anyone cbetting that much is cbetting totally merged and I want to xr and make is life hell with his two pair or pair+gutter hands that are going to be able to have good visibility IP on turns and rivers.

if we get it in we should have plenty of equity, and by raising we can actually check to induce several of our outs on the turn since we'll expect villain often trying to bluff these.

I think a villain that is cbetting a merged range is going to correctly bet for value on the turn and river if we check call.

I prefer to 3bet on the pre and just call on the flop with overpair + nut FD + gutshot at OOP in the high SPR.

3 betting pre is standard vs one opponent even when his pfr is 17%. As played, this is clear c/c to me since this board hits utg's range hard.(esp. given that we block AA)

We are too deep to c/r as well. 

So if we're calling this hand, do we have a xr bluff range on the flop?  And if we don't have a xr bluff range how can we have a xr value range?  Should we not have a xr range on this board?

Preflop: Calling is fine/standard, we don't need to 3b all AA against a tight UTG opener.

So if we're calling this hand, do we have a xr bluff range on the flop?  And if we don't have a xr bluff range how can we have a xr value range?  Should we not have a xr range on this board?

Good question.  The answer is: it depends.

To start with, I think we can x/r bluff with some blockers, like 99 or QQ.  Then we can add in some semi-bluffs like AKQ5 depending on opponent.  Sometimes you can even turn AJ + no redraw into a bluff (top set blocker, etc.) 

Now, as for the no-equity no-blocker bluff, we usually don't do pull it off on this board because the c-betting range on these wet/heavy flops tend to be stronger and our x/r bluff won't work as often as we would like.  However, given that this villain was c-betting close to 100% on flop and folding quite a bit to x/r, we might as well go ahead and x/r bluff even with total air.  This is a purely exploitative play, but if the math dictates that we make money by doing this, we should do it with a non-zero frequency.

That said, hero's actual hand certainly isn't a pure bluff; if we x/r with this hand, it fits somewhere between a very strong semi-bluff to a weak value bet/protection raise.  Fwiw, against $fi15 range (he opens 17% UTG and c-bets ~90%, so this should be a fair assumption to make), we have a very clear equity advantage of 67%.  However, that does not tell us the whole story.  When facing this decision, we usually have to worry about three more things, at least: 

a) What are the hands that he bet/folds on flop?  How much equity do they have against our hand?

b) If he 3bets on flop, are we happy to fold or continue?

c) If we x/r and he calls, are we comfortable playing on many turns?

If he is betting with dry AA/KK, he is drawing very slim anyway and we don't mind giving him a "cheap" turn card.  If he has AKJ5 type of hand (TPTK + gutter + maybe bdf) we make him fold some equity, but that's not much.  You might think we can fold out his 2p hands, but if you think about a tight 17% UTG opening range, you will notice that most 2p's on this flop have redraw(s) to go with, and won't fold to our flop x/r.  

On the other hand, he might bet/call with some sort of marginal draws (Jx + FD for example) and all sets + some 2p's, against which we either have good implied odds or some fold equity on later streets.  Interestingly enough, AAQ7dd is not a terrible hand to run a multiple street (semi-) bluff with.  We block Q9 and 97 and no Jx, so his continuing range will be a bit more weighted towards Jx + draw than Q9/97 as well as 2p+, and some of these will fold on turn/river.  All our outs are to the nuts, and even A can improve our equity significantly (if we were behind on flop, that is).  And more importantly, I don't think we will get raised on later streets very often if villain just flatted our flop raise, except for those times that he was slowplaying dry Q9 on flop and is now jamming on a blank turn.  So in a sense, once he flats our flop x/r, we don't have to worry too much about getting blown off our equity later on.  

And of course, we are never doing terrible against his flop 3b range either; even against a range of JT+ (=JT, sets, straights) we have ~45% equity, and getting it in is never a huge mistake.  In practice, villain can overplay some of the weaker draws that we would have crushed.

Well, we have more or less answered to the above questions.  Cliff is:

- Some of the hands that he bet/folds don't have much equity against our hand, but he might continue with some dominated draw stuff.  We want to keep both in the pot, but want to charge the latter (the former too, but he will just b/f those hands I guess).

- If he 3bets on flop, we are doing okay and wouldn't mind getting it in.

- If we x/r and he just flats, we can continue on many turns because we have lot of nut outs and we don't expect him to raise on turn very often.

That said, raising doesn't seem a bad play at all.  However, this brings us back to a very important question that we haven't considered yet:

Q. If we just flat on flop, how likely is he to continue barreling on turn?

This is gonna be a long(er) analysis so I won't bother doing it for now, but long story short, the higher his turn barrel % is, the better our flop x/c becomes.  

I have a meeting at school, so I'll sign out for now and leave this to others.  Hope this helped.

- midori

I'd c-c and cr straight+fd,straight+set for value and weaker nut draws or blockers as bluff.