QQ in a minefield

Pre seems standard.

Flop, our read is that V1 is too loose and chases too much. If I thought that extended to finding some of the thinner x/r opportunities I might just gii here. We are only crushed by AA/KK and sets. His sizing feels super small for those hands. We're calling $45 into a $235 pot? You said he is a reg so I'd assume he recognizes he is giving great odds. I think a super strong hand wants to make flushes pay more. So my instincts make me think his range has more TT/JJ, A5hh, maybe some middle scs like 65 type hands, and he is thinking that he wants to build a pot so that if he hits, he can go big or he recognizes that he is going thin for value (perhaps Ah9x?). It's a confusing size, but I think we can discount the risk of being crushed. That means we either have him crushed if we're against JJ/TT, or we are basically flipping against 56hh or Axhh.

For that reason, I'd jam expecting that sometimes he will fold lower FDs maybe some straightening type cards that have a bit of equity against us, occasionally we are called by JJ/TT that won't be able to get away (especially when V2 calls which coming from the future, I think V2 calls) and occasionally we get called by both Vs and both are chasing the FD and are blocking each others outs and when V shows up with Axh we're flipping.

AP, I think we have to go into pot control now. V1 could have a lot of Kxhh in his range and now he is more likely to fold JJ/TT/A9 type of hands because you have a ton of Kx in your range. If it checks through and river bricks, maybe we can go for thin value or bluffcatch. If V2 jams the turn, we can assess based on V1's reaction. My gut is that if a lot of money goes in after this turn, we lose a lot. If they have weaker hands they aren't likely to call and our best path to more value is to bluffcatch river. And maybe on a Kc river, we can value bet targeting JJ.

Results: I really had no clue how to approach this turned K, although my read was that V1 had already given up. Consequently, I bet $50, since I wanted to leave myself the ability to fold if V1 was trapping and then went for another checkraise.

V2 actually raised AI for his last $40, and V1 quickly mucked. Although I assumed I was beaten, I obviously couldn't fold getting 11:1.

I called, the river was a brick, V2 showed Kc5c, and MHING.

Easy to say this after seeing the reveal, but I think a flop 3B folds out V2, and we don't mind the turn K as much if V1 calls. If V1 jams, we probably just have to call off the rest.

It's hard for V1 to have 55, 33, or 53 when he opens UTG, and I'd think he's likely to 4B pre with AA/KK, at least some of the time. If he has 99, and took this small x/r sizing with top set, it's just a cooler.

V2 should fold OTF if hero is 3-betting it, but it's $1/$3, he started with under 70bb and cold-called a 3! with K5s and after calling the initial flop raise, has committed about 30% of his stack. He didn't do all that to fold his FD.

So... because we don't think making the best play will work, we shouldn't try it?

Cbet larger. What is it with these small cbets. Solvers sometimes like them, but they usually don't make sense at low stakes live.

3! shove the flop. You should only be losing to a set or a slow played big pair.

Nah, of course we should. Getting called by the FD is hardly a terrible thing here. Just noting that OP seemed destined to lose $200. Though perhaps if the 3! was larger than what V2 had left, maybe V1 would come along OTF and have a shot at the sidepot.

Not trying to be pedantic or make you feel stupid, but what flush draw? OP said V2 had Kc5c. The flop was 3h5s9h. All V2 has was middle pair.

I mean...yeah, if OP 3B's over a x/r, maybe V2 calls with middle pair, but I'd think he'd have to be a complete dunce to think that would be good, or believe that the odds of hitting his kicker justify calling off the rest of his stack.

The point I was making is that V1 should be the main concern, and if he's x/r'ing the flop with JJ/TT, A9, or A5hh, he may not fold if we 3B to $200 or $225. And he's the one we want to stick around and pay us off.

If we 3B on the flop, V2 probably folds, but if he doesn't, we don't really care. We just want V1 to come along with a range we should have dominated.

