My weak blind defense with ATs

[detruncate]

[ QUOTE ]
God forbid someone ask a question? JHC. Clearly your line is 100% foolproof and the only one that's perfect.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd suggest that you're going to get a lot more out of your time here if you grow a thicker skin. The post that provoked this reply was responding in kind to your previous posts, and neither of you seemed to be doing anything more than arguing your respective positions. Whatever. Just a friendly bit of advice.

A flop bet gets us into trouble. The problem is, his pf action would seem to indicate that he he's going to be willing to spend some bets post flop. If it's a pure steal, he knows he has to fire on the flop and often on the turn (at least) after the cap. This means he'll usually be planning to strongly represent a hand post flop.

If he's on a steal, you're going to get raised a lot. Not terrible in itself, but where do you go from there? Do we take it to 3 bets and hope he backs down? He's going to raise a very high percentage of the hands he'd cap pf with, so we pretty much have to either 3-bet or lead the turn.

Also remember that we're OOP, so we're committed to firing multiple shells if we seize the initiative on the flop. Any check by us is going to lead to an insta-bet unless we've been going crazy with c/r's or something -- we forfeit all our fold equity, and shouldn't check unless we plan to fold. We also tend to tie him to the pot if it goes 3 bets on the flop.

I don't mind firing if I think I have the best hand or that I can push him off a better one... I just don't think a flop lead is the way to go. If we're prepared to put in 3 bets on the flop, it's much better to take the cap out of the equation and c/r instead. We don't really mind if we whiff, and checking gives us flexibility. We can decide to c/r the flop. We might opt instead to see how we like the turn before making a move. We can take a passive line if we think he's flat-out bluffing and want to encourage him to keep doing so (we'd probably prefer that he fold the turn, but it's close enough that we might take the chance). We also might call/fold depending on our read.

There are a lot of cards that improve our hand, so I'm not unhappy getting to the turn inexpensively and taking it from there. I check and see what happens. My response to a bet would be player dependent.

Once he checks through, I lead the turn. If he raises, we can easily fold -- he might be taking a shot with nothing, but more often we're up against at least strong overs that he's planning to check behind UI on the river. With a stronger ace I might call a raise vs a known aggressive opponent with the intention of seeing a showdown... but we don't beat anything here except a pure bluff, which probably has at least 6 outs against us even if we're ahead, whereas we might well be drawing slim or dead. Calling a turn raise also commits us to calling a river bet, as we have to conclude that the combined chances of being ahead + staying ahead are sufficient to compensate for our apparent equity deficit re. winning via improvement -- we can't know which cards are scary for us in that case, so we have to call the river no matter what drops.

If he calls our turn bet in this hand, I probably fire again on the river... though somewhat reluctantly. It's true that we don't have to take down the pot very often vs a better hand for it to be a profitable move, but his call would seem to indicate that he's going to see a showdown a significant % of the time (his implied odds might just be good enough to peel with 2 overs vs a pair if he thinks he can get 2 bets out of us, but factor in reverse domination and the chance he's drawing dead and it's never going to be better than close to neutral EV unless there's a reasonable prospect of winning UI). It doesn't seem likely that he has a pair unless he's slowplaying, which is probably the least likely scenario given your pf 3-bet + the fact that Villain was presented as seemingly fairly reasonable.

So... we conclude that his flop check would seem to indicate weak/tight tendencies. It's difficult to know whether they will manifest themselves in the failure to bet strong overs for value/bluff equity even though he plans to show down or a willingness to fold to aggression UI, but I none the less think bet/folding the river is the best play -- we're unlikely to be raised when behind unless he's got a monster, and he's going to find it hard to call down big aces vs a pf 3-bet + multiple street aggression + a scary board if he's anywhere close to weak/tight.