[PokerBob]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Is a solid player paying off a turn 3bet and a river bet with AQ here?

[/ QUOTE ]

I imagine that it would be much easier for a loose player to alter his preflop game, and get tricky postflop then it would be for him to start laying down TPTK. After all, you aren't going to find any books saying you should laydown AQ to a turn 3-bet, but they all say to fold 66 to a UTG raise.

In my mind, it's pretty clear that you can 3-bet aces here and not be exploited (in a game theory sense... if you don't 3-bet aces, what is your 3-bet range?). Just calling them seems to be an attempt to take advantage of this particular opponent. I don't see the part of the player description that lets us do this though... I read the villain description as "villain probably can't make big laydowns, he likely is trying to play well preflop, and I'm not sure how tricky he's playing at the moment". Seems like the "standard" play of 3-betting is the way to go.

It seems like you are saying you wouldn't 3-bet a tough player though... so what hand do you 3-bet a solid player with here? What is your range when you bet the turn? What hands do you fold? I know this is a lot to ask, but I think you'll find that this kind of analysis will prove that just calling aces by default will make it very hard to play our range.

my 2 cents.
eric

[/ QUOTE ]

I wouldn't 3bet anyone other than a complete idiot here.

3betting a tough player here is only going to get him to (a) fold nothing or a worse hand or (b) allow him to put you in an awful spot by 4betting with a worse hand, knowing that you likely do not have a 9 and thus cannot continue unless you have Qs full or all the 9s.

The only way 3betting can be correct here is if (a) we know this guy has exactly AQ and (b) he is bad enough to pay off with it. IMO, we aren't sure what this guy is up to, so we gotta just call down.