Recently got back into live poker since the Encore Boston Harbor has been built, making it much easier to get to a game from where I live. This hand took place during one of their daily high hand promotions. In terms of general reads, most everyone at the table (besides a select few, more on that later) have been playing extremely loose passive, trying to hit the jackpot. There have been very few large raises both pre and post, and even fewer 3-bets pre. In terms of the main villains in this hand:

Villain 1 (Stack ~$500) - Slightly older white guy with a thick Russian/Eastern European accent, running well. In the last hour, missed the high hand by about 2 minutes, and seemingly hitting everything else. Will come in for the occasional raise, but overall playing passive and has not gotten out of line.

Villain 2 (Stack ~$190) - Younger hispanic guy, playing loose passive and possibly on tilt. About 30 minutes prior to this hand I limped 22 against him and then bet/bet/bet a 2KX-X-K board. He called and was confused as to why his KJ wasn't good. Not sure if he didn't see the 2 on the board or if he really thought his trips were good.

Hero (Stack ~$370) - Young white guy, on my second full buy-in of the night. I've been pretty aggressive pre, raising large over multiple limpers and have been one of the only ones to 3-bet so far. The hand I lost my stack in is critical to this history, so to briefly recap: MP who's one of the only other aggressive players at the table raises to 6. One call from a short stack in the HJ and I 3-bet on the button to 30 with A2. SB calls along with MP and HJ. Flop comes 39J. MP donk bets 20, HJ shoves for ~80 more, and I re-shove about 250. MP tanks for about 2 minutes and calls. Board runs out 97. I flip my hand, short stack flips QQ, and MP scoops with 89. I might have overplayed it, and maybe I shouldn't have even flipped my hand, but felt like I was getting the money in good with 9 clean outs to the nuts and potentially an over card.

On to the hand:

Encore Boston Harbor, 1-3 NL
Hero dealt QQ
Villain 1 raises to 12 UTG
Villain 2 calls in MP
Hero raises to 45 in HJ
Villain 1 looks exasperated and shouts something along the lines of "Eh I know you're full of ****, you don't have anything. I call."
Villain 2 tanks for about a minute, and somewhat hesitantly calls.
Before the flop is dealt, Villain 1 announces that he's checking dark, and in a somewhat weird turn of events, Villain 2 announces "well I guess if he's going to check, I'll check."

The speech play felt really strong to me when it happened. Maybe it's MUBsy, but the thought immediately crossed my mind that V1 was slow playing aces or kings. V2's hesitation felt genuine to me for whatever reason. Felt like maybe he had a potential promo hand that he wanted to see a flop with, but could be wrong.

Flop (pot = $140): 89J

Dealer says action on me, and I confirm that both V1 and V2's check darks stand. I'll go into later streets after some responses, but I was really lost on what to do on this flop. I was really stuck between checking to pot control as I probably only get worse to fold and better to call, but on the other hand I didn't want to give either the A or K a free card. This isn't even taking into account what some of the speech play means. So thoughts?

It's hard to speak to the speech play being strong but it kind of doesn't matter because you're not in terrible shape anyway, like against all AA/KK you have 36% equity, even against AcA you have 21%, so I'm probably not basing play decisions on a hunch that he has that.

Allowing a turn card here carries substantial chances of either losing the hand to something that can't call or of having your action killed. I definitely don't think it's true that you're not getting called by worse. People aren't just check folding JT here, or AJ, or the ace of clubs, or etc. I think you're more or less overthinking this hand and that you have an overpair with a flush draw and gutshot and should go for value. If you get checkraised just GII. This is a threebet pot against two opponents, you can't try to manoeuvre and play subtle poker, just hope for the best.

First I want to talk about your A2 hand. Personally I'm not a big fan of 3betting suited aces namely because I want as many people in the pot with hands like this as you're always drawing to the nuts. You can iso with all other suited hands but keep the ace high one's for the massive pots. This kind of plays into your turn jam. Why shove a draw that has zero fold equity? Someone else was already allin, you cant win without hitting your hand, so if you're forced into a showdown then keep the customers in. You dont want to spike the nut flush heads up when you could have had it 3 ways. Imagine if V folded his 98 on the flop but you binked the river. You would have felted him with a flush vs trips.

