My first orbit in at this table, so no reads.

SB posts 1/2 kill, utg limps, HJ raises, I 3b AK from BB, both call

3-way, 10 SB: A94
I cbet, both call

3-way, 6.5 BB: J
I bet, utg calls, HJ raises

Best play?

Call. Then check call all rivers, probably raise a K, and make a decision if UTG goes crazy and raises on non K rivers.

Even at the 8/16 level, I think folding would be insanely weak. If he has A4, A9, AJ, 44, 99 (I assume he'd cap AA and make expert slowplay with his flopped big hands), oh well.

Really, there's people who I'd turbo three bet here and there's people I'd even consider folding to. But readless, you need to be calling.

I call down (and donk/call a river K) but you're in bad shape here TBH.

I agree you should call down here. I would not 3 bet against an unknown at 8/16. I would expect to be shown AJ, JJ, or 99 a lot of the time.

How bad would folding be here? I ask because this situation seems pretty hopeless. Vs a set we're dead. Vs 2P we have 3 outs and nowhere near the odds to call, nor the ability to make up the odds OTR. The flop was as dry as you can get so no draws are possible. AQ is almost impossible because 8/16 players don't overplay AQ in these kind of spots. They're far more likely to call to showdown.

We 3b pre oop and bet twice post and yet the original pfr still sees fit to raise the turn with a third player in between. We beat nothing, chop at best and will likely face another bet OTR. Given all this is calling still better than folding? If so what are the reasons?

Pretty bad.

For starters, you have more than 3 outs vs several two pair combinations. Versus J9, J4, 94 you have 8 outs.

If you take issue with those hands being in villain's range, here is how you are doing against a pretty strong range that doesn't even include those weaker two pair hands:

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation
1,232 trials (Exhaustive)
board: A94J
AsKh 8.77% (108 wins, 0 ties)
AA, JJ, 99, 44, AJ, A9, A4 91.23% (1,124 wins, 0 ties)

If he turned over that range face up, I think it is still a call as you are getting 10.5 to 1.

This is probably a little more accurate assessment of villain's range:

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation
1,584 trials (Exhaustive)
board: A94J
AsKh 11.36% (180 wins, 0 ties)
JJ, 99, 44, AJ, A9, A4, J9 88.64% (1,404 wins, 0 ties)

If you want to spend time arguing about what is vs what isn't in someone's range, then have at it. But every once in a while I wouldn't be surprised to see random hands including: AQ, AT, KK, QQ, QTs, T8s, etc. trying for a "free card."

People lose their minds sometimes, and I think that pushes us over the edge to a call. Plus, river's check through a surprising amount of times.

Hopelessness is in the eyes of the beholder. Some people feel hopeless when they only have about a 20% chance of winning (say, all in preflop KK vs AA). But, as it turns out, about one in five people walk away from that breathing a huge sigh of relief. That's actually not that awful.

You should also be looking at the size of the pot. It's a big pot. You should be more inclined to call down with your strong hands.

You've never seen AQ flop top pair on a dry board and wait until the turn to raise in position?

Yes.

1) The pot is big and you have some winning chances.
2) You should not always assume that your opponents are playing in a perfectly sane manner.
3) Even if your opponent is playing in a sane manner, you might still be ahead. (See AQ in position.)

Folding is horrible. You have a reasonable amount of outs to continue vs. some raising hands like A9 and A4 and aren't completely dead against AJ. I'd call here and most likely c/c river. I think the more interesting debate would be what to do on a king river.

I think folding AK here would be like a 6 on the bad scale, where 0 is "not bad at all" and 10 is "absolute disaster". Like there's definitely boards to get rid of TPTK, but those are usually straightening boards. This one, the pot is pretty big and your opponent needs specific hands to have you beat.

I'd need a read or a strong stereotype to fold here. Like 80 year old lady raising turn.

I agree that you need a read to fold here, but this should be a fold against the vast majority of 8/16 players you have a read on.

