Bad Aggressive player #1 straddles to $20 (This guy plays passive half the time, but has been caught bluffing off frequently with no equity). Loose passive player limps. Bad aggressive player #2 limps (this guy plays around 3/4's of his hands and bluffs often). Both bad aggressive players and me have $2k behind.

I raise KJ on the button to $100. Both bad aggressive players call. The flop comes down AQ5. They both check. What is my street projection plan here?

I check back trying to spike. Bad Aggro #1 checks turn. Bad aggro #2 pots it for $300. I fold.

how else could you play it vs 2 bad aggressive players?

I'm fine with either checking it back or cbetting here. I am more inclined to check because you describe both Vs as bad players so I think it would be very unlikely your cbet gets through 2 sticky players.

I opt for a check.

Okay cool. That's what I was thinking too, but got a little tilted when he flipped over his KTo haha.

What about vs two loose passive players? This spot comes up often, and I don't know what is the most +EV thing to do. Do you

A) Check back vs 2 loose passive players because it is 3-way
B) Bet the flop to collect dead money, and check turn if called.
C) Bet flop to collect dead money, and barrel most turns to get them to fold a Q

My guess is your supposed to bet the flop, and check back the turn because you probably don't have enough fold equity on the turn to make up for your 8% pot equity vs an Ace.

I say it depends how wide their range is. If the loose passives are playing a super wide range of offsuited connectors, big little off, etc then C-betting seems bueno because they should whiff often enough. If they are playing a range a little narrow with more big cards/pockets and only say suited connectors, in a 3-way i think checking back is fine. I think it highly depends on how wide their range is

Don't think about poker in terms of absolutes.. there's nothing you're supposed to do vs certain type of opponents on certain boards. Think of live poker in terms of a series of ever-changing decisions with a lot of factors, most of which time-dependent(eg. he's loose-passive but he just lost a big pot so his calling range is likely to be...), thrown in to affect your decision-making.

I don't mind a Cbet on this flop and then checking turn if we're called and miss

Overlimping pre instead of raising with a marginal hand?

They'd have to be extremely aggro for me not to cbet this flop. Cbetting just has so many pros:

1) This flop hits our pf raising range and misses their pf limp-calling ranges; unless they have A5/55 exactly or improve, it'll be tough for them to call down because we rep such a big hand.
2) There's pretty much no way we're winning the hand when we check back, unless we hit our 4-outer. Yeah, we can make 2nd/3rd pair and maybe win at showdown but that relies on getting a bunch of checks from these supposedly aggro players.
3) They might make fundamental theorem of poker mistakes on the flop, such as folding small pairs.

This is often a spot where in practice I'll check back, but only against people who I think are limp-calling AQ-AT type stuff pre or against people who will really just straight up go for it with KT/JT/KQ. "Bad aggro" players don't seem to fit that bill, so I think cbetting is better.

i think checking or cbetting are both fine, but in this particular situation i lean towards cbetting because you actually do have a draw the nuts and hitting a king may be good, and you have a legit chance to get them to fold slightly better hands in small pairs, or hands with reasonable equity like KT,JT, or just two random cards etc.

if it were 4 way or if it were like A93r then id probably prefer a check.

and yeah maybe i dont barrel enough but im probably going one and done if i get called here and brick out on the turn unless i have some kind of read that they were peeling light and are ready to give up later.

Making it 80 instead of 100. Nobody is folding regardless of bet size and should be able to build the pot as big as you'd like post against these types of villians. For the boards where you give up on flop or cbet/barrel/give up you lose less. These guys aren't paying attention to your sizing so you won't get exploited.

I wouldn't recommend overlimping KJo most of the time. If you do you'll wind up playing it 4/5 ways instead of 3 ways and you'd rather build a pot with a pretty good hand and define vilians' range a little more.

I actually go bigger pre but w/e. I see no reason to not fire a hlaf pot cbet here. I think checking is almost certainly a mistake.

bet flop

All this

Maybe I'm crazy, but if my image isn't **** I'm betting 3 streets on most runouts.