I played an interesting hand yesterday and in this scenario I place myself in the Villains shoes.

I am holding AhAs9h6h on SB about 105 BB deep. There is a maniac (190 BB) sitting just on my left-hand side on BB who is raising, 3-betting almost every hand.
LJ, HJ fold and CU (100 BB) who is rather tight (the real me) opens, Button folds and I 3-bet pot. Maniac calls and CU calls.

Flop (40 BB) QhJx5h. SPR - 2

Hero??? I literally have no idea what to do here.

check/shove vs maniac?

Just pot and if either or both call then shove dark.

If he’s really 3b over 50% you should flat pre unless you think the co open will make him 3b less since co is tight. Even then just flatting with a disguised hand isn’t so bad.

3 betting seems bad. Let him do it.

From my understanding of spots like these we do a lot of betting/pot with 3 card flush hands

Less so with 2 card flush hands

If we have BDNFD also we can check

3-betting is madness, now check.

3b sucks as described. We have below avg Aces in the worst position to have them. We can either play a deceptive single raised pot with them or let the maniac 3b, CO call and we can get in 50-60% of our stack pf and maniac may even jam and get us HU

Thanks for the feedback once again everyone. I believe that I personally would have just called with AA96 preflop too, but the Villain decided to 3 bet and found himself/herself in a very strange position.

What happened ... AA96 decided to pot it on the flop, the Maniac on BB folded and CU (the real me) goes all in. AA96 calls obviously and sees AQQ10 ds and 30% equity.
I noticed that most people would bet with this AA96 hand on flop, but is there alternative take on it?

Could we not check with that AA96 instead knowing that we have a maniac sitting just next to us? The maniac could lead out after our check instead or would it be too risky?

Of course we could but that would require a similar level of awareness as just flatting the AA pf which is seems wasn't there

I would take with a grain of salt the "don't 3b these aces" comment

You are only 100bb deep. There's almost no situations we do NOT 3b aces 100bb deep and even less situations where we don't when we are OOP

To give you an idea, flatting aces here is a -83bb/100 mistake compared to 3 betting them.

That is a literal punt.

You cannot make up that EV post flop.

You actually played this hand perfectly in theory. Don't be results oriented. You aren't going to win every hand and if you fight situations like this attempting to reduce your variance you will miss out on massive EV wins in the long run that crush your bankroll.

Solver doesn't account for a guy 3b almost every hand. It accounts for everyone at the table playing GTO perfect. Also we aren't looking to reduce variance, we're looking to stick most of our stack in after BB 3b

Being unable to deviate what the solver does in games that are light years away from being GTO is a literal punt

Opponents playing non GTO only INCREASES our EV, not decreases it.

It's an even bigger slam dunk 3b when players are calling dominated hands they should be folding to the 3b.

You can exploitatively just call and hope he 3B from the BB but opponents CRIMINALLY under 3b from the blinds and you have to be certain it's a higher EV play when compared to GTO.

The way SB played this hand was perfectly GTO. The only argument against it would be if deviating from GTO from an exploit perspective would be HIGHER EV.

Maybe. We would have to weigh the increased EV we get from the BB 3b vs the lower EV we get the times he doesn't and we have to play OOP multi-way at a high SPR.

But to say the SB made some kind of terrible mistake is disingenuous. He played it perfectly.

Yes I understand that 3b AA with 100bb is GTO perfect. We are talking about exploitative play however. It's not riveting discussion to come in and say "solver always 3b AA bc it's GTO perfect"....we already know this

We are talking about what's best in this scenario....

"There is a maniac (190 BB) sitting just on my left-hand side on BB who is raising, 3-betting almost every hand."

Now if he's pfr'ing 85% but only 3b 25% then yea ofc 3b AAxx ourself is gonna be best but if he's just pfr'ing and 3b every time someone hasn't already done it before him pretty much then flatting is gonna be better and we're gonna trap CO in between

^^^ read that he is actual expected to 3-bet.

Hope? WTF?! Twisting the story in yet another thread against the actual read.

^^^ exactly

In another thread by DeoD, 2 weeks ago, his AA93 thread, I wrote, "In my pool, people massively under 3bet in the big blind, especially when they can just close the action with a call instead, but even when they are not closing the action."

But that is without any other information or read. However, this forum might as well close up if reads like what the OP wrote in original post go from an almost certainty of the 3bet to Echemondo's stubborn; obstinate behavior wanting to twist it to "we hope" he 3bets. That "hoping" comment Echemondo is the real disingenuous comment in this thread.

Certainly. If opponent is 3b at 100% frequency we can flat all our AA at 100% frequency and then 4b him.

You guys are 100% right.

I've never seen this live, but if this is in fact true then the exploit would be to deviate and play like you are suggesting.

I guess the question is, at what percentage does it become a mistake Only 3b 85% of the time 75% It may not even be a mistake until sub 40% but it may also be a mistake as high as him only 3b 80% of the time.

I don't have monker in front of me cuz I'm in Vegas but it would be interesting to see at what percentage would it be a mistake to just call from from OOP 100bb deep with a suited ace with the hopes our villain 3b's.

"I don't have monker in front of me cuz I'm in Vegas but it would be interesting to see at what percentage would it be a mistake to just call from from OOP 100bb deep with a suited ace with the hopes our villain 3b's."

Yep, it would be interesting to see, but I reckon that there must be a small portion of weaker AAxx that would just call too with not so high EV loss.
I personally at least mix in some calls with weaker AAxx OOP too, because I really hate playing marginal hands like overpairs (mostly we do not have a flushdraw or top set) OOP against a player who literally does not have a range and is willing to call 3-bet with a hand like 3h3x9hJx/ 2s2x6s5x etc etc ... or worse ... against two or three of them.

Echemondo, could you ever consider checking that flop with AA96? Potentially we could get some dead money into the pot from that maniac there ...

I rarely deviate from GTO unless a player gives me a very good reason to do so. It's served me fairly well.

In this instance at 100bb I'm never not potting this flop. I'm also never not 3b pre.

When we get deeper around 200bb or higher, that's when hands like this I would instead flat as the EV difference is marginal and instead, we care more about playability when we 3b as opposed to raw equity.

You'll find that players who 3b or POT all the time don't really do well when facing aggression back. They want to bully but don't like being bullied. They don't really want to lose or face a decision they just wanna be the one winning and making others face a decision.

I would pot here at 100bb with this hand. I don't want a hand like a weak J getting free turns and we may even get calls from weaker draws. We don't have enough behind to get all fancy. If the SPR was much higher, we have options but I don't see too many in this spot.

I guess we can maybe check and pray he puts money in for us, but our hand isn't strong enough to check IMO. If we had an overpair with a flush and straight draw and a pair block maybe. Something like AAQT where we are just crushing everything, then id check. Or something like AQQT with a 2FD. We can really only check with lock down hands or hands that whiff. We wanna push our equity and fold equity when we have strong but marginal hands when OOP.

Thank you for the explanation. I am new in PLO and not very good at it and at this moment I am trying to understand the depth of the game just 100 BB deep. In fact, I am actively trying to avoid deeper games . After doubling up at Zoom for instance, I usually reenter with 100 BB, because I have no knowledge about the strategies implemented deep stack and I play deep only if I see that there is a really bad opponent at the table who cannot play at all, but it was really enlightening to read your comment, which kind of indicates some possible strategies 200 + BB deep.

I think it makes a lot of sense to play at a stack depth you are most comfortable with if possible. I love playing 50bb game against weak players, because it highlights their pre-flop inability.