On a train and writing hand from memory, but its not that detailed.

6max, eff stacks a little over 100bb villain unknown

Hero is in SB with A: 8:

Folds to Hero who raises to 3BB, BB flats.

Flop Q 3: 2:

Hero b/f or x/f or x/c?

In this instance I x/f but it highlighted to me that im very unsure about my BvB play. I checked because I had more SDV than a lot of other junk but what does it matter if I'm x/fing? If I'm betting there aren't a great number of cards I want to barrel on. If I'm calling because my Ax is often the best hand, am I really calling any more than one barrel unimproved?

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betting flop, range of BB is very wide and we can discount a lot of strong Qx

I feel this way in the blinds all the time. That being said I think you can go ahead and Cbet this board. The board is dry but better for your range overall. It sucks that you only really get to barrel an A on the turn but you need to have some hands that you bet here and check the turn so I think it's fine.

c/f is the best play in a vacuum, I think. We have some sdv as you mentioned.

Think betting on dry flop textures is ok since ranges are wide so wide.

cbetting if u hold the spade since all the BDdraws etc...

I think most competent players would float you on this flop if you cbet and then you're in an awkward spot on the turn. I either check/call flop but fold to a turn bet or check/fold the flop. It depends on how aggressive I think my opponent will be on later streets.

I typically range bet really small on these type of textures, although c/f'ing some hands like this seems like an option too.

If you're checking, this is a hand I would check/call. Range bet on Q32 seems good though.

edit: and check/fold to a turn bet unimproved

x/f for me... you're essentially drawing to one of 3 aces and have no BD potential whatsoever. He should you float you pretty often and you're going to be x/f turn a huge portion of the time and even when you hit your A in these types of spots you can be beat and might have to X/F river. IP I'd float it but OOP I would imagine folding is highest EV line here. Can't win every hand.

You seem to be making the assumption that we're behind every hand in villain's betting range.

Considering how rare it is that a worse hand will try to get us to fold the river in such a scenario, I don't think that's much of an issue.

our showdown value at this point Ian almost irrelevant, it's about the playability of the hand. Let's say the 93% chance (or whatever it is) materialises and we miss our ace, are we calling another barrel? And again on the river?

Huh? i said that even if we hit we can still be beat. There just aren't many ways to make this hand profitable after that flop unfortunately.

I don't understand how SDV could possibly be irrelevant at this point. I don't disagree that its playability is not good, but that alone is not the only factor to consider.

It depends.

I don't see why there's an issue with check/calling one street only to check/fold the next. You have to check/fold a certain portion of your range on every street.

Because we are nowhere near a showdown. If we could guarantee x/x for three street then great but it's never going to happen. It's rarely going to happen for two streets and if it does villain will hold a weak pp or random 3 or something.

And yes I realise you can't x/f every non pair but our hand has almost n potential to make a strong hand. AK yes float, Ac4c float, JT with 1 spade float...but with A8o you're essentially drawing very thinly to top pair bad kicker, even one of those outs are tainted as it brings the flush in

Being less important isn't the same thing as being irrelevant. SDV is less important the further away you are from showdown, but it's never entirely irrelevant.

I expect players to check behind OTT often unimproved with air. Villain's flop range is going to contain so much air on this kind of texture.

I get what you're saying about choosing hands that realize equity better, but do you not think it's a problem that villain might be able to profitably bet any two cards when checked to?

Also, check/calling the flop with JT would be terrible, it'd be a cbet.

Idk what to tell you mate, you've said a few things here that I realised were pretty big leaks in my game about three months into playing online poker so I'm not sure what I can reqlly say to get through to you. GL

Make it so that's not the case. Check/call strong hands. Check/raise draws and monsters to discourage bets vs missed c-bets. Adjust your opening range. All reasonable solutions to your issue there.

Even though the Q is a "big" card I don't actually think it's as good for us as people think. You expect people to flat tons of their Qx suited over 3-bet bluffing it and they likely flat all the QJo-Q8o if not more. And then there's all their middle pairs and pockets that call twice, plus they have all the 56o/46s kind of hands that own you by floating this flop when you bet a hand that does so poorly on turn and river. It really doesn't matter very much that villain can't have AQ if he still has a ton of hands he isn't folding and you have so few good turns.

My suspicion is that we should check this flop a lot more than a Kxx or Qxx.

In practice maybe just stab everything in these spots expecting that people play fairly fit or fold and will auto-bet when checked to. I prefer just giving up with what is now total trash though.

I probably would've said the same thing a few months into playing online myself. Some things that looked like leaks to me when I started turned out not to be, and vice-versa.

All I'm trying to do is to get you to argue your point. I don't necessarily think that I'm right or anything (all imo). I don't think that anything you're saying is invalid either.

Those are all fine options, but wouldn't they all be adjustments? This hand is against an unknown that we have yet to adjust to. Unless you have decent pop reads to go on, to me this seems like a math problem of defending at least a certain % of your checking range. Am I wrong in thinking that has relevance here?

If you're worried about being exploited by an unknown, it should be your default strategy, not an adjustment.

That's all I was saying. We're supposed to defend x so not any two cards can be profitable. How can we defend x? We find out through math and adjust our pre ranges and/or split up our postflop ranges to not be exploitable. There's a lot more to what's going on in this scenario but that refutes (answers?) the "any two cards" thought.

That makes a lot of sense

bb is super weak, no matter what you do you will be +EV. Its pretty complicated to play here for bb, betting will probably be best at 10nlz since people aren't aware how aggressive they have to be in these spots.