Getting raised here sucks, we have a good, but not nut draw, a solid but not great made hand and we rarely get called down by worse, so I like x/calling here.

Villain has called a 3bet pref flop. So I would be putting him on:
- top pairs: KKxx, AAxx - assuming he did not 4bet on flop to not reveal his hand
- big pair hands: JJxx, QQxx, etc.
- double paired hands: JJTT, 8866, etc
- suited/double suited connected cards
- some random semi-weak hand because he in on the BTN and wanted to steal the blinds.

If you bet and he has KKxx, AAxx (unlikely) or 2pair (AKxx, A2xx) he will probably raise. If he has a draw (flush or straight) he will probably call or semi-bluff check raise. If he has a weak hand he will just fold.

Unless you feel comfortable getting check raised here and you know villain might semi-bluff here a lot of the time, I would just check - call a bet.

I like betting smallish (40-45%). We have huge range advantage (much more AA, KK, AK, than wide opening BU) and we have some bluffs/semibluffs we would like to bet small aswell.
And it works quite well for our actual hand too. We shouldnt get raised much at all (villain doesnt have many AA-combos and even with KK he will very often just call). If it happens, it obv sucks and we probably have to fold, but we shouldn`t be worried too much about a thing, that happens very seldomly.
Also betting smallish will keep in dominated flushdraws.

On the other hand, checking looks reasonable play aswell, cause we don`t have to protect against anything (we have 2nd nut fd and we block str8-draws with QQ), it strengthens our checking range and may induce a bet from opponent hand, that has very little equity.

Hey Bdon22,

I like a c-bet. If we get check-raised, call and see a turn. We can call any Spade, Ace, 3, Queen, Jack and 10. With the Jack and 10, we can decide how we want to bluff.

On the turn: we can decide to check/call a spade if he bets pretending to represent that we have a set of aces only. If the river blanks, he may bluff not that he has many but more importantly he will value bet worse and we can check/call. If he didn't raise the flop or turn. I'd think about check-raising the river as well. Most of his Ace high flushes will check-raise the flop or turn. I'd also do this if I had a non showdown hand and we were at the river as a bluff to win the pot.

Since we have the queen high flush, I'd continue betting because we will have smaller flushes like Jack high or 10987 run downs with flushes that we can check/call with and also sets. We want some kind of betting range but also value for our actual queen high flush holding.

-You could also choose to bet small on spade turns to force him to call and set a trap for the river. IF the board blanks off, we can bet for value. If the board pairs, we can decide if we want to bluff. Since we can still represent Aces full.

It will be worth a c-bet to make all his hands with equity against ours to immediately fold. Also we get in a bet vs smaller flushes. Yes he could have the nut flush, but we will get raised at some point and realize we can fold.