In SH limit games, you can raise 87 for value on this flop. I think it is meh, but you see people doing it with 44. Like if you can ever remove some Ax from the villain's range (capped range somehow), the argument could be made. The NL side is interesting. I certainly see the case for cbetting nothing if your range is overall pretty strong -- nothing really benefits from villain's folds b/c anything he folds is way worse than your range of non-TPGK hands. I assume then you cbet nothing and see if he induces. I think a lot about these spots HU where you're trying to lever his range back wide open -- you make a little money off the hands strong enough to call a c/r + 2 barrels, but you make way more money when you allow him to barrel off 100% of his range.

In a single-raised pot, I would say that some people will stick around with 98s, especially if they have a BDFD. Their plan will be to make 2nd pair and get to showdown cheaply, or pick up some equity on the turn with which they can get aggressive, or bluff some rivers when turn checks through, or make an unlikely monster and get paid off. But it being a 3bet pot makes our range on an A-high flop stronger than it would be in a single-raised pot, so villains are less likely to play back light or spew chips at us. Furthermore, the fact that the SPR is only 7ish makes any plan to float flop and make moves on the turn less likely to work than it would in a single-raised pot where the SPR would be 13 or higher. So in general, I think competent regs realize that they are not in good shape here range vs range, and they have no problem check-folding the flop here, especially being OOP.

So you could balance here by cbetting 100%, but really you just get everything you beat to fold except the Axs combos. And very little of their range has a good equity share in the pot if they are behind, so you are not giving up very much by letting a free card drop, imo. So I think cbetting 0% might actually be better than cbetting 100% in this specific example.

Those ranges seems completely unrealistic to me.

First of, just because hero 3-bet for value in this hand with AQ he would still have a 3-bet bluffing range. If he isn't villain is making a huge mistake by calling that wide. Nobody should call with a range that has 35% being OOP in a 3-bet pot without initiative. That is just going to cost you money.

So if villain is calling that wide it is because hero has or villain perceives hero to have a bluffing range. In reality any decent player will have a lot of bluffs in their 3-betting range BTN vs CO deep simply because CO aren't able to play many hands deep, OOP without initiative profitably.

So in order for the question to make sense we need to define hero's bluffing range and have an idea of how it is distributed (especially how many Ax(s) type of hand hero is bluffing).

The question becomes about balancing your valuebet and bluffs on this board that hits hero very strong. So if we have more bluffs than value in our 3-betting range it makes sense to want to be able to win with a c-bet on the flop because we don't hit this board that well, yet villain can't peel lightly because we still have a lot of value hands that will bet turn/river and we can chose to bluff some, but not all of our bluff hands on turn/river if villain does peel lightly. He wont be able to call turn/river making his bluff call very questionable then.

If we have few bluff hands it makes sense to check back with the intention of letting villain barrel it off against our stronger range with his weaker hands, and if he doesn't we will often be able to take the pot down on the turn with our bluff hands anyway.

Yes, you're right that our range is ridiculously merged and value-heavy. Since that was the range that was proposed for our example, I just went with it and assigned villain a wide calling range, as it only makes sense for our 3bet to be unpolarized if we think villain is calling wide. If we suppose that villain will fold to our 3bet more often, and we therefore include bluffs in our 3betting range...then I still think this flop may hit our bluffing range quite hard depending on whether or not we are using our low Axo and/or Axs hands as bluffs.

If we change our 3betting range to be something like:

JJ+,AQs+,A8s-A6s,T7s,96s,85s,AKo,A9o

and tighten villain's range for calling to:

JJ-66,AQs-AJs,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,98s,87s,AQo

then we still are a 71/29 favorite on the flop, and many of the same considerations of being way ahead of his range apply.

Wow just found this, very good read, well done guys.

Hey, just an idea for next month, how about you send one interesting hand to players very different from each other, express it in BB rather than $ and get analyses from all of them? I'm thinking maybe a micro stakes nit (Arty maybe?), a micro stakes looser player (ProfesorKaos if he's willing, or myself perhaps?) and a slightly larger stakes player (Queen6Suited perhaps?). Ask them in terms of their own stakes. I think this could be pretty interesting to see differing thought processes beyond the one-liners given in strat threads.

I resemble that remark.

A solid idea. We will probably use this. I doubt we can get it done for the October issue, but soon.