Now on to the actual hand; while I definitely think it's possible he may have been exhibiting the whole "im weak but I call you" reverse tell (meaning he's strong) I honestly dont even care on this board. Gutshot, overs, queen high flush that may be good, I'm totally fine getting it in here. Sure AAc is a nightmare scenario but it's not like we're dead and honestly I find most dark checks are just drawing hands hoping to hit a miracle on the flop so that they can x/r allin and leave you confused. I put him on 22+ and any number of suited connectors which QQc does fine against. Cant really read V2 other than his range is probably much much worse, especially with him playing follow the leader, he could literally have anything.

Spr 3, 3b pre, great flop, equity vs just about everything...gii as quickly as possible

+1. Just get it in and ride the variancetrain.

WTF does gii accomplish here? "Equity vs everything" is not a good enough reason to jam it in.

How about having good enough equity against pretty much everything so that a potenial stackoff in a 3 bet pot with low SPR here is +EV?

Like, we have alot of hands in our 3 bet range that dont like this flop and cant stand much heat. Like all QQ-AA no club. Like All AQ-AK combos without a club. When we have alot of giveups/check backs here in our overall range, i believe its a fair logical approach to stackoff with QQ/one club on this flop.

Still not a good reason. +EV in a vacuum does not mean the most +EV, or +EV for your range.

The fact that a ton of your hands don't like this flop should give you less reason to bet here, not more.

In regards to the A2 hand, I really like all these points and definitely think I overplayed the hand. I 3-bet pre because the 6 dollar bet and call seemed really weak and my strategy of isolating limpers and small raises had been working really well all day, but you're right in that there are better hands to do that with versus a hand that can make the clear nuts but has relatively low value otherwise. I also didn't take the lack of fold equity into account and played it post-flop like I would with any draw heads-up, when there's clearly little value to raising and I'm basically betting into a dry side-pot. The hand could be its own thread really, so I won't get too into it, I only bring it up because after the QQ hand, V1 told me he made that comment because "I had been overplaying **** hands all day." I politely disagreed; it was probably just 1 hand that I slightly overplayed, but I guess this is the image you get when you 3-bet at a typical 1-3 table.

I'll post the rest of the hand soon, just wanted to see if there are anymore comments on flop action.

Tough spot.

I'd do a $110 flop CBET.

Fold to any V1 raise. Call to any V2 raise since he's got little left.

Then push any non-club, K, A on turn

I was going to say $95-105 c-bet. It's right about that pain threshold and the flop hits your range hard. Keep the pressure on and evaluate the turn for a check or jam.

I appreciate all the replies so far. It seems like the general consensus that a c-bet is ideal in this situation given how much equity I flopped and how I still probably have the best hand a good portion of the time. Unfortunately, in game I checked the flop. I was really thrown off at the time and I think I greatly underestimated just how many dominated hands could call a flop bet on a board like this, and even against hands that are beating me, I still have tons of outs. So, to continue:

Turn (Pot = $140): 4
V1: Check
V2: Check
Hero: ???

So a good(?) turn card for us, but now potentially an action killer. After another 2 checks, I’m definitely feeling like I have the best hand and should probably bet, but probably don’t get called by a ton at this point. Does that thinking make sense? Wondering what you guys think the correct play/sizing is here on the turn.

You're likely only getting 1 street of value here, and your hand needs almost no protection (it can't really get worse), so I'd just check again and hope someone bluffs the river.

There is some merit to betting to charge sets, but I still like a check here.

+1 to SABR’s input ITT.
People play monotone boards really poorly.

This is clearly a check.

We want to get to the SD as cheaply as possible because we haven't got the nut flush draw. Ac and Kc are ahead of us.

Check, as stated. You got the action on the previous street and now your only callers are likely A K 10

Speech and 2 dark checks is most definitely not strong

I'm fine with c-betting, and closing my eyes and clicking call if one or both move in

Do you think a flop check is better than a flop bet? Why?

We probably dont need to hit our draw to win the hand.

I'm late replying to this thread again, but the point of betting the flop is that you can get value from a bunch of worse hands and a ton of turn cards kill your action, for example the actual turn card where people now want to (correctly) check again. I don't think the spectre of getting checkraised and having to GII is that bad given how robust our equity is.