REAlly ?
Bad play from HJ if he do not raise AQ on turn here ...
You have outs vs J9s,A4s, A9s .

Following thought process of jdr , I would put an 8-9 on 10 for folding here .

Depends how you see it .
His in great shape if he takes this hand and plays it as a bluff catcher .
I don’t see a better hand for that , I would be happy about it .

Very few player can have J9 here....he did raise preflop. Most live players would either raise AQ on the flop, or even just call it down. Not sure why you think waiting for the turn with AQ would be the best play; better to raise when you still have two customers if you think you're ahead and KK/QQ will typically check the turn if called in 2 spots on flop.

YOU said it yourself , he did not raise on the flop .
Not raising AQ on any street and just calling down is bad .
Especially when hero should be unknown .

Don't get your point; I am saying he almost certainly does not have AQ here, and if he somehow does that would be playing it poorly, not well as you seem to say.

YOU think raising AQ on turn is a lot different than raising It on flop ?
I don’t .
You think only calling down with AQ without raising posflop on this flop , because he got 3bet pf , is better than waiting for the turn to raise ?
I certainly don’t .

In this spot vs a PF 3b and a double barrel on a dry board, I don't think I've seen a turn raise, which is not to say it can't happen.

Taking it from the "AQ" perspective he raised pre, got 3b and saw a double barrel oop 3-way on this board. The vast majority of 8/16 players aren't raising turn because they fear sets and AJ+ and AQ beats none of that. Maybe I have KK but even then I can't call a turn raise. And there's always a small chance utg is slowplaying a set or 2P.

Perhaps he's trying for a free SD play but given a 3b range that double barrels on this board he should fear getting reraised back. From what I've seen the majority of 8/16 players are loose passive and don't raise turn without 2P+ never mind in a 3b pot, which is why I don't really put him on AQ. But you're also right that I shouldn't assume players play sane all the time.

FWIW, if I were the HJ, I would probably call flop and raise most turns (but not this particular turn) with AQ, even in an 8/16 game. But I may not be your average 8/16 player.

This may be true. I'm not going to pretend to speak into the exact game conditions you face. But it is not in any way absurd to think that this might happen.

My point is this: If you're folding TPTK to a turn raise in a big pot, you're developing a habit that is very easily exploitable.

While there are insane things that can happen, raising AQ here isn't among the things that I would consider insane. It might be misguided in this particular situation (because of the lack of draws), but thinking that TP2K is in terrible shape because you there was a 3-bet preflop and both the flop and turn were bet is extremely timid. This may describe your particular opponents and your specific game conditions, but in general you should recognize how narrow of a range your opponents must be on for this type of thinking to be correct.

Anyone who spends time on this forum isn't your average 8/16 player lol

Agreed with your first point but I felt that this specific spot might be one of the few times folding to a turn raise could be warranted.

And yeah I didn't mean to imply raising AQ was insane. Meant to say that I shouldn't assume players play sane and always have a monster when they raise turn here.

A good question to ask yourself is "What other hands would I have in this spot and how would I play them?" I think you should go through this and think about the flop and turn c-bets and work through this. You might be as narrow as AQ, AK, AJ, AA. And if you're folding AK, then you're also folding AQ and you've only got a tiny sliver of hands going to showdown.

Exploitative play is great in the right spots, and I'm not arguing that you should be thinking about balancing your range here. But the bigger the pot, the less likely an exploitative fold is correct because the odds are too good to pass up.

I'm happy to get see the showdown for 3-4 BB when flopping TPTK. I really wouldn't think about folding it unless there was more action than just a single raise against me.

This seems like a good rule of thumb to follow.

Call down. There are some hands that you still beat on the river, but expect to lose most of the time. Folding is plain bad.

I might call the old lady down too, because the old lady is playing at least twice as high stakes than old ladies at 80+ play, and therefore not entirely fitting the stereotype (truly old ladies play $2/$4), and may still be driving in the middle lane if not the fast lane.