Villain is a solid winner in both the Bellagio 40 and 80 and IMO one of the mid stakes LHE regs. We have some history and I'm pretty sure he (correctly) thinks he has an edge against me BVB. My only notable observation of his BVB play is that he 3-bets the BB at a pretty high well balanced frequency.

I open SB with 8c7c, he calls BB.

Flop: AcAd5s

I bet, he calls.

Turn: Jc

I bet, he calls. At game speed I think I overestimated my fold equity with a naked FD, as in hindsight, I don't think he's calling that flop very often without the intention of seeing a showdown on most runouts.

River: 9h

I bet, he raises.

Normally I do the standard thing and give up, but while re-evaluating the action I realized he 3-bets a lot of his aces preflop, and most likely calls any 5, 9, and K river. This would leave him polarized, often holding a weak ace (he'd 3-bet his better aces pre) or is bluffing a busted draw (QT, KT, any wheel draw). He is good enough to raise for thin value with something like JT, but think he'd more likely have done that one the turn.

All things considered, is a 3-bet re-bluff remotely profitable?

Let's suppose that villain is vulnerable to river bluff 3bets. Let's also suppose that he will correct this imbalance if he catches us bluff 3betting.

I think we should save this play for a better spot since our chances of getting caught are unusually high. Villain can just have tons of Ax that never folds, and we have so much Ax that I don't see why he would value raise worse than Ax. And only some old school 1995 type is going to fold Ax to a 3bet here.

In better spots, villain might fold something stupidly high like 50+%... some aggressive players just raise any river air heads up until it stops working. But a paired ace is just the most ass possible situation to go for it imo.

fold and it not even close to whatever theorists think

What about the fact that he frequently bets 3 aces preflop though? It's that observation that made me even consider this, because he has a lot less Ax then it would seem. I'd say he 3bets A9+, A4s+, and thats a conservative range. He very well might have 3bet any suited Ax from the BB.

Also, say hypothetically he does fold his weaker Ax? He doesn't -which is why I didn't attempt it and just folded - but say he does? If that were the case, would it then be a good spot for this?

You have this guy pretty narrowly defined to "won't raise worse than Ax" and "won't fold bad Ax". Think those are both bad oversimplifications.

Heh <waves>, I think we should probably way over 3 bet bluff here, hero probably doesn't check any Ax on the turn even though he should, and I doubt villain found the call twice with weak Ax. Funny thing about assumptions I guess. In theory this hand was a river check fold but now that we got here its not a bad combo to 3 bet.

Hypothetically, of course! He's folding top of his range, so yeah its gonna work a lot. Btw Pio never folds Ax on the river here and your hand is still an ok 3 bet bluff, villain folds 20% of his range to the 3 bet despite getting 10:1 (take that MDF!). You were supposed to check fold river though, clubs are bad

I think you are living in theory world and that a very bad approach. also you are using solver incorrectly.

OP described villain as one of the best mid stakes LHE regs in his opinion. Raising worse than Ax on the river for value is completely idiotic. Folding Ax to a 3bet on the river is also completely idiotic. These are not "bad oversimplifications" given that we are dealing with one of the best mid stakes LHE regs. I'm sorry that you are naive enough to believe people when they lie to you about what they mucked on the river.

I can't imagine theorists proposing a 3 bet bluff with 8 high when traditional theory says use the best hands you would otherwise fold to bluff-raise rivers with. Not to mention, as DD pointed out, the clubs in your own hand reduce the chances of blowing him off a higher busted club draw. This is described as a good opponent so surely we would not expand a bluffing range that wide as an exploit.

I'm pretty sure the solution here is check raise the turn and avoid the river dilemma altogether.

If I'm bb in this spot, I can see delaying my raise until river if I have J8 on turn. If sb is barreling turn, he prob thinks he still has a range advantage and is barreling too much. Why not pick up an extra bet from the significant part of his range that will find itself upstream without a paddle on the river and bet because it has no showdown value? Plus, you might get a crying call from thin value hands worse than your own that would've folded to a turn raise. And you might discourage thin 3 bets versus on turn because now you can't have a draw or a fsdr to punish.

I disagree that game theory is dead just because unexploitable solutions are discoverable. No one can memorize a single game tree vs an optimal opponent let alone the diverse trees that exist among various humans opponents. Game theory is an effective mechanism to provide your ranges with balance and adjust them to exploit the mistakes of others. It can also be utilized to inform all decisions at the table, not just the parts of the game tree you have studied and can summon to memory mid-hand.

DD are you saying villain should be folding A2 to a double barrel here in a blind battle?

I think he’s saying that most people would raise with an ace at some point

The river seems like the best place to raise an ace here.

Agreed

I prefer raising flop to any other street as the BB. I feel like you get looked up really light here, and I also think that many decent-to-good midstakes players will check the turn with their weaker showdown-able hands after you peel the flop and never let you get a raise in. If you raise flop and get 3bet, I think calling turn and raising river is ideal with strong Ax hands.

(Also, I don't love the river 3bet but also don't think it's truly horrible and I'm struggling to think of a better hand to 3bet if we think we should have 3bet bluffs here.)

Are you considering not having any river 3bets here? I find that very limiting. Obviously we're 3betting nuts and near nuts (AA, AK, JJ) so is there any kind of argument for not balancing them?

I absolutely do check some Ax on the turn, and villain knows this.

I'm not very sure about guidelines - can I mention who villain is? It's likely a lot of you know him.

It seems to me that we should be targeting a spot where the BB can have a wide range of missed draws. In this situation the BB might be polarized but his hands in the strong part of his range are probably never folding to the 3 bet. I'd like to think he can fold some strongish hands even though my main target would be his missed draws. It would be better if we unblock any of those missed draws. I also would like to think the BB thinks I have a bet/fold range to be bluff raising. This seems like a bad board for him to choose.

I do like a turn CR in this hand.

As played, check folding is probably wise on the river.