[PokrLikeItsProse]

The theory is the easy part. The practical is the hard part.

If hero can't automatically fold queens up, I don't think that hero can automatically call with queens up without being exploitable, either. I also suspect that the villain can't automatically raise aces up here without being exploitable, too, although it may require a tough hero to recognize and figure out how to exploit the villain's play. Am I wrong?

It seems like your assumption for the villain is that hero will always bet the river with that board? Is that a safe assumption? Is that automatic play right for the hero, regardless of his actual hole cards? If the villain thinks that hero won't always bet the river, is that enough to make value raising aces up/kings up/trips a mistake?

I don't think that the times that the hero is starting with a three-straight down really makes the villain raising with aces up that much better. If hero started with a three straight, he has one pair, drawing to two pair and possibly a gutshot on the river. Keep in mind that if hero started with three straight cards, he has a small straight draw that wasn't completely live and he called after bricking fourth street against a player with two suited cards who showed some strength on third street. Which possible straight draws do you have hero playing that way? If that gives the hero enough callable hands to shift a raise into the +EV column, then it sounds like a pretty thin value raise.

One thing that I am thinking about is the possibility of going for a check-raise on the river here. Am I the only one who even contemplated the idea, even if it was immediately dismissed? I can think of at least one betting profile where going for a check-raise seems at least close enough that I should really do the rigorous math.

To give you an idea of where I am coming from, I am used to playing (at lower stakes than this) against passive but not always clueless players, some of whom won't raise me on the river unless they can beat a queen-high flush because I have a tight image that allows me to steal a decent number of medium-sized pots. Three-betting a flush when I have a paired board ends up being wrong against some of these players. Because of this, I think that a leak in my game is not going for a check-raise or a bluff-raise on the end against aggressive players, so I've taught myself to think about all of my possible options unless I've done some rigorous math for that particular situation. While I've soaked up many books and the conventional wisdom, I'm still inclined to deconstruct particular plays and examine the assumptions that people are making.