Turned nuts faces board-pairing river with around 40% pot behind...

"pear" / "tarp" / "moran" is just some "stoopid" thing I do that makes me lol. I easily amuse myself.

Even though we'd prefer folds from hands like AA on the flop, we're also cool getting in all the money versus them as well (as we're slightly ahead equity-wise with huge dead money). Add in some small FE against hands like this and we're doing extremely well. Overall, I just have to believe this is better than passively calling (although admittedly this may be extremely difficult to prove mathematically, but it certainly is my hunch in this case). I mean, ~half the time we take down a huge $200 uncontested / UI with T high (while the ~other half of the time is always going to be somewhat +EV due to our huge equity and guaranteeing we realize it); that EV will be difficult to beat using a different line, imo.

FWIW, unlike others I don't think we have to take an aggressive route in every single spot (this should be obvious regarding my quite passive preflop play in a lot of spots). And there's lots of spots where passive play outweighs aggressive play (such as inducing bluffs / overvalue especially when it is unlikely our opponent has anything, pot controlling mediocre showdownable hands, etc.). I don't at all mind your "let hands develop" line of thinking, and I might even prefer than line here had the pot been limped (due to the money currently in the pot meaning relatively little versus the stacks behind). But there are spots where aggro play is better, and I think the flop in this particular case is one of them.

GimoG

I agree with this. My turn and river aggression is thru the roof compared to my 2010 play, and my flop aggression is lower than 2010. Sounds like youre making solid improvements imo.

This hand has been on my mind a lot since I played it, and especially since I posted it. As always, I want to be clear that I'm open to being persuaded to an alternative point of view.

When I think about x/r'ing the flop, I think about what hands continue, and what hands fold:

2P+ - since there's no straight or flush possible on the flop, my value range is pretty capped at 55, 88, JJ, and maybe occasionally J8. If V has JJ/88, obviously he's happy to get stacks in with me. Doubtful he's got 55 or J8, and unless he knows / thinks I'm half a maniac, I probably don't have many, if any 2P combos in my range. My range on this flop is going to be heavily weighted towards draws. So all his 2P and sets are probably going to 3B-jam over our x/r.

Over-pairs - if I had a read that he'd fold over-pairs, that would be something. Most low-stakes recs aren't folding QQ+ to a flop x/r on a board this wet. I think QQ+ is going to get 3B-jammed a lot, but rarely fold. When he doesn't jam, he's likely planning to call at least one more street, and at this stack depth, that's probably all we've got left, because I'll be jamming most turns. If he realizes that, he might just decide to jam flop with all his over-pairs.

Un-paired over-cards - with two clubs on board, he'll probably continue with AcKc, AcQc, and KcQc. He might continue with every combo of AKo/AQo with the Ac, and a lot of AKo combos with the Kc. Assuming he believes we somehow have a strong enough hand to x/r on this board, and will fold anything, the combos he's folding are mostly going to be over-cards with no clubs.

Okay, I guess it's a win if he folds and we just take down the pot, but two-thirds of those combos he's folding have a Q in them, and can potentially pay us off if a Q comes on the turn or river. Even if a Q doesn't come, he's likely to fold to further aggression on a later street.

So, if we agree on the above, when we check-raise flop, we're really not folding out very much of his range, and the part of his range that does fold is just the weakest part. And we actually don't mind if he calls with 2/3 of that range. Everything else in his continue range is very likely to jam, and / or has a ton of equity against our hand.

The bottom line is that we're probably not winning the pot on the flop nearly as often as you and others here seem to think. We're actually just bloating the pot and committing ourselves to getting stacks in before we make our hand, with just T-high.

There's almost no size we can take with a flop x/r that will avoid this, at these starting stack depths. If we started out deeper, it would be harder for him to play against a flop check-raise. He'd be less likely to 3B with his over-pairs or continue with his over-cards. We could play a multi-street game with enough FE to jam the turn.