[chesspain]

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Oh man, I don't like checking this flop. You have two overcards and an inside straight draw and you just gave a free card to a diamonds hand.

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I think checking is fine. You seem to be worried about giving a free card to a diamond draw, yet at the moment hero's hand is in need of a free card as well, since there are very few reasonable hands with which MP2 could have three-bet PF which hero is not behind. However, it is possible that MP2 is waiting until the turn to raise, in order to try to reduce the pot odds for both hero and BB.

Once the turn brings the ace, and MP2 raises, it would seem pretty clear that he has AK, because he would likely only have called with AQ.

Although I can't imagine that Hero's hand is good, he lucked out not having to make the crying call after MP2 lost his nerve on the river, sinced he really should have known that there was little chance that the second eight would have helped Hero.
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I was amazed to read at the bottom that Hero's hand was good, since "tight-aggressive" players do not three-bet EP raisers with crap like AJo. Without being results oriented, I think Hero played this hand fine, since it will be a fairly rare occurance that AQo would be ahead on this flop against a pre-flop reraiser.