Think you have to lead flop here. As described, your image is fairly loose so after the 3bet pre and the check on the flop, you would actually scream strength to me if I were in villain's shoes. On that board of A-9-9 rainbow, you would normally cbet close to 100% of your 3bet range in that spot so by not throwing in the cbet, I think it screams strength. Basically, in villains shoes while setmining, unless I hit paydirt on the turn, Im getting out of this hand.

However, if you lead on the flop, I think your hand can be much more disguised. I would think you are going to lead here most of the time and would call and reevaluate turn.

Haha, you know how 2p2ers like to pile on/hate... I think you just weren't weighing the spr/how shallow we are enough in your thought process. It's easy to overlook one part of a hand history and it doesn't make you a horrible human being or a horrible poker player imo . If we were super deep, leading flop in op's spot would def be exploitable/punishable by an aggro opponent who knows he (op) will not stack off with 2 pair.

^^^
This is helpful.

It's not so much that I think he has a 9 that often, it's that if he raises my flop lead, I have no way of knowing whether this is one of those <10% of the times that he actually has it. That's what I meant by "exploitable" (probably a bad choice of words, but glad it gave you a laugh). It seems like in my regular game, in this exact same scenario, I get shown trips alot (perhaps an aberration due to my low sample size as I play only about 3 times a month) and feel absolutely idiotic for having gotten ai with TPTK.

I think my experiences (which sound, from the posts here, to be somewhat atypical) are leading me to play TPTK way too weakly and I am clearly being bluffed too much. I will have to find an adjustment. Funny, I'm told most people in my game don't see me as being a tight player, but this is obviously a scenario where I'm playing way too tightly.

After seeing how this thread turned out, I like a smaller flop cbet and check/decide, betting river if checked and check/decide river if he bet the turn.

In this hand I bet 510 on the river, villain shoves, then says "if you fold aq you're the best player ever, I call almost 200 more then shows me the pocket j9o.

haha. those were some fun days with sammy. but i think you mis-quoted.....it only applies when the villian had "pocket jack-ten".

bummer you lost the hand, but with relatively short stacks, i think you should be betting hard for value here. last i checked, it's hard to flop a pair, let alone three of a kind.

good luck.

whoa dude, can you not see why it doesn't matter at all whether or not he has it if when he raising your flop lead he only has it < 10% of the time?

If anything is exploitable, it's the average player in your games' Axx flop raising frequencies...

Tight spot on the river.

If you think villain is going to call it off with most Aces, then shoving has merit, especially if he is liable to check-behind with any showdown value. The Q does put Queens full in your range, and may allow him to fold some aces, and lesser pairs though.

The river is awful. IF he is the type that is mostly just betting the goods on the end, then you can check-fold.

I would never check-call.

Raise more pre and then bet bet bet. As played bet more on the turn. As played shove river. c/c is horrible.

I think the different opinions on this hand are just based on the types of players you're playing with. Against good, aggressive players or loose passive players you can play this hand very straightforwardly and feel good about getting the money in. Against a lot of very weak-tight players, though, if you get played with on this flop you're gonna get shown the 9 most of the time. Some live games will consist almost entirely of those weak-tight players.