I personally don't think ATo is a great hand to 3bet, so I'd say preflop that fold>call>3bet (it's close though). This is partly due to being deep. If stacks were closer to 100BBs, then it's easier to put villain to stack commitment decisions by 3betting pre. But at 200+BBs, I think you're mostly just spewing chips by 3betting this. ATo is a hand that makes top pair, bad kicker (relative to preflop raiser's likely kickers if he has an ace), and it's just so rare you're going to be trying to get 200BBs in for value, but you can get into a lot of bad spots with it...

But I don't entirely hate the call deep in position, if you play well postflop. That being said, fold flop.

I wouldn't 3bet if I only had 100 big blinds, I need more leverage post flop and I would never want him stack committed by calling pre. Also I would never try to get 200BBs in for value with ATo.

If he has AQ and an ace flops and he calls a cbet, I'm not continuing to get him off the hand. But when he has AQ and he misses the flop 66% of the time, I take it down with a cbet (with an inferior hand).

At 100BBs or so, he won't be stack committed by calling a 3bet pre, but will likely feel stack committed when facing a bet on the flop (while we can still get away).

Re: AQ... How is this different than just calling pre then making reads and raising his cbets occasionally?

At 200BBs+, facing an EP raise, I much prefer to polarize my 3bet range between very strong hands and weakish hands that can make strong disguised hands post (like SCs, Kxs, maybe Axs, or occasionally medium/small PPs). If it were a HJ or CO raise, I might be inclined to 3bet ATo as kind of a merged value-range hand.

I would still 3bet AQo, the only time I'm flatting pre is if he's likely to 4bet us light, tilted, or knows we continue to light 3bet his opens and if I do flat I'm bluff raising his cbet like always, unless we hit the flop and don't want him to fold.

When you call pre his range is so wide even if he barrels the turn, but if he flatted a 3bet we can narrow his range down on each street and decide to continue or give up the hand. Most of the time I would expect him to flat pre and fold otf.

Of course we can 3bet with AQ a lot. I'm not arguing that.

What you said originally was that we can get villain to fold AQ if we 3bet pre, the flop is low, and we cbet. My counter is that we can get villain to fold AQ if we flat pre, the flop is low, and we raise his cbet. We end up risking less because we can be selective of the flops we raise... It's all about having a strong sense of ranges, and making good reads. (However, I'd tend to just let AT go after a pot sized cbet - it's just too indicative of an overpair).

ok but it's costing you a lot more money to do that, plus, after he puts x dollars into the pot, he's that much less likely to fold. It's cheaper and more beneficial to just 3bet pre since we don't have a reason to play it that creative atm.

Fold flop. Fold turn.

It's not costing a lot more... In the case of 3betting pre and cbetting, we make the 4th bet on the flop. In the case of flatting pre and raising a cbet, we raise to the 4th bet on the flop...

Pre and flop are extremely ambitous. After that its probably fine. People never stack off here light