No I was agreeing with you. I should have made myself more clear.

Granted I'm not qualified to agree or disagree, I just felt your point deserved emphasis. Seems to me that OP over-committed against an unknown villain. I can see an argument for not betting as strong, so as to avoid pot-commitment. But I feel you have a better argument for playing defense.

As a general rule, I figure it's good to 3b out of the blinds with the top and bottom of my playable range.

I've been struggling to come up with a general rule for when it's good to flat and play defense, a deeper concept than "flat with everything else." I figure
- Trying to seize the initiative from OOP doesn't always work out so hot
- When I play defense, it seems like the hand tends to hinge on the turn.
- There is at least the potential to get information by letting the other guy bet first.

So, I figure, I should at least consider playing defense from OOP, when I need more information than I have, with a hand that is likely to turn well. Exception being, if stacks are short and we are seeking pot commitment from the get-go. All seem to favor playing defense here.

If we go back and look at those hands in the middle, where we are more likely to flat that raise out of the blinds, they tend to fall into two categories. The first are static hands like 99, which usually won't flop well, and in which we will usually try to get to showdown for cheap. The second are dynamic hands like JTs, that aren't likely to flop well but might start looking really good by the turn. AKs is a good static hand in that it will flop well a lot of the time, but it's an excellent dynamic hand also. So it's not that AKs should be played defensively; it's that it can be played that way if you want.

How'm I doing?

^ My apologies. There's a group of guys on here who seem to meet once a week to troll the opposite of what I post and now I'm always on the look out for anything like that.

Yeah that's how I think about a hand oop. Even opens in early not just in a flat or 3b spot. The other night I was one of 4-5 guys at the table $500+ deep ($1-3) and I raised to $10 UTG+1 with AA. Most people go bigger than usual there, I went smaller than usual because I wanted to keep myself as uncommitted as possible in case we went 4-way or even if I got 3b I'm not too happy about it, unless I 4-bet laughable big the SPR is still bigger than I want otf, the 3-bettor can call and know I have to open shove every flop.

I hear a lot of guys say "big hand big pot, small hand small pot." I've won plenty of big pots with 1 pair, the better position I have the bigger a pot I want to play, it's not so much a function of the cards.