Playing 1/1 NL 9 handed, 2hrs in.

Relatively quiet Thursday night table with little aggression and players generally on the weaker side.

Villain in this hand is probably the best player out of the bunch at the table. Generally exploitative style with lots of floating and in position betting which has netted him the biggest stack at the table.

UTG straddles for £2
Villain (covers hero, UTG +1): raises to £6
Hero (button/£225 stack): raises to £18 w/ A Q
Villain calls

With hindsight, I feel like raising a bit bigger pre-flop given how deep we are is the play. Raising > calling though.

Flop: 2 3 9
Villain checks
Hero bets £20
Villain raises to £55
Hero calls

Things start to heat up with his flop raise. No way we can fold this one considering how ahead we are of practically every draw.

Turn: A
Villain bets £55
Hero calls

Now we have top pair to go with our hand and given our draw calling seems the best option.

River 9
Villain is all in
Hero: ?

Whats the best play here?

Yes and no.

You obviously can fold here, but he could have worse flushes as often as boats.

Standard call.

Hero blocks AA, so there is a total of 2 combos of AA/99. Less likely are 33/22 raising from +1 pre, then calling a 3b HU oop.

I thought standard call too but then how many worse hands than hero's hand does villain shove 100bb on the river on for value?

my call on the flop and turn has to be a little concerning if villain has a flush.

Also forgot to include that heroes image is likely a good TAG . Hero's played few hands aggressively and have shown the goods every time at showdown.

Are we giving enough consideration to V's thought process here?

OP, knowing your image is critical here. Because if it's tight / passive / somewhat nitty this becomes an interesting question.

What's our 3-b range OTB as a TP player? Probably AA-TT, AK-AQ, maybe AJs. I don't know too many rocks who are pumping pre with KQ or A9.

OTF, we c-bet and call a raise. We're not doing that with unsuited overs so I'd argue we're down to AA-TT and AK - AJ.

OTT, we x/c the Ace - no way we're just flatting with top set with a FD out there and I can't imagine KK-TT continues here.

So it's possible our entire range by the river is nut flushes. Yet V shoves on us for 100+ BB anyway. What is he doing this with other than something that can beat that?

This is all moot if we've been aggressive / 3-betting light, of course, but does it make sense if we're nittish?

ETA: For some reason your follow-up post didn't show up until after I posted. If we've shown even moderate aggression pre he's probably not giving us full credit and we can pretty safely call this shove. But if we've just been tight and shown up with the goods - without a history of wide 3-betting - IMO there's good reason to be really concerned in this spot.

Looks like you're getting ~2.7-1 (260/97) on a call.

Let's give him 2 combos of AA/99 and 1/2 the combos of 33/22 sets for a total of 5 better hands. Given the odds, you only need to find a couple of worse combos that make calling profitable. 54dd and AxKd are 3 combos that might take this line. If you think these hand combos are reasonable, call.

Shrug call?? Expect a lot of AxKd and suited diamond broadways. Would think for a few seconds but really an easy call in a 3-bet pot. Agree the 3-b sizing was too small.

Also consider the fact you're both playing deep which makes people call more 3-bets preflop with speculative hands in hopes of hitting the flop big. So I think it's not unreasonable to assume he can have stuff like KdJd, KdTd, JdTd, 8d7d 7d6d 6d5d 5d4d, that's already 7 value combos worse than ours that he might be doing this with.

Interesting breakdown of villains perception, Mook. I didn't 3bet much on this occasion so he probably assumes I've got a strong range. Which you're right, does make this river shove scary as fuuuck.

I don't think 45dd is too likely, it's a very bold raise in first position. He does have a couple of combos of diamond broadways that he could potentially play this way though like J10 or KJ and I guess AxKd too. I guess that and the fact you never know what's going on in the mind of these low stakes live players makes me lean towards calling.

In the end I flicked it in and got shown 33.

If he opened 33 then he could open 45s as well (though I agree it's less likely), it's a similar hand in terms of realizing equity, in both cases he hopes to hit the flop big and check/folds otherwise.

Anyway it's worth observing villains you play against, many of them will be unbalanced here and play draws as check/calls too much and their check/raising range will be unbalanced towards value. I always make a mental note if I ever see a player check/raise draws, we take it as obvious he might do that with a draw but the reality is many players just play draws too passively.

Another combo/math problem. 1 combo of 99, 3 of 22 and 33 each so 7 combos that we lose too (if V has AA I will eat my shoe). Pot by my math
is laying you 358/98 or 3.65-1 so we need to be good 1x out of 4.65 or ~22.5%. So as long as V has 3 flush combos in his range that would play this way (KJ/KT/JT), then we can profitably call beating 27% of his range.

I think it is close at this level, but I call.

I think once you 3bet preflop and saw this flop you're basically tied on to the hand.

Which begs the question, and I'm just thinking out loud gere - is 3betting here actually a good play? I don't mean with specifically AQdd against a random EP open but with a range at this stack depth against this stronger player?

With 225bb, a quiet game and facing an EP open from a strong player you've got a problem even though you're in position. Any reasonable 3bet sizing is going to present a profitable set-mining opportunity to your opponent if you're only 3betting for value and when you start 3betting he's going to assume you're value heavy so he's going to set mine you. This means you won't get enough folds preflop from a tight EP open range to be able to profitably 3bet light without getting into a regwar postflop.

But if you only 3bet for value you're likely just going to trade stacks back and forth as you cooler each other. Rake takes its toll and over the long-term you'll both end up down off your hands played against each other.

I think in this exact spot I'd personally prefer to just flat IP with a range of strong plus speculative hands and look to make good decisions with the advantage of position postflop. That's easier to do with decent stack depth postflop. The other advantage of this strategy is it lets the weaker players in the blinds into the hand so they can lose chips over time to you and the reg.

Flat pre