Lol, I misread. For some reason I had it in my head he flopped a FD and picked up a pair to go with it OTT, guess my head was trying to make his line make some sense! Or maybe because before the reveal I had already assigned a FD as his most likely holding.

At least we can be confident that OPs money won't be staying at its new home for long.

The 3B here isn't against the whole table who may have been folding too much, it's against the "too loose V who likes to chase". This suggest to me a vilain who doesn't like to fold to 3bets. Obviously intuition at the table will often lead you in the right direction, but based only on this description I don't think there's enough to justify any major deviations from what should be a basically sound strategy. We certainly can't say whether he'll fold QJs to sizing x or y with any particular frequency. If the standard opening in this game has been to $10 then yeah maybe 35 seems about right — BUT, if its more often been to 15 then a normal 3B will be to 45, and we can expect many villains to view this in absolute dollar amounts and thus call with their normal (wide) range.
Ultimately we just need villain to call with a range sigificantly weaker than ours, and unless the table dynamic suggests a larger 3B will be perceved as truly excessively large, we can expect a fairly inelastic calling range.

Also, letting our actual hand strength dictate our 3-bet sizing because we're "trying to get a call" is a poor strategy. Sizing up with ultra-premiums against truly oblivious villains who will call with the same range is one thing since we're exploiting to get more value. Sizing down because we're afraid they'll fold just loses value the times they DO have many strong yet dominated hands, and should thus only be executed if our read is VERY strong.

It isn't about absolute hand strength. We want our 3!s to be called, preferably by exactly 1 villain that we have position on. I never 3! with the intention of getting everyone to fold. This is especially true if I've identified a post-flop leak. In general, we are going to make far more money from our opponents making post-flop mistakes than pre-flop mistakes. So when selecting a preflop 3! size, my main considerations are:

1: What will V call with a wide range, but will still discourage others left to act to fold?

2: Will the pot be large enough that I can reasonably gii by the river with non-nutted hands? We're $425 deep, so with a $70 pot our SPR is 5.5x. We can gii on a wide range of runouts with reasonable bet sizes. For example, $35 flop, $90 turn creates a $320 pot going to river with $265 for the final shove. So our sizing is enough that we can gii against decent but not necessarily great made hands like TP. And since we didn't size up too much, on some runouts we can make it a two street game and overbet jam for protection, or go smaller on the flop or turn to set up a big river bluff. We have a lot of paths to decide post-flop whether we want to build a pot, set up a bluff, or shut it down. That favors the more skilled player and the player IP.

If we went to the other extreme and made it $70, now OTF we have a 2.5x spr. We don't have room to outplay our opponent. Our skill edge matters less, and our position matters less. The game becomes a lot more about luck and hands are much more likely to simply play themselves where the correct option is obvious. This is why solvers almost always 3! larger when OOP than IP because a smaller SPR favors the OOP player by making their decisions postflop easier. So if we were $1000 deep vs V, there is a lot of logic in sizing up. Given that we're only $400 deep, sizing up is definitely a theoretical mistake.

$35 isn't "sizing down" it is at the upper end of theory. Going beyond that is purely in the realm of exploitative play and I'd argue that exploitatively you want to be IP against one V with a high SPR when you have the post-flop skill advantage. If you don't have a post-flop skill advantage and/or are OOP, that is when you might want to juice up the pot and go to a flop with a low SPR. As a default in a Monday afternoon game at $1/$3, wratcheting up the 3! to $50-$70 is going to be a significant error, not an exploit. That should only be done after you have accumulated enough evidence that $35 isn't enough to iso frequently enough, the stacks are getting deeper, or a particular player is a straight-up whale.

The V plays too loose (preflop error) and chases too much (post flop error). We want V to make both errors. If we jack it up to $50, most Vs who open too wide are going to tighten up when calling such a large 3!. Which means they will make postflop errors less frequently and when he does call, there is less room for errors due to lower SPR. We don't want him to tighten up, we want him to call with almost 100% of his range because he is going to make larger mistakes postflop. And we want room to maneuver postflop. That is true whether we have QQ or 72o.