Game is an 8 handed 10-20 W/HK (15-30) zoo game deep into the night where almost every pot is getting bloated and going very multiway.

Hand is a kill pot.

Hero is dealt Ah3hQs9h on BTN. MP loose player posts $15 kill. Folds to MP who checks kill. CO super action player raises to $30 (very standard for him in CO, would make this raise 7+/10 times). Hero calls $30 on BTN. Both blinds (both quite loose + chase-y) call. MP kill-poster calls. Everyone is deep-stacked and it's very unlikely anyone's stack will end up all-in. No one still involved in hand likes to ever fold.

Flop Qs3s5h (5 ways, $150). Checks to CO who bets. Hero...?

With so much dead money and position, pf is automatic. Will say that this is one of the worst A3s you can have, but a3s is still strong enough here.

Flop is a call. This is a weak one-way drawing hand. even if you iso against co, it's not clear you come out +ev. Then a large% of the time the iso doesn't work and you bloat the pot with a bad hand.

I prefer a 3b pre. With the 3 blinds out there you have a lot of potential dead money to put into the pot and your hand plays better HU than multiway.

Seems like it almost certainly will be multiway even if hero 3 bets.

100% would still be multiway pre even if I reraise.

Only interested in flop analysis; keep it coming!

Too many Qs on flop but would call anyway.

Start killer and co with conservative estimates in relation to the reads you gave us and we have an easy easy 3b pre. With the button, guys. The button. The blinds can't really hurt us by coming along or folding and they read like favorites to make that decision poorly. Last but not least, raising puts us in the best position to take free cards on flops we don't like. Such as this one.

If there was ever a spot in poker to look left before acting this is it on the flop. It's clearly right to see the turn if we only pay one then but we're going to get jammed a lot with terrible equity dead indubious outs. If you're not sure how to read and respond to your opponents aggression here it's really okay to fold now. But my plan here is to call 1 and 1 but not 1 and 2.

Even if this were a less showdown bound game raising doesn't accomplish much as our backdoor hearts are nutted and getting eg overpair/K4 to fold isn't happening frequently enough, imo.

Huh?

1 Qs in OP’s hand + 1 Qs on flop = too many Qs

So you think it's bad for hero that he paired his queen?

Am I the only person not wondering why you didn't fold pre-flop?

I would definitely 3-bet this preflop, especially in a kill pot. This is still the better play whether the BB and the kill call or fold. If they on the tighter side, they will fold to the 3-bet, while they likely would have had good odds to call if you had flatted, l leaving significant dead money in the pot. If they a loose and call, you will just be getting more money in the pot where you are almost certain to have any equity advantage over their calling range.

On the flop, I would immediately alert the dealer that there is a duplicate card in the deck.

Yes, most likely.
Folding in this spot sounds completely nuts.

OK, I get the other guy's joke now; OP said there was a Qs in his hand and a Qs on the flop.

You can't use one "s" to mean both spade and plural though!

There are too many Qs

This seems to be a straight forward call. With top and bottom pair, hero is probably ahead at this point.

No one is folding to a raise on this flop (CO will most likely reraise), and your hand isn't really strong enough to want to bloat the pot.

With a flop of Q53, all of these hands have straight and low draws and will likely call any number of bets on the flop: A2, A4, 24, 26, 46, 47, and 67. Also, if there are two spades on the flop, no one with a flush draw is folding.

You could be ahead on this flop, but you're going to hate a lot of turns: pretty much anything except a Queen, 9, or 3 (and maybe an 8) makes it likely that someone will have either a straight or a better two pair. So I would call on the flop and proceed with caution.

This hand has a rank of 18.0 according to ProPokerTools. I've seen players fold the same or very similar hands two or three times, but I wouldn't do so in this exact situation (on the button, in a zoo game).

Can you articulate your argument for folding pre?

Should be isolating here to knock out other hands and get HU. Think about it: You raise to $45 and folds around to this guy who calls, you have $120 in the middle and invested $45 to be HU. Clearly a profitable scenario w/ any suited A3. At the very least, you will often have position the rest of the hand.

Thin we have to call and be careful here post.

I don't think it makes sense to give advice on the flop without knowing the actual suits of the flop.

The flop and its suits are correct. My hand did not contain the Qs but did contain a Q. Just sloppy writing on my part as I knew my hand contained three hearts and that there were two spades and one heart on the flop.

Appreciate all the posts and analysis so far, although I wish the Qs thing hadn't derailed the thread. Also would prefer if we could limit discussion going forward to the flop. Preflop, while I agree ISO'ing would be ideal, it just wouldn't work in this game. Among the people who saw the flop for $30, we would lose one at most, most likely would lose nobody.

The point of the preflop 3 bet is that it either works as isolation or for pure value. If the field players are going to call 3 bets with the same range they are calling 2 bets, they are calling with a range that is inferior to your hand. And getting more money in the pot with an equity advantage over their range is a good thing.

On the flop, I probably raise, but I could be convinced a flat call is OK.

if you're not going to knock anyone out with a raise, then calling the flop and raising a reasonable turn card would be better

I hadn't mentioned this, but here's an extra factor to consider re: pre: if we raise, the likelihood CO caps it is near 100% b/c that's the way he plays. While we continue to find ourselves in a +EV spot, we have also upped the variance considerably by raising here and increasing the likelihood we become pot committed in uncomfortable situations like this one. I'm generally not a fan of bloating pots pre in this game b/c of this kind of volatility.

Ultimately, after having played this hand otherwise, having thought about the spot a decent amount, and reading through this thread, I think calling otf and proceeding with caution is by far the best approach.

As it happened,

I'm going back and forth on this one. Raising a "reasonable" turn card here sounds great, but how many "reasonable" turn cards are there? You're basically talking an offsuit J, T, 9 or obviously a Q or 3, but that's only 13 cards.

On the other hand, I looked at some simulations, and we are basically neutral EV against a very undefined set of hands on this flop. And if we get hands with marginal equity to fold by raising, much of that equity may be on the low side and may go to some other player and not us.

When it comes down to it, I'm not sure it matters that much what we do on the flop as long as whatever action we take does not result in us folding out our equity on later streets.

These all seem like arguments about how how the hand will -feel- better if you don't raise, not how the hand will make you more money if you don't raise.

Yes, if you end up playing the hand four- or five-ways for four bets preflop, you will end up being more pot committed than if you play it for two bets. But the same can be said about all of your opponents. This demands that everyone in the hand make adjustments postflop, and if you are a better player, you should be able to adjust better than your opponents.

If anything, this should make you more comfortable playing aggressively postflop because your bets will be smaller relative to what you can win, and your opponents will be making even greater mistakes by folding to aggression. And in many cases, knowing you are showdown bound makes the hand easier to play. If you are put in the position of having to call a river bet with a very marginal hand, you'd rather be getting 20-to-1 than 15-to-1.

And you really shouldn't care at all about increasing variance on individual hands in a cash game.