The Now Infamous A-A versus Monotone Flop

[Festus22]

Lest anyone forget:

1. Black A-A LMP. UTG open raises, MP calls, you 3-bet, button calls 3 cold, SB caps, BB and all call.

Flop [Q /images/graemlins/diamond.gif 8 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif 4 /images/graemlins/diamond.gif ]. SB bets, all call to you. Action?

And this is from majorkong's "Charging the Flush Draws" post:

"Thus, when you are playing against a flush draw, he is your companion to the river. If it gets there, he wins. If it doesn't, you win. There is nothing you can do to get him out, so don't worry about him. Your job is to protect your hand from the people with bottom pair, gutshots, backdoor draws, etc. whom you can force out."

So how do we accomplish this goal given the mega-pot we have going in the hand in question? Raise the flop and hope SB 3-bets thus forcing the callers to call more 2 SB's cold? We already have a 14 BB pot by the time the original flop bet is to me. Might work but probably won't. Could my flop raise get it checked to me if a blank hits the turn? Maybe and then what? I bet and get 5 callers? ICK!

So I call the flop and the turn is a blank. SB bets out (no reason to think he won't) and the same cast of characters call again (assuming someone doesn't catch their card and raise). Now I raise. What happens? Now they have a gadzillion to one to call one more. My only hope it the SB 3-bets and confronts them with a call of 2 more BB's cold. THAT might spook a few into folding but I'm not doing backflips at this point either when someone would 3-bet that board on the turn. I guess this is the best of this situation but it still sucks. Good grief, should I just be calling this beast down assuming the 4th diamond doesn't appear?

Now what if the flop was J-10-9 rainbow. This seems like all but the same situation.

To be honest, this is great stuff - kind of the next level of this game and something I consider somewhat advanced. I think LostWages asked the question - what kind of situations dictate just calling with overpairs or TPTK on the flop?

And all this on the lowly microlimit forum!

[Gravy (Gravy Smoothie)]

If the original flop bettor were immediately to your right, then you raise the flop to try and knock out single crappy diamonds. In this situation, however, raising the flop does nothing but increase your variance. I think the right move with this hand is to wait for the turn. It sure looks like there's some single-diamond-holders out there calling SB's bets. SB could have AA, KK, QQ (which would be bad), or perhaps AK with the Ace of trump. By waiting till the turn, it's now 4:1 against the four-flush on the river. If you have the best hand now, you are likely to have the best hand on the river, and you should play it as such.