Playing in cash games

So I'm a cash game player. I first started building my 5 dollar BR on DONs maybe a year/2 years ago. It worked out for a while but i hit a downswing and I was down to about 70 cents. I started playing some limit and sold some play chips to get about $4 and then from there i just started to climb. I crushed 2nl at 19bb/100 out of about 15k hands and finally after a grueling 55k hands at 10nl i'm finally grinding 25nl.

Naturally i always thought i was a decent player but recently i'm finding out a lot of things that seem really different to me, things that go against what I always thought was right. For example this hand I found on 2+2:

Poker Stars $0.05/$0.10 No Limit Hold'em $0.02 Ante - 6 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

MP: $32.09
CO: $25.00
BTN: $11.14
Hero (SB): $34.27
BB: $22.68
UTG: $14.59

Pre Flop: ($0.27) Hero is SB with Qc Ad
1 fold, MP raises to $0.30, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.25, 1 fold

Flop: ($0.82) 7d 9h 7s (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $0.40, Hero calls $0.40

Turn: ($1.62) 2d (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $1.20, Hero calls $1.20

River: ($4.02) 3c (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $5.40, Hero ???
(OP had said villain is running like 35ish/20ish over a 70ish hand sample.)

Here I made a comment asking why hero didn't 3bet this pre. I mean he's OOP and has a strong hand. I had a couple people agree with me that we should 3bet but then others came in saying that flatting might be better to just flat and have villain "valuetown" himself.

This is just one instance, i mean i've been seeing more and more people saying that we need to somehow keep the villian in and have him not fold out worse hands. I understand this but i mean i don't know how doing this is possible without giving him pot odds to draw out. Usually when i'm playing my standard cbet(whether i hit the flop or not and if the texture is ok) is almost 3/4 pot. And i 3bet AQ from the blinds almost every, if not all the time. Do i have a huge leak?

I was actually looking at these stats earlier today in HEM as I was wondering what was making the most for me.

Holding AJ, AQ in sb or bb facing 1 raiser and flat calling I am down 80bbs

Holding AJ, AQ in sb or bb facing 1 raiser and 3 betting I am up 350bbs


I think the numbers speak for themselves...

Whoever said to call is either some insanely clever high stakes player slumming it in the micro's section (i.e. thinking many levels ahead of us) or completely clueless. I'm going with clueless.

You're in EP pre-flop, 3betting will never be significantly worse than calling, and calling is almost always much worse.

Calling under represents your hand, but you're OOP which means you're either going to have to c/c your way to the river and then c/r or c/r the flop and bet the remaining streets, either way your range is usually polarized by the river. You're not building massive pots OOP unless your opponent has a hand he's willing to play a big pot with, in which case you'd be better off in a 3bet pot.

I'm all for getting fancy IP, but when OOP just play like a nit and then when you do play a hand turn hyper-aggressive and just start shovelling chips in.

well if he is 35/20 i would have called, see if i can hit an A or a Q, if i 3 bet preflop and i don't hit i am in a big pot without a hand and than what do i do? but if i do hit the fish will most likely pay me of with second pair or same pair with a worse kicker because he is so loose.

Continue the aggression by leading out with a c bet? You will have massive fold equity here as you have shown aggression and taken the lead in this pot pre flop. Also, most players will have a fairly small range for calling a 3 bet so we can be fairly sure if the flop hit him or not.

This

3-bet

I really dont know how anyone can advise anything other than 3-betting in this situation although they will.

You make money when you 3-bet you lose money when you call.

Dont do that