Thanks very much for the detailed response :). I think I've been getting into a few more of these spots with near the bottom of my range than usual and it's subtly tilting me a bit about them. I'm pretty sure I play weak in a lot of other spots and it leads to me second-guessing myself when I need to make a standard laydown. Interesting that you don't raise flop, I think that's like, half of what I hated about this spot, that I thought I would have raised flop with most of the really strong hands I could have here. What's your reasoning for not having raised all those strong hands on this board? Do we just do better in position and struggle to construct a good raising range against 16 AQ combos? Or does raising mean we have to call down too light?

It's really interesting looking at how well our range calls down on this board to me. Playing around with it in CREV even if we call EVERY pocket pair <99 vs the 3bet we can fold every single one and the rest of our hands hit so well that we aren't giving him a +EV bluff with ATC. OTT we can fold every hand which isn't >2P or a flush draw and half of our pair+OESDs, then OTR we only have to call sets+.

On the other hand if we raise just 6 combos of AQ OTF we call way more of our pair+OESDs OTT and have to call down to KT OTR. This seems like a really really good bluff spot against me because I think I will (or would have when I was playing the hand) raise some nutted hands OTF, then probably call too much OTT with all the pair+OESDs, and then fold KJ to the jam.

If we don't raise any AQ OTF his AQ combos only make ~10bbs valuebetting the river.

I think my favorite stat from analyzing this hand is that if he has KKK and we call down to make 43o indifferent to bluffing we end up having a straight or better 47% of the time on the river before we've even called and 75% of the time we call. lol. Those blockers are preeeeetty bad for him here.

Oh, what about playing QcQx as a bluff here for the BB? I think if both players are doing what you're saying OTF it's a really good hand to throw in our bluffing range for the AQ blockers and OESD. If villain is calling down sensible frequencies so much of his calling range wants to be AQ on the river that it should show a very large profit. I get BBB with QcQx being worth 6bbs on the actual runout, 7bbs on non-flush bricks, and 20bbs on an ace turn (on an ace turn our calling range should be straights, fds, sets, and AK to be calling enough, but we're only calling a straight+ on the river and folding some straights if the board pairs or the flush hits).

I'm guessing it doesn't do as well as that as a check unless it's planning to x/r.

Since he hit this board so hard and we got a lot of bluffcatcher/weaker hands like AJ,QJ,KQ etc I prefer to don't raise at all. I just think it's easier to stay protected and don't leak on different run outs this way and overfold. It's easier to be balanced if you limit your ammounts of plays. With that said I don't think raising is bad as long as you know you're range and stay balanced etc. Some regs rly barell too much or too little as well, so I like getting the opportunity to be tricky on later streets and rep a wider range.. May not be very good, but at least I'm having fun :)

Edit : not sure if i understood your last comment. But if i were hero and had QQ i would check call twice with the Qc always and jam river if checked to (assuming we got some kind of fe)