I don't care if he knows exactly what I have.

If the spot feels uncomfortable, it is possible that opening to 50 was a mistake. Maybe it's not, but your analytical powers are flawed if you don't even consider it.

This kind of nails it for me. If we 4bet and only V3 flats, he pretty much knows our hand and can play perfectly in position against us (unless H has been 4betting wider, which I doubt).

Out of curiousity, how low does SPR have to be for you to play your AA hand effectively face-up?

This is a fair question. I know that personally I am not comfortable turning my hand face up if the SPR is higher than about 1.5-2 but I think this is probably too tight.

Appreciate all the feedback received thus far. I think there’s been a ton of great input and am especially taking to heart the suggestions that opening to $50 is what put us in this situation in the first place. I obviously don’t love getting it in preflop vs a five bet but i wasn’t too worried about that because V3’s range is much wider than AA so a five bet is only going in very rarely i think. I would gii against a five bet because we can run two boards and I’m rarely going to be at a huge disadvantage given the dead money by the time i four bet.

Ok so final coda to this story. I flat, V1 shoves for $70 more, V2 folds, V3 and i both call the shove, which does not reopen action. Pot is about $1k going to flop.

Flop Qh4h2s I check, V3 bets $550. Is this just a fold? Call and evaluate turn? I do not have the Ah

That's not a terrible board for your hand basically heads up. Why did you check?

I'd probably call now that I'm here.

It depends on my opponent. I'm not really happy having obvious AA when stacks are deep enough for my opponent to float the flop and bluff the turn, but that only applies against an opponent who is capable of floating. It bothers me less if my likely caller is a fit-or-fold type who doesn't bet draws.

Check is standard
Villain was last agressor and we can get blown off our hand by leading
Calling now is also standard

I'd be surprised if V would blow us off our hand w/o a set of Qs or flush draw? Not much else out there. I guess we are checking our whole range here?

Are we in check/call mode on most run-outs?

Sorry, I meant for the type of opponent we're worried about in OP. I have the same trouble...wanting to maximize while also not being exploitable. Intuitively I'd say 2.5 SPR is where I'm at in turning my AA hand face up and allowing anyone to come along, but heads-up that means I'm committing only 16% of my stack pre-flop, which seems like too low of a % to show the strength of my hand. A 2 SPR is only 20% of my stack PF when it's heads-up pref-flop (or I should say that the action is almost all between me and my main opponent, with not a lot of dead money), and a 1 SPR is 1/3rd of my stack. Maybe I'm as tight (or tighter) as the other gentleman in the hand.

More likely though, when we decide to turn our AA hand face up, we're doing so to limit a multiway pot with decent (what will be) dead money into a heads-up flop, more than likely. So in that regard, saying that the dead money is 50% of our pot-sized PF "announcing our hand as AA" bet, 28.4% of our stack in pre-flop (2/7ths) gets us to a 1 SPR on the flop.

Obviously this hand is special b/c we're so deep, but in the majority of confrontations, I think whenever we can get 20-25% of our stack in pre-flop, we're getting the better of it to do so, even if that turns our hand face up to our remaining opponent.

A lot of times when I have the opportunity to make a big raise that my opponents interpret as me having AA, it is because there are several players who have already called a raise. I tend to be pessimistic about them folding because I often get multiple callers hoping to flop two pair against "obvious aces". So, dead money is usually not a concern unless I get enough money in for them to not be able to win another significant bet on the flop when they hit.

My preflop raises tend to be for value and almost never to isolate heads up unless the game is short-handed. I'm not adverse to playing this hand multiway, but if you are looking at a multiway pot, I think you don't want to bloat the pot preflop.

In general, I'd say I don't hate having obvious aces when I am pot committed so that my opponent has no fold equity. So, it really depends on how correctly my opponent will play after the flop.

As played right now, check/call flop is extremely standard.

Why would you lead?

Because there is a huge chance I have the best hand right now and I might have some fold equity if he did not hit this board at all.

Kind of why I asked if you guys are checking here with a set of queens or nut heart draw or similar? Are you checking everything?

Again, I feel as if we are giving him the chance to play perfectly against us when we are out of position. What is our plan on a non-heart turn? A heart? A blank?

yeah, I would be interested in that too if you lead...
you´re going for three streets oop, or building a huge pot when betting blank turns (whatever that may be) with probably less than a PSB left otr? no blocker to any draw that might hit? repping I have no idea what but likely an extremely narrow range against the good player you did not want to play a bloated pot oop? narrowing his continuing range as well? good luck with that...

all these things really don´t go in line with your reasons of avoiding a 4bet in the first place.

as played, c/c.

If we had 4bet, we are in the same position with a ~$2,000 pot. I consider that a worse position than where we are now. Also, V is a good NLHE player and is new to PLO, so we are not sure how good he is.

I don't think betting this flop is a bad idea, because it's very likely V folds unless he has a big piece of it, and that's unlikely. If he re-raises us, we can fold because we are likely way behind -- or soon to be. Now, we have given him the advantage.

The theory behind checking this flop (at a very high frequency, maybe even 100%) is rather basic, I will list some of the reasons below

-villain was pre-flop agressor and the flop is somewhat dry, he is likely to cbet with most of his range (except whiffed rundowns because a player is all in)
- hero wants villain to cbet when hero has an equity advantage (and hero has a clear range advantage on this flop)
- leading or check-raising the flop can both lead to awkward turn spr situations given effective stacks making a flop check fairly attractive
-lead should give the villain a much stronger indication of hero's current range and overall strength than pre-flop
-hero is put in a difficult situation if villain raises his lead, villain can apply a lot of pressure with qx, heart draws, even when hero has an equity advantage

So even though there is some theoretical merit to leading here , checking is generally going to be more profitable - against this particular opponent, it is likely to be much more profitable

I should also note that choosing the sizing for when hero does lead is fairly complicated

I want V to think I'm strong -- that's why I lead. I would love for him to fold, actually. I honestly can't imagine V raising a lead by H on this board w/o a very strong hand.

OK, so are you in call-down mode? I guess we just need to get on with the turn, most of which I now hate, but maybe V hates them, too, and will check behind, because I assume we aren't leading unless we get an extremely lucky card.

Also, I can't imagine checking a set of Qs or the nut-flush draw on this flop.

Edit: I will make my post a little nicer

Java the way you evaluate aaxx hands and your reasoning for wanting to lead the flop both seem seriously flawed to me and inconsistent with best modern practices

moving on : i think we can lead the turn, our range is uncapped and with only 1 card left we will frequently want to seek iniative, most non hearts 8 and below are reasonable candidates (and unlike flop we can feel much better about bet/fold lines)

You could very well be right. I don't get to play PLO very often. I am a winner in the game, but not over a huge amount of hours. I am still not sure I agree with you, but that's poker.

Would you play this the same way in a 4bet pot, or do you bet the flop now that you are the aggressor? Is a non-heart under-8 turn a bet/fold?

I guess we should just go ahead and get the turn.

So I have some bad news for you guys. I check folded flop. My reasoning was that i thought given the empty sidepot that he would be way less likely to bet hands like KK or air and more likely to only bet hands that were big hands or had big equity. Also I felt that I would have a lot of KQJ10 type hands or hands with a Q and non-nut flush draw that i would want to see a turn with and so i think my range is somewhat protected. If I had AA with Ah i also continue. However I ultimately felt like i was gonna get blown off the hand on a lot of turns.

He had AQJ7 with ace high hearts. Turn was a blank and river was a heart for him to win.