Wednesday afternoon at Mandalay Bay. Table has been playing loose but not too aggressive preflop. Players including a couple businessmen who work at a local strip club and a father and son of Middle Eastern descent visiting from California.

Villain 1 in this hand is a mid 40s white reg who just sat down to the table about 10 hands ago. He begins the hand with a little under $200.

Villain 2 is one of the strip club businessmen. He had been playing pretty loose-passive throughout the day. Only times I have seen him bet he has made 1/2 to 2/3 psb OTR with straights or flushes. Be begins the hand with roughly $300.

Hero is a late 20s white male who has been playing tight aggressive this afternoon. I started the hand with about $650.

V1 raises to $9 from UTG + 2. MP calls. Hero finds A A and makes it $35 OTB. V2 calls in BB, V1 calls, and MP calls. Flop comes Q 9 T. V2 checks, V1 shoves all-in for $140. MP folds. Hero ???

Hero re-shoves. It's a 3bet pot and you have the flush redraw, can't ever see folding folding here with an SPR of 2-3 even though board sucks.

Two biggest questions I was thinking about during my 25 second tank:

1) How often does V1 have a set when he shoves? Getting 2/1, so I need him to have AQ or KQ about a third of the time to be ahead in this spot...removing two aces and a queen from the deck, there are six combos of AQ available, twelve combos of KQ, and nine different combos of sets (although I'm not sure if he raises in EP with 99; not everyone does). When he does have AQ/KQ, does he shove because he thinks my 3bet range includes a lot of JJ/AK? If he does give me credit for AA/KK, would he bet 1/2 pot and fold to my shove? Tricky thing is that his shove is a pot sized bet, so it seems as though he very well could do this with AQ/KQ; KQ does have a gutshot to go with top pair. And, as mentioned, if he does indeed have a set I have two outs to set over set as well as a backdoor NFD, so that provides me about 16% equity in a worst-case scenario.

2) Does V2 ever cold-call $35 with 99/TT/QQ/KJ/T9/QT and then decide to checkraise the flop from BB? I think it's much more likely that he has some kind of draw with this flop, but I looked at him for a little while to try and gauge whether he wanted to see a shove (I thought he had a few physical tells that day).

ship

Results:

Hero ships all-in for $600. V2 folds. V1 shows Q Q. One of the two strip club promoters says, "Hey, spades are a possibility." I give a half-hearted smile and say, "Put out a spade to make him sweat." Turn is 6, river is 2. The strip club promoters get excited about the pot, the old man frowns vigorously at his misfortune, and V2 tells me I now have enough cash to speak with a girl who's doing some work on the side. I respectfully decline.

Still not entirely sure how often V1 shows up with a set in this spot. In the long-term I think he shows up with AQ/KQ at least a third of the time based on the very limited observations I had available at that point.

Pretty simple ship because of stacks

I mean I realize that the SPR going to the flop is literally 1, but if I thought V1 was the most weak passive OMC in the world do I have to give him credit for having a set more than twice as often as he ships with less? Are there player types we can think of that only ship here with a set, or can we reasonably say that everyone will have a range that includes 1/3 AQ/KQ when they make the pot sized ship here?

Not only are the stacks way too short for this kind of over-thinking, but anyone who's going to show up with QQ here could also easily show up with KK.

You played this hand fine. The defining moment in the hand was preflop. After making that raise, you are committed on all flops.

I would have raised more pf. Raising "pot" is too big, I don't think anyone stays in unless it's QQ+. But I would make it closer to 50.

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your post or if you might be misreading the OP. V1 raised in EP to $9, MP called the $9, and I made it $35. With the blinds behind me, there would have been exactly $30 in if I had flatted the $9 PFR, so raising to $35 is exactly $4 short of a pot sized raise. Raising to $50 would have been $11 more than a pot sized raise.

In general I tend to make my 3bets around 3x when I'm OTB, but in this case I knew the table was playing super loose so I made it 4x instead so I would be more likely to get HU or 3 ways...I didn't count on the BB cold-calling $33 more so he could c/f the flop.

I don't know why, I thought three guys had put in $9 before you acted. 4am post lol, there ya go.

Fold obviously. Nobody is over playing KQ here nor AQ since you hold blockers ldo.

So did you allow villain to profitably setmine? Preflop his pot odds are 3.385-1 (assuming the MP player folds).

To setmine, he must win at least 8 - 3.385 = 4.615*$26. Do those numbers make sense? 8 is because that's the odds of flopping a set. $26 because that's the price for him to call.

4.615*$26 = $119.99. If you will commit on any flop post flop (and I'm assuming you would since Q109 is about the worst flop for AA), then you allow villain to setmine against you, since $140>$119.99.

Conclusion: 3-bet a bit bigger pre.

You can't always deny set-mining odds. If we are $800 deep in a 1/2 game we're not raising to $100+ preflop.

If you don't deny set-mining odds, then you should be prepared to fold overpairs post flop. If you do deny set-mining odds, then you can always commit postflop on any flop.

Folding AA in 3-bet pots with SPR < 3 is definitely -EV

This doesn't even make sense though. Because the 1/2 fish won't care if they get the right or wrong mining odds. So even if you denied them the right odds, they're only going to be putting in big $ post flop when they hit, so you're just conceding the post-flop portion of your stack in this case?