Locked up flop against two action players

You describe V1 as "loose passive" and imply that he chases in bad spots and makes bad calls. All that points toward a bet.

Ignoring the read, the risk of checking here is that it will go check/check. Then what? Are we then betting the river? Checking hoping V tries to bluff or go for thin value? I think the only time we want to check is if we expect V to get aggressive and try to represent the J with bluffs and try to push us off a perceived QQ-AA type hand. Even then, the check/call, check/jam line is dicey because even an aggressive V will check behind a lot of rivers. And even an aggressive V probably checks turn with TT, then bluffcatch river where the call is likely very sizing dependent, meaning we can't go big.

We want to target hands like 77-TT, maybe a QQ if V doesn't 3!, but I'd focus my sizing on getting max from 77-TT and go bet/bet. That's somewhat player dependent, I'd love to go for $100, but in $1/$3 that seems to be a magic line that people think "oh big bet", so in general I think $75ish performs better. $75 leaves $195 behind that you'll be jamming into a $315 pot. Seems adequate to make TT at least think about calling you down if your image is good, versus V as described I think $75 gets called by a lot of pairs. Also a non-zero chance V has something stupid like 53 or 75s that certainly isn't folding for $75.

And while Jx should be just getting it in against you here, way too often I've seen loose passives willing to call off but with a hand like JT they will never raise and just call down whatever you bet. So failing to jam river is a huge error IMO for all the times V has J with garbage kicker and will call a jam, but would also just call smaller bets. That makes up for whenever he finds the fold button with pps, but you might be surprised at how sticky some Vs will get with TT here even though your line screams strong. Especially if you've been active and Vs perceive you as capable of bluffing.

Grunch:

PRE - think AJo is kinda cuspy to raise here, but I don't hate it. Just seems like we'll often run into better AX combos, or run into aces up, or make 2ndPTK on K-high or Q-high flops. Hard to play hands like this super well when we're first to act and multi-way.

FLOP - as soon as I see this flop, my plan would be to c-bet small, pray to get called, then plan to check most turns to induce loose opponents to stab when they think we're weak or scared.

I think we could have bet $25, but $20 is fine.

TURN - check, or bet small again, like $40-$45. With the read we have on V1, betting small is probably better than checking, because he probably makes more calling mistakes when we bet, than betting mistakes when we check.

We have $270 behind getting to the turn. If we bet $45 and he calls, the pot will be $255 and we'll have $225 back.

This is why I would have liked a slightly bigger bet on the flop. If we bet $25, the pot would be $175. We could bet $50 on the turn. The pot would be $275 and we'd only have $215 left.

On the river, I'd be thinking about what size to bet to get 55-99 to call. Against the pool, I might go half pot. Against this V, maybe 2/3 pot. So if we bet $40-$45 on turn, I'd be betting around $175-ish on the river.

Against the pool, I'd be thinking about whether or not we want to try to play a two-street game on the flop, and possibly setting that up by c-betting larger, and / or thinking about inducing by checking the turn. Against loose-sticky V's, I'm probably simplifying and just betting for value, using sizes that are as large as I think he'll call.

H checks
V tanks, then shoves
H calls.
V shows QQ.
River is a six giving H a fullhouse.

I needed every bit of those three jacks to win this hand. I might get stacked off here if I hit only TPTK.

Does anyone know what V was thinking here ? Should I even be worried about it?

I considered betting big (pot sized bet) if the turn went check check.

Nice hand.

V's a fish. He slow played his hand pre, hoping to trap. He's not folding to a single bet on the flop. When you check turn, he doesn't know what to do, but thinks his hand is best, so he jams.

I wouldn't worry about trying to get inside his head. Don't try to figure out what opponents are doing if they don't know.

If he checked back turn, I'd typically bet smaller on the river against most opponents. But if we think V is sticky and has to see it, go ahead and bet bigger on the river. That bet-check-bet line tends to look somewhat bluffy, and can get some loose calls.

I like everything docvail said so I'll only expand on the AJ pre. If I'm at a table of good, observant, and clever players, I'm just calling with AJo in the BB. It doesn't hit a lot of flops hard and being out of position gives them too many opportunities to steal the pot away from you.

Against this table as you describe them, aggression is almost always a plus.

But the more important issue is what's the story of your avatar?

Thanks everyone for their input. I have some new things to think about with AJ. I have been raising to larger sizes lately and bringing a lot of pots down preflop. I had some confidence that this hand would go the same way. When I got called by two players my first thought was oh crap this could go bad. But then again These were the two players I thought I could make money off of.

28 years and 56 lbs ago. One night with friends, some liquor, cards, and new technology called a digital camera. It only cost about $800 (the camera, not the woman in the photo, she cost me a lot more than that).

Jk I found the pic on the internet. It seemed to speak to me and I thought it was relevant for these forums.

This is great advice!

This is great advice!

Such great advice, you said it twice!