If you're going to be results oriented then you want your mythical villain to call all the way with 64 since it doesn't get there. You're justifying raising the flop because the main villain played the hand so poorly. I was taught that two wrongs don't make a right.

I disagree in general. OP didn't provide good enough reads in his post compared to his other thread. If villain has worse than bottom set a decent amount of the time in his range (two pairs, QQ, Jx and/or a horribly played KK-AA or draw) AND he will call with worse to a 3bet post flop then yes flop is an obvious 3bet. But if his continuing range post flop is sets only since its hard for him to have two pairs then flop is a flat. And your math is off because we still have 23% on turn if they hit a straight and we can still boat up on turn

But yes given reads in his other thread I would 3bet flop. 6 combos of QQ only vs 6 combos of sets and you crush all other hands. Villain has proven to be a terrible player who vastly overplays hands though

There is never a good spot to raise for protection. You bet to make worse hands call and better hands fold, thats it.

CLIFFNOTES: THINK I MAY HAVE BEEN WRONG AND LETTING MY OWN BIAS INTERFERE WITH OPTIMAL LINE

Yes, if we had the read that villain horribly overplays overpairs then we can and should absolutely 3-bet the flop, call turn, and raise river

but given the reads we had going into this hand in this thread, flop is a clear flat BECAUSE villain's c/r is already big enough and if we raise on top of that c/r what other hands can call us???

but stepping back a bit.....

I think I'm letting my own bias interfere with the situation here because I play a lot of deep stack and have been playing higher limits.

I guess if we step back a bit and think of your typical LLSNL player in this spot. I guess the real question we should ask ourselves is: "If the typical LLSNL villain had QQ+ would that villain fold to our massive 3-bet?"

And I think the answer in most cases is no.

And if we 3-bet and the typical LLSNL villain had a set they would 4-bet, so when they call the 3-bet then lead out for less than 1/2 pot on turn they are sorta blocking betting their overpairs and sorta betting weak just because they don't quite know how to play their overpairs after we blasted them on the flop...

I'm not trying to be results oriented, however, I think I let my own bias get the better of me. My default when super deep is assuming villains are competent and a competent villain is just never calling a massive 3-bet on the flop with an overpair unless Hero and Villain have been in a lot of leveling wars and/or Hero has super loose image which isn't the case according to OP (actually, OP description describes Hero as a nit that is aggressive and bluffy WTF???)

anyways, more I think about this, more I think I let my own internal bias get the better of me. We have to step back and remember that for the most part, our villains aren't all that competent.

So I think optimal play is that we do put in a big 3-bet which then brings us to what do we do if villain 4-bets or shoves? Again, the question becomes (would a typical LLSNL player 4-bet AA/KK here?) I think this varies and it becomes more read dependent. I know that sounds like an excuse, but when you are playing for 600bb stacks, you better have a read on your villain if you aren't nutted.

So in conclusion, I think I was off in my initial assessment and letting my own bias about how I would play an overpair interfere with the optimal line we should take against a typical rec player who couldn't fold an overpair to save his life...

Haha yes that "read" of OP is real. This specific villain, along with others, call me out for being a nit and among the tightest on the table (Nit is a derogatory term at our table). Yet, whenever I bet or raise, they think I am bluffing because I have shown down a few big bluffs in the past and am aggressive. Its a weird image to adjust too. I always have to have it.

So wtf did the V have?

To address the person who said raising for protection is always wrong: no, it isn't, and this hand is one really good example of why.

In this spot, we are raising for value against a villain who makes huge postflop mistakes with one pair. (See: he gave us $1600 postflop in this hand.)

But we are raising for protection against the other two players because we want that $1600 (or however much it's going to come out to) to go to us exclusively, on all turns, not just turns that don't complete open-enders.

I suppose another way to look at is that we're raising for isolation?

Like I said in the spoiler, getting cracked versus forcing out the open-ender is a swing of over $2500 a significant percentage of the time. When I raise here, my main reason for doing so is that I want the open-enders to fold now, before they hit, so that no matter what the turn is I'm in line to win a huge pot off the guy with the worse made hand who will be putting more in.

EDIT: Of course, after I raise, my dream scenario is to get cold-called by an open-ender, because now he's paying too much to draw AND I'm inflating the pot against the fish. So the raise is a value raise, I guess, but it's a value raise that I expect live draws to fold to and our original villain to call.

We make money when our opponents make mistakes. If we were 51/49 against our opponent, but he didnt know that, then yes my goal would be to make him fold, since he's never making a big mistake by calling. And in this situation if we can manipulate the other opponent to making an even bigger mistake by calling very far behind, our EV is suddenly magnified. I just dont like to look at it as "protecting my hand", but instead winning the most money possible with it.

But sometimes winning the most money possible means making someone fold a live draw because it costs you too much when it hits. In this scenario, if an open-ender hits, it costs us the current pot, which is already pretty big, AND all the money we can extract from someone else who is mistakenly calling with far worse equity. And that ends up being a lot of money in this hand.

Just in case anyone didn't know, results are posted in a seperate thread with more details/reads.

Link is in OP

This is all so silly and results oriented.

1) The main villain has to have exactly {AJ, QQ+} in a single raised pot where he flatted 3 people pre-flop AND
2) He has to play badly and pay off a raise + future streets with it AND
3) another villain has to have 6 freaking 4 in a raised pot.

That three event parlay is <2% of possible outcomes.

I really think that under every single other scenario flatting is better.

Everytime the villain has 55/JJ flatting is better.
Everytime the villain raise/folds a worse made hand, flatting is better.
Everytime the villain is making some weird squeeze play flatting is better.
Everytime a third person has AJ/KJ and is willing to put more money in against non-extreme strength flatting is better.
Everytime a third person is slow-playing 55/JJ flatting is better.
Everytime villain is raising with a wide value range we are ahead of, flatting and letting him lead the turn is better.

The turn and river sizing are suspicious as hell. But because you made that flop 3bet, you really can't raise either turn or river now (I mean, if he still has QQ+ in his range by the turn, is he really going to call a raise? I'm like 99% sure he won't/can't).

You know you beat his betting range (assuming the sizing is a tell), but you also should know that he has no calling range (or does he? this one's on you buddy... but obv average villains here wouldn't).

I think the flop 3bet cost you the ability to make turn/river value raises. I've often found that there's a lot of villains who will stand up to basically one aggressive action, but fold to any subsequent further aggression (esp. a lot of breakeven-ish regs have this). If you think you're up against a villain like that, or a board where that's likely, then raising turns/rivers is always >>>>>>>> more profitable than raising flops (for value I mean).

I almost entirely disregard the straight draws on this board, unless the other villains on the flop are also 200bb+ deep with us.

OP has said the other villains started the hand with $1200 behind, or 240bb deep, so this does matter.

The one thing that makes this wrong is that we are so goddamn deep with our opponent. You will never get stacks in this deep by playing each street with a single bet. It's just not going to happen. If a raise war ensues on the river or something, then it was a total cooler and always going to be set over set or set vs straight. This is not how we make money, since neither one of you made a mistake, thats why we call it a cooler.

The FLOP is where we can get our opponent to set the stage for a big mistake. 3betting the flop is incredibly effective for this very purpose. It is the only street whereby you arent immediately announcing your hand, and players can level themselves into thinking it's a bluff, misplaced value bet, they have odds to draw, whatever. Consider the difference between a 3xBB and 4xBB preflop raise. The resulting pot size on the river is dramatically different, all thanks to snowballing from this one initial bet size of just a single BB. The same thing is true of placing multiple bets postflop. There is no preflop setup that can win you a 600BB pot on the river. We simply must use postflop mechanics to build that pot. Otherwise all you're ever doing is playing maybe 200BB effective poker.

Another part of the equation that hasn't been talked about is how much harder it is to get main V's stack and just actually play/win the pot if the hand goes to the turn 3 way. If we flat and a player behind does as well, all the sudden regardless of the turn card, V1 likely shuts down/check evaluate.

When your avg rec player puts in a big c/r and gets called in 2 places they almost always run for the hills. Their thinking is something along the lines of, "I can't be ahead of both players, one has to have the nuts" or something of the sort.

Plus we become somewhat handcuffed in the middle of 2 players and being this deep set ourselves up for getting outplayed on bad turn/ river cards. If we flat and a player behind does to and a club comes off what are we doing? What range would we give to the over caller in this spot?

I feel like we make the most money getting the pot heads up against a player who can over value a litany of hands we beat. The flop is the time when he likely makes the most mistakes because all of his one pair and draw hands shrink dramatically on most turns.

What we are trying to do is avoid the beluga theorem.

just my 2 bits.. the OP here and later linked was kinda annoying as the details in later change the situation a lot!!