1/2. 250 effective.

V1 Loose passive calling station.

V2 Loose passive regular.

V3 (Button), same villain as my most recent post. He called a maniac preflop with 68s and got it all in on the turn with a straight-flush draw. I won't give away the previous hand, but let's say my read was correct: he's an solid aggressive player, on the loose side. He might be three-betting too wide, and in another hand, he's a candidate for a four-bet semi-bluff.

Hero's image to V is now tight passive

V1 in MP and V2 in HJ limp. V3 on the button raises to 10. Hero with AhQc?

A solid V will usually raise 10 + 2 for each limp, so this bet could indicate a weak hand, someone trying to narrow the field to play Broadway cards or small or medium pairs aggressively post-flop in position. How much weight to give the small bet, I do not know. Hero is also considering that V1 is sticky and V1's call of hero's 3bet would bring along calls by V2 and V3 for a bloated pot with AQo out of position the rest of the hand.

3b to $50

Definitely 3bet. I'd go $40, but $50 is fine and might be better give descriptions.

raise to 40$

I call

He 4bet bluffs and will likely never fold to a 3bet anyway, and he has position on us too and we're likely crushing him anyway but not enough to 5bet/jam though so call and play creative as opposed to f/o/f this looks like a rare spot where flatting could be better and these types of players usually give up when their cbet get's c/r'd. Of course this is villain and hero's own image dependent.

The problem with calling here is you invite the other 2 V's in and now are OOP against 3 players

Hero called. V1 and V2 fold.

I used to muck AQo in these situations. In the moment I lacked the stamina for the raise. I think the better play is to fold around 1/3 of the time and 3bet 2/3 of the time, depending on players. A call is the worst play. It gives you no chance to win the pot through aggression.

Flop (23 after rake) Ts8d7d

Hero checked. Villain bet 10. Hero?

Fold. You have two overs and really no backdoors

Fold pre is by far the worst option. 3bet by far the best.

Depends on your style of play. Calling makes your flop play transparent. I'm losing more money calling than folding here.

3bet >> call >> fold

…and IMO it’s not close.

I wouldn’t mix, just 3bet 100%. But fold is definitely the worst option.

I’m not saying I doubt it, only you can know this…but it may be that you need to put in more work on your postflop game.

3betting in this spot is standard but the villain is known to 4bet light, so I would only be doing it if I planned on 5 bet jamming pre (not 3bet folding) so this is a rare dynamic where I would sometimes flat

3betting to 45-50 basically 100% of the time. Cant go multiway in this spot in the SB

Fold pre is LOL and I'm the tightest MFer in my room, there is no discussion to have about folding. We're versing a competent player's BTN iso range so we should 3bet for fat value. Flop is an easy fold.

Thank you for teaching honest poker's first lesson: humility. I promise I will never fold AQo pre in the SB unless facing a 4bet or a nit calling an early raise by another nit .

Results: Hero folded the flop and started writing down the hand instead of observing the rest of the action. I don't remember who won or how. Sorry to disappoint those offering alms of humiliation.

Keep paying attention to the action. Remember the hand in your head as you do so and jot down some cliff notes the next time you get Dealt J5.

If you want to give up on that flop I don't see how calling with AQo can be profitable here. Your opponent could c-bet 100% and push you off your hand 2/3 of the time...

Small raise generally means playable hand that wants to take initiative to the flop (and build a pot on the button). Range is very weak here. Given there are 2 loose passives limping MP+ and this is a 1/2 game he's unlikely to be very balanced in this spot.

If this hand goes multiway and it's a bad flop for our hand we can just check fold.

This is completely ass backwards. I'm hoping he 4bets so that we can 5bet as a sizable favorite vs his range.

I'm going to disagree with the others and say that I'm not so sure that a lot of players wouldn't lose less if they just fold in this spot rather than call. That being said, we shouldn't focus as much on which bad play is worse but rather focus on the fact that 3betting is the correct play and you shouldn't expect good results if you deliberately choose to make the incorrect play.

Wait, what? Since just Hero and Button went to the flop (you stated in Post #7 that V1 and V2 folded preflop), I can only assume that the rest of the action went something like "Dealer slides Hero's cards into the muck, pushes pot to Button, who places a $1 chip on top of his cards and slides them to the dealer."

Semi-grunching here.

Not 3-betting PF is criminal, AQo is a very strong hand HU and you don’t want to invite the limpers to come along. That said, if you really don’t know how to handle a 4-bet then I see the merits of calling. But I’d 3-bet with a plan (which for me would be jamming but that’s just me).

On the flop, that’s likely a good flop for his button steal range, and if he’s going to continue to barrel then I think folding now with little invested is best. This should also be good for our range and should slow him down, and if you think he can outplay you postflop then I think folding is best and you should wait for a better spot, especially since you have position on him